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Star Wars Assault Team, Tiny Death Star get bullseye'd like womprats
It seems that Disney has instituted its own version of Order 66 and cleansed the iOS App Store, Google Play Store and Windows Store of free-to-play mobile games Star Wars Assault Team and Tiny Death Star. Both Pocket Gamer and Game Informer report that the decision to pull the games - both of which had been available for less than a year - was made so that the company could focus on Star Wars Commander. Further, it seems that Nimblebit - co-developer with Disney Mobile on Tiny Death Star - was not made aware of the game being retired prior to the game, well ... being retired. "We're very disappointed to see Tiny Death Star shuttered less than a year after launch," Marsh wrote to Game Informer. "We had no prior knowledge that the game would be removed and no longer even have a contact at Disney after the recent layoffs." "Suffice to say if you're a developer looking to partner with Disney this might not be the partnership you're looking for." Ouch. Maybe it's because the games just didn't fit Disney's new canon for the Star Wars universe? [Image: Disney]
Daily App: Disco Zoo lets you rescue animals and throw them a 70s party
Disco Zoo from NimbleBit is a casual puzzle game that challenges you to rescue 8-bit animals while you build out your virtual zoo. It's an interesting puzzler as it has several different objectives that keep you busy and engaged in the game. The first objective is to collect animals that you add to you zoo. To collect animals, you must find their unique pattern in a 5 by 5 grid. Each animal has a three or four-square pattern and you have eight tries to draw the correct pattern. Once you collect an animal, it is placed in a pen with other animals of the same type. In the zoo part of the game, you are challenged to earn money by keeping your animals awake. When animals are awake, they earn you coins with the more common animals earning you less and the rare animals earning your more. As the animals fall asleep, you are alerted to wake them up in order to keep the money flowing. Coins and DiscoBuxs are the currency within the app and are used to pay for animal rescues, unlock new areas for rescue trips and throw disco parties for your animals. The disco parties require DiscoBuxs and are a lot of fun with cheesy disco music, a disco ball and lots of dancing animals that earn you double the amount of coins during the dance. Disco Zoo is a unique casual game that is part puzzle game and part zoo simulation. The music is fun, and the 8-bit animals are adorable. The game is easy enough that it takes little effort to start playing and is engaging enough that you keep playing when you have a few spare minutes. Disco Zoo is available from the iOS App Store for free. There are in-app purchases for DiscoBuxs and coins, but you can earn all the currency that you need to play the game as long as you are patient. You really only need to buy the in-app currency if you want to advance faster.
First Star Wars game from Disney, Tiny Death Star, out now for free
That's no tiny moon – it's a Tiny Death Star, the first Star Wars game from Disney since it bought LucasArts in 2012, made in collaboration with Tiny Tower developer NimbleBit. Tiny Death Star is a pixelated Star Wars take on Tiny Tower, with players building their own Death Stars for the dark side of the Force. It's available now, free, for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8. Disney shut down LucasArts as a development studio in April, shifting it to the licensing business. NimbleBit has made its mark in mobile development in recent years, with more than 10 million downloads of Tiny Tower as of 2012. But no matter how you may feel about Disney, LucasArts, Star Wars or NimbleBit, it's clear that Tiny Death Star is pretty darn adorable.
ANNE, Nimble Quest among 100 greenlit games by Steam
Valve accepted 100 more games onto Steam through its Greenlight service, in which community votes determine the games that are granted distribution on the platform. Among the games that will now appear on Steam are action-platformer ANNE, Nimblebit's arcade-style RPG Nimble Quest, Cornerstone: The Song of Tyrim, roguelike Our Darker Purpose and real-time strategy game Frozen Hearth. Cornerstone developer Ascension Games just achieved its funding on Kickstarter last week. You can view the entire list of greenlit games on Steam's announcement page.
