My Tiny Tower Is Taller Than Yours

Since I got my Samsung Galaxy Tab last year, I must’ve installed and uninstalled dozens of apps. Of those I’ve kept, there are those I use every day (Evernote, Dropbox, Aldiko Book Reader, Tweetdeck), those I open every once in a while (Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, TripAdvisor, Google Maps), and those I feel I need but hardly open (Skype, Yahoo! Messenger).

And then there’s Tiny Tower.

I’ve only been playing Tiny Tower for about a week, ever since my two iPod Touch-wielding sisters Ina and Tessa bugged me relentlessly to download it. “It will eat up your life, Kuya,” they said. And they were right.

Tiny Tower is an 8-bit (that’s Family Computer graphics for you tech term-impaired) simulation game, where you build and manage your very own condominium. You start with a handful of coins, a few Tower Bux, and a ground floor/lobby. To begin, you use up your coins to build a residential floor, wait ’til people come in to rent the space, and then start building shops where your bitizens (citizens made up of bits – cute, huh?) can work. Once you’ve hired people to work in your first shop, you then proceed to build or produce goods, and once that’s done, you stock your shop with them.

Everything you need in one place

Stock up!

In Tiny Tower, you’ll earn money in several ways: rent, shop sales, and tips. See, apart from being the owner and manager of your condominium, you’re also the elevator operator. What make this a game with the potential to eat up your life are the variety of management and customization options available. Lemme try and explain this as briefly as I can.

There are 5 shop categories: Service, Recreational, Food, Retail, and Creative, under which there are various options. Each resident comes with both a dream job as well as skills in each category, on a scale from 1-10. As you build both more residential floors and even more shops, you’ll find it will help to put residents in jobs that suit their skill levels, or if possible, in their dream jobs. Each item in each store takes a different length of time to complete production, and that time will depend on the employees’ skill levels.

Skillz That Killz

The game tends to get harder as your tower grows taller (no green jokes, please), and that’s where your Tower Bux and certain VIPs come in. You can use your Bux to speed up jobs, sell of stock immediately for more money, upgrade your elevator (this will help immensely), or buy more coins. It gets more expensive to build a new floor over time, but it compensates for your added income, so it’s all good. VIPs will come in handy as well: depending on which one you get, they can speed up construction, hasten production, move people into empty apartments, drive more customers into your shops, or buy out your entire inventory. Even the regular Joes who enter your tower and ask for an elevator ride will sometimes tip you Tower Bux for your trouble.

Finally, there’s BitBook, the Facebook-like networking sites where your bitizens rant or rave about their jobs, talk of seeing ghosts in the halls, or even make jokes about feeling like they’re inside a computer simulation.

You'll find yourself laughing at some of your bitizens' status updates

It’s been said that apps for smartphones and tablets are for what they call “casual gamers,” and this is true for those that you can just pick up and drop at anytime. Not so Tiny Tower, which you will find yourself coming back to again. And again. And again. Every. Single. Day. Now, if you’ll excuse me…

No Better Kingpin

I walked out of Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story with a renewed belief in the future of Philippine cinema and just one complaint: that Jeorge “ER” Estregan (born in 1963), who played the title role, was too old to have played the notorious Tondo gangster, who died at 27.

“May gatas ka pa sa labi,” says a rival boss to a tied-up and brutally beat-up Salonga in the first scene of the film. It’s hard to get past Estregan’s age through most of the film, especially when he shares scenes with his young wife (Carla Abellana) and querida (Valerie Concepcion). Talking about the film with some of my office mates, one suggested that perhaps Baron Geisler, who played one of Salonga’s henchmen, could’ve done justice to the role. I agree, although Geisler’s performance as Erning was perfect in my book, too.

I’ve been thinking about who else could’ve played Salonga in the last week or so, and I can’t imagine anyone else doing justice to the role. Yes, there’s no one else who can play a convincing 27 year-old gangster. I realize now that what passes for entertainment in Philippine TV and cinema these days are mostly vehicles for pretty boys with washboard abs and soulless beauties with hot legs. Our screens are filled with stories rehashed from what was hot in other countries last year, sometimes even blatant rip-offs.

The few truly original stories have to be confined to Cinemalaya and other such festivals, where budding directors, writers and actors walk away a few trophies richer but with wallets even thinner than when they started. Despite its poor showing at the box office in its first 3 days (only P7M), I hope that Manila Kingpin makes more money as the days go by, especially since it practically swept the MMFF awards. It’s time that we as moviegoers clamor for films that not only put smiles on our faces or cause tears to fall from our eyes but also for those that have original, genuine and rich stories to tell.

Let’s have movies with stars who shine in them, rather than whose credits shine with superficial, synthetic stars.

Getting back in it in 2012

I think it’s time for this fledgling writer to start writing again.

*flexes muscles, licks chops, lets out a low growl and then sniffs armpits*

Stay tuned, dear readers. Happy New Year!