NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower app for the iOS platform continues to serve as a form of crack for any iPhone or iPad gamer. The game is an economic simulator based around a skyscraper populated by “bitizens” going about their daily lives hoping to score their dream job at one of the businesses residing in Tiny Tower.

The game deservedly won kudos from Apple as the 2011 iPhone Game of the Year. Its 8-bit graphics and music delight, making the job of managing one’s Tiny Tower relatively easy — that is, until the tower grows to over 150 floors.

That’s where things gets a little harder to manage in Tiny Tower, and the game even hits a floor limit (which thankfully has grown with most app updates from NimbleBit), essentially shutting things down for the gamer. Sure, one can build new empty floors, but no businesses or apartments can be constructed inside them.

Fixing Tiny Tower

The folks at NimbleBit are great programmers, so fixing Tiny Tower involves just a few hopefully simple tasks.

1. Do away with the floor limit by allowing more than one instance of the same floor. So if you want to build two Fancy Cuisines, you simply have to give the second one a new name — something like Chez Francois? If you have more than three bitizens with Fancy Cuisine as their Dream Job, happiness ensues.
   

   M. Patterson is jonesing for a Dream Job at the Health Club. Every dream job a heartache? Enough with the Bryan Ferry references.

2. Allow the recruitment of bitizens with a certain type of Dream Job. Putting 3 bitizens to work at their Dream Jobs is the best way to optimize a Tiny Tower business. A recent update allowed the gamer to choose a specific business type to build, so why not allow recruiting of a “Dream Job” bitizen to work at that business. Charge a Tower Buck or two for the headhunter service — that’s cheaper than they are in real life! The game really bogs down at higher levels when renting and evicting bitizen after bitizen whose Dream Job is at a place already fully employed with three dream employees. Personally, I can’t replace someone already rated 9 at a Dream Job, just to get the extra two Tower Bucks. It’s just wrong.
3. Allow quick porting to a specific tower floor when not using the elevator. Once a Tiny Tower gets tall, the game’s normally easy interface breaks down when having to navigate up and down the tower trying to find a specific floor.
4. Roll one’s own missions. One nice-to-have would be to allow the gamer to generate their own missions. Pick two to three products with amounts, and have the game generate a Tower Buck reward. It’s just another way to keep the gamer busy at the higher levels.

By doing those four relatively simple tasks — depending of course on the game’s data design for task #1 — Tiny Tower’s replay value is greatly increased. Frankly it’s sad looking at those empty floors at the top of my Tiny Tower.