Aussie rebels steal secret plans for Star Wars: Tiny Death Star
Star Wars: Tiny Death Star has snuck onto the Australian App store and onto Australia's Google Play store. That's no small feat considering how imposing even the tiniest that's-no-moon must be. Star Wars: Tiny Death Star is a variant of NimbleBit's property management game, Tiny Tower. Players must construct levels with the world destroyer and help usher the Death Star into a prosperous future of intimidating the rebellion. The game is due to hit iOS and Android in North America sometime soon.
LucasArts and NimbleBit team up for Star Wars: Tiny Death Star
You love Star Wars -- yes, you do, don't lie -- and if you're an iOS gaming fan, you probably also love Tiny Tower, the micromanagement game from developer NimbleBit. Now, the two have been combined in an all-new title called Star Wars: Tiny Death Star. The game tasks you with building an all-new Death Star, level by level, in the same adorable 8-bit style NimbleBit has been perfecting for years. Not much else is known about the game at the moment, as Disney Interactive has held back all but the details above, but the game is slated to arrive "soon" for "mobile devices," which will undoubtedly include the iPhone and iPad.
Star Wars: Tiny Death Star coming soon from Tiny Tower devs
NimbleBit, indie creator of the mobile free-to-play hit Tiny Tower, has partnered with Disney to produce Star Wars: Tiny Death Star, due out soon for mobile devices worldwide. Similar in concept to Tiny Tower, Tiny Death Star is a simulation game in which players build floors and manage businesses in a bid to populate a tower (or a mobile instrument of planetary destruction, in this case) with workers and residents. Tiny Death Star will feature familiar Star Wars-themed locations filled with series characters and Galactic Bitizens. As of last year, Tiny Tower has racked up over 10 million downloads across the iOS App Store and Google Play.
Daily iPhone App: Nimble Quest arrives on the App Store
You may already know that the great NimbleBit has released a new game this week, given that I spoke with them earlier here at GDC. Nimble Quest (free) is unlike the company's previous hits, Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes, but it's just as fun and well-implemented. The core mechanic is borrowed from Snake, the old mobile game where you send a long snake around in four directions while eating bits of food and growing longer. In Nimble Quest, you guide around a train of fantasy-based adventurers by swiping on the screen, earning XP and gems as you go. The gameplay is simple, but it can be tough. Running into a wall kills your whole party in one hit, and the adventurers you pick up during play (which are unlocked at a rate of about one per stage) are relatively fragile. You'll probably lose just about as many as you gain over the course of a level or game. Just like in Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower, NimbleBit keeps the rewards flowing. Powerups boost your strength or give you a gem magnet, and clearing out an entire level is a very rewarding feat by itself. The game is freemium, but NimbleBit knows how to keep a freemium game fun even for those who don't want to spend money, so the in-app purchases are always there and ready if you'd like a hand, but never required or annoying. The one misstep is that NimbleBit has borrowed the idea of "boosts." It's a concept that's ascribed to Bejeweled Blitz and has been showing up in several games lately. I don't like boosts at all. The idea is that you can spend some money on unlocking an extra ability or some extra power for a certain stage, essentially gambling that you'll earn just as much or more back with that extra power. In my experience, buying the boosts is never worth it, so I just don't use them at all, and that seems like a less-than-ideal mechanic in a game that's otherwise so polished. That quibble aside, Nimble Quest is another gem in NimbleBit's crown. It'll be interesting to see what kind of audience it finds, as it's a very different game from the others the Marsh brothers are known for. But it's definitely a must-play, and if you're anything like me, this game will snake its way right into your free time for quite a while.
