The Empire’s ultimate weapon, in handy diagram form. Doubles as a cute hamster ball!
Tiny Death Star , I think, is an amusing game for the iPad that combines the premise and basic game mechanics of Tiny Tower, another hit iPad game, with the vast interstellar possibilities of the Star Wars universe. Instead of Tiny Tower‘s premise of contstructing a massive skyscraper in which virtual “bitizens” can live and work, the player for Tiny Death Star instead takes on the role of a teeny-tiny Darth Vader and builds a massive portion of the infamous Death Star space station. At the start of the game, a miniscule Emperor Palpatine informs Vader that the building of the Empire’s ultimate weapon requires a great deal of funding. To obtain the necessary galactic credits, he assigns Vader (alias, you the player) to the job of Imperial Landlord, moving various denizens of the Star Wars galaxy into apartments on the Death Star, putting those new residents to work in various restaurants, gift shops, and other stores, and extracting secrets from captured Rebel forces. Will Vader prove himself capable of managing the galaxy’s most terrifying “ant farm,” or will it all blow up in his dark helmet-covered face?
I’ve played a bit of Tiny Tower before, but I stopped playing it and took it off my iPad. I am not quite sure why: I think it was either because I found the basic game play a bit bland or I was not fond of its presentation of a combination apartment/office building. Weirdly enough, Tiny Death Star is the exact same game as Tiny Tower with a Star Wars coat of paint, but I find this version much more compelling. It is probably just due to the material being used, but let’s face it, watching small Stormtroopers and droids go about their daily routines isn’t something you see every day. In addition, there is also a steady stream of miniature bounty hunters, aliens, X-Wing pilots, Han Solo lookalikes, and a host of other familiar faces among the itsy-bitsy crowd. If you play long enough, you’ll even see a few of the really big players in the Star Wars saga drop by. Early in the game, I received a visit from Jar Jar Binks who used his long tongue to snag a sandwich from a high shelf in my cafe; unfortunately, he also caused a portion of the ceiling to collapse. (Don’t worry, this was only in an in-game movie and everything was fine once the movie finished playing. I’d still like to know why Jabba the Hutt fell through the ceiling, though; just how did he get onto the Death Star, anyway?) If these special character cameos keep coming, I will be one happy Padawan (junior Jedi Knight; Yeah, it’s not my favorite Star Wars terminology either, but if I was eight years old again and able to swing a lightsaber around with Yoda as my teacher, I’d put up with any terrible name I was given!)
Seeing new characters is great, and keeping the Death Star up and running for them to enjoy is almost as fun to me. My main duty as Imperial Landlord consists of managing my growing collection of residents and making sure they are in positions where they are able to generate the most credits. Each of them has a series of numerical ratings attached to them indicating which type of work they perform best (retail, service, manufacturing, etc.). A worker with a high retail rating placed in a retail job will, of course, generate considerably more income than someone with a low retail number. Each resident also has a “dream job,” a particular place they would especially like to work. If they are placed in that location, they generate a bit of a bonus income on top of their regular contributions. I only have a few stores open on my Death Star at the moment, so my work force is not as productive as they could be. I’ll need a bit of time to get things up to lightspeed, but once they are perfectly aligned, I will no doubt have one of the best sales groups in the cosmos!
What is really pushing me forward, though, is the potential for the game to tell a compelling story. The building of a structure as huge as the Death Star is an interesting situation to play with, and Star Wars is fairly famous for game-changing plot twists (Vader being Luke’s father, for instance). I can only imagine what might happen with an apartment complex smack dab in the middle of a gigantic space battle. What happens if Rebel X-Wings take a few shots at the Death Star and ruin my new balcony? What if the Wookiees (Chewbacca and his family and friends) and the Mon Calamari (Admiral “It’s a trap!” Ackbar and the rest of his kind) don’t like each other and want to be kept as far away from each other as possible? Just when in the Star Wars timeline does this game take place? I don’t want no stinkin’ trench run ruining my well-intentioned apartment-empire!
The combination of Star Wars and real estate development has made for an exciting combination so far. I think I will be sticking with this game for far longer than I did Tiny Tower. I just hope that the experience lasts longer than the real Death Star did in the movies!
What are your feelings on Star Wars? Would you be willing to play Tiny Death Star, and if you have, what do you think of it so far? Do you think the Rebels would notice a bunch of apartment towers jutting outward from the surface of the Death Star (just seems like a huge security risk to me, is all)? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll get back to you faster than it takes Han Solo to make the Kessel run (12 parsecs is a long time, you know!).
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