NimbleBit readies Nimble Quest, and then plans a return to Pocket Trains
I've met with David Marsh here in San Francisco a few times before, and somehow it always turns out that I meet with him right before his big releases. The last time was right before he and his brother Ian, the founders of NimbleBit, released Pocket Planes, the company's follow-up to Tiny Tower. And this week here at GDC, we met a few days before Nimble Quest was finally due out for release. So it's tough to ask questions about how the release of Nimble Quest is going when the game hasn't actually come out yet. But Marsh and I did chat about what they expect to see with this latest release. It's not a simulation game at all, unlike Tiny Tower or Pocket Planes, and Marsh says he hopes this game will demonstrate that the company can make a successful game that is a little more action-oriented than what they've made in the past. The two brothers were very struck by the gameplay of a game called Call of Snakes, and Marsh says Nimble Quest is essentially an exploration of that gameplay into a little wider fantasy realm. I've been playing the game for quite a while now and it is very fun, though Marsh agrees that "compared to our last three games, it is less casual." Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower basically both ran their course no matter what you did, but Nimble Quest requires some finger agility and can be lost pretty quickly. At the same time, however, Marsh says that while the game might not appeal to a casual audience, he hopes it will be very engaging with the audience it finds. The game includes a boost system (which Marsh says was inspired by PopCap's Bejeweled Blitz), and there's a certain bit of strategy there to choosing which boosts you use regularly and which boosts you put into play when you're on a hot streak in the game. I asked Marsh about the game's name, and he said that putting the company's name in the title was more about making sure it was something that could be theirs rather than something generic. "Pocket" and "Tiny" are both words that are hard to trademark well, he said -- "we couldn't really own that." When the brothers sat down to try and name this title, "Nimble Quest" is just what came to mind, so it'll be interesting to see if the game's release drives a little more interest in the company for people who may not know their story. Nimble Quest was developed in Unity (using Matt Rix's Futile framework), and Marsh says that engine worked very well for them. Unity allows the company to port its games more easily, and so Nimble Quest is the first title that will become available on PC, Mac and iOS all in the same day (NimbleBit even released a browser version already thanks to Unity's portability). Marsh does say that getting the game on Steam is a goal, though he hasn't started talking to Valve yet about how that would happen. Finally, Marsh says that while NimbleBit is currently focused on Nimble Quest (and will likely provide more content and support after released), the team's next title is actually a step backwards. When Pocket Planes was being developed, it originally started out as Pocket Trains, before David and Ian decided that having to stick to rail routes was a little too limiting and that they should take to the air instead. "But we still had all that art from Pocket Trains," he told me, so the company has an artist working on recombining that art into a "completely new game." That release is still a ways away, but we may see Pocket Trains return in some form in the future. Nimble Quest is coming out this Thursday -- NimbleBit continues to impress (the company is still just three developers and one support employee), and Nimble Quest should continue the brothers' streak of freemium hits.
NimbleBit's Nimble Quest coming to iOS and Mac March 28
NimbleBit has announced that its latest game, Nimble Quest, is due March 28, right in the middle of next week's Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco. I've been playing the game for a few weeks, and it's great. It's definitely more arcade-y than NimbleBit's other games (including Pocket Planes and Tiny Tower), but it's a lot of fun, and there's no shortage of heroes to unlock and high scores to earn as you play through the Snake-based RPG dungeons. The game is coming to iOS and to the Mac next week, which I believe is a first for NimbleBit. The team has released its games on both platforms before, but not at the same time. This is probably a result of the team using Unity to build this one. The Marsh brothers used developer Matt Rix's Futile framework in the Unity engine to make Nimble Quest, and it likely made bringing the title over to OS X easier. Finally, the game will also include Everyplay integration, which is a video-sharing service designed to record and share videos from iOS games. Nimble Quest is hardly the first title with Everyplay integration, but it may be the biggest title to release with the service included, so we'll have to see how that goes for both the game and the service. At any rate, if you've been waiting to play Nimble Quest, the wait is almost over. We'll see the game live on the App Store, for free, next week.
Hands on with NimbleBit's next title, Nimble Quest
I am a huge fan, as you may already know, of the two brothers behind NimbleBit and all of their work, from the earlier titles like Scoops and DizzyPad to the much larger freemium hits they've had like Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes. The last time I talked to either of the Marsh brothers in person, I was told that the company was hoping to shrink in scope a little bit, and make more, smaller games, rather than huge freemium titles full of content. I was also told that they were going to return to Textropolis, an early title of theirs, and maybe expand it into something with a little more accessibility. But it turns out neither of those plans were true. The company is currently working on a game called Nimble Quest, which is both not a word game, and seems pretty full of content to me. As previously described, it's a sort of arcade RPG, where you guide a line of adventurers through a series of stages, earning currency you can use to level them up. When the guys at NimbleBit sent me a preview beta build this week, I eagerly jumped to play it, and I think I can describe the game (in its current working state, at least) in just one word. That word is "Snake." Yes, the classic video game has a long tradition of appearing on mobile platforms, and it is a very clear influence to the NimbleBit team here -- the game even brings up a picture of an old black-and-white device playing the game to describe to a new player just how Nimble Quest works. In each game, you start out as one hero, and then you move that hero around a field, swiping in various directions to steer your little guy around. And that's it, basically. Attacking is all done automatically -- if an enemy is in range and your adventurer is facing the right direction, you'll attack. Killing enemies drops a number of different bonuses and powerups: You can collect coins (which are your main currency, used to upgrade both your individual heroes and all of the powerups), extra abilities (like a coin magnet, similar to Temple Run, or an extra shield or bit of attack power for your hero), or heroes, which then are added to your line (just as you'd grow a longer snake in the traditional Snake game). Ian Marsh has been tweeting videos of the game in action, so you can see what it's all like by checking those out. The trickiest part of the game is that your enemies also have their own routes, speed and ranges, so while soldiers will just slash the space in front of them, spiders will toss ranged webs to slow you down, and skeletons will throw bones at you no matter which direction you happen to be in. In fact, the current beta build is fairly tough: If you crash into the wall or another enemy, you die, and that has happened to me a lot. Having one of the characters following you die isn't a big deal, but having your lead hero die ends the game, at which point you're given a Temple Run-style epitaph ("Ulrich got stomped on by a spider"), and the chance to continue by spending another bit of currency (strangely not Nimble Bux -- they're round and white, so I've been calling them "pearls"). Outside of the core game, you can use the gems you've earned to upgrade each of the heroes, which are unlocked over time, and so far tend towards the main fantasy tropes: There's a tough soldier, a ranged archer, a mage and so on. The characters get more esoteric as you unlock them, so later on there's a ninja to play with, some sort of demon guy and a few fun references to other games and properties. Characters can be unlocked either by finding them in the game, or by outright buying them with IAP, though that feature isn't hooked up just yet. In addition to upgrading the heroes you do have unlocked, you can also use gems to buy one-time buffs, if you so choose. Not that I'd need to buy any extra gems -- like all of NimbleBit's other games, Nimble Quest seems nice and generous with its currency, and there's a lot of fun to be had just questing through the game's levels, earning as many gems as you can and setting high scores as you figure it all out. At some point, an Arena mode also unlocks, which I presume is an endless mode to quest away in -- but I haven't opened it up yet myself. The game does seem a little less complicated than Pocket Planes, which is not a bad thing at all -- this is a more of a grindy, progression-based arcade game than a freemium management title, which will likely appeal to a nice, wide swath of the App Store. But even though the gameplay is slightly simpler, there's no shortage of content here to unlock and find, so NimbleBit's claims of trying to make smaller, more compact games were probably overtaken by the Marsh brothers' interest in creating a lot of fun RPG-style rewards for Nimble Quest. Considering that the game is currently in beta, a release has to be somewhat close, but NimbleBit has stayed mum on exactly when Nimble Quest might be done. Given the state of what I've played already, and a few comments the team has made on Twitter, I'd say we'll look out for it on the App Store within another month or so. I'm scheduled to speak with NimbleBit for sure next month at GDC, so if we don't see Nimble Quest available by then, I'll be sure to ask them why.
Tiny Tower creator NimbleBit's next game is Nimble Quest
Brothers Ian and David Marsh of California-based game developer NimbleBit are taking a different path with their next game for iOS. Having made a huge splash on iOS with their sim-management titles Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes, the duo is turning to the action role-playing genre for the upcoming Nimble Quest -- and it's looking pretty distinct from their previous efforts. Revealed by Touch Arcade, the title has you steering an unstoppable "conga line" of adventurers through endless levels in an attempt to cut down enemies in their path. Drawing on the idea of customizable "Bitizens" from Tiny Tower, you'll be able to unlock more adventurers and grow your adventuring party, thus increasing its power and bestowing it with new abilities. There's also a multiplayer component planned where'll you'll be able to join guilds with other players and embark on time-limited quests together. Nimble Quest is set to be released sometime in the next few months. Head over to Touch Arcade for more screens.
NimbleBit holding a fall sale, first episode of Tiny Tower Shorts out now
NimbleBit sent along an email announcing that the company was holding a fall sale, and it made me do a double take: how does a company whose games are all free hold a fall sale? Surprisingly enough, NimbleBit found a way. From this Friday through Sunday, all of the in-app purchases in NimbleBit's freemium hits Tiny Tower, Pocket Planes and Pocket Frogs will be available for half the price that they usually are, so you'll be able to buy Tower Bux, Plane Bux or Potions or Stamps for half price. In other NimbleNews (feel free to use that for your blog, guys), the company has released its first animated short based on Tiny Tower to go along with the Pocket Planes series that was already in progress. This one riffs on Tiny Tower's upgradeable elevators, and how they sometimes tend to go a bit too slow .. or too fast. Enjoy by watching it below.
Pocket Frogs getting a big update this week
NimbleBit has had two big freemium hits now with both Pocket Planes and (before that) Tiny Tower, but my favorite of the company's titles is still Pocket Frogs, where brothers and developers David and Ian Marsh first cut their teeth on the generous freemium gameplay they're now known for. And this week, they're returning to that title with a big update: Pocket Frogs is being updated for the iPhone 5 with version 2.0 on November 1. Not only will the updated app include support for the iPhone 5's taller screen, but it's getting new content as well. Over 40 new frog breeds are being added, bringing the total number of collectible amphibians up to 100. And NimbleBit is also making another big change: They're switching the game's backup and social system from ngmoco's Plus+ service into Apple's Game Center. That's a pretty significant change, but a solid one, since the official Game Center service has become much more prevalent lately. But it does have one side effect: Players will need to make sure they have at least one install (and run) of the current client before upgrading to the new client. Otherwise, the Game Center version won't be able to grab the Plus+ backup, so all of your frogs will be lost.
Pocket Planes coming to Mac, getting animated shorts
Here's an interesting pair of announcements from NimbleBit, the makers of the hit freemium games Tiny Tower and Pocket Planes. First up, Pocket Planes is coming to the Mac App Store. Starting this Thursday (at this link, which doesn't work yet but will when the game is live), players will be able to grab Pocket Planes on the Mac, featuring the same excellent freemium plane simulation gameplay on your desktop computer. The app will sync with the iOS version and feature an exclusive plane, the "X10 Mapple Pro." Pocket Planes is also available through Google Play on Android. Secondly, NimbleBit has commissioned several animated shorts from Loading Ready Run, the first of which is available to watch right now (below). The shorts bring some voices to the plane-riding Bitizens, and a pretty absurd (but chuckle-worthy) premise. There will be a series of these things to come, and Loading Ready Run is also working on some shorts from the Tiny Tower universe. Kind of a different addition to NimbleBit's series, but they're free too, so sure, why not?
Daily iPhone App: Pocket Planes flies high
Odds are that if you read our quick interview with NimbleBit, you already went to check out Pocket Planes, the new freemium title from brother David and Ian Marsh. If you were a big fan of Tiny Tower, you've probably been counting the days until it arrived, already knowing just how addictive these deliciously grindy games can be. But if you've never heard of NimbleBit or played Tiny Tower, maybe you need me to tell you: Go play Pocket Planes. The one caveat is that it is a time-based freemium title: The gameplay consists of a series of small bursts on various cycles rather than a full-fledged traditional game. But just like Tiny Tower and Pocket Frogs before it, Pocket Planes is polished to a brilliant shine. It features the Tiny Tower bitizens, and this time, they're flying planes around a real world pixel map. Using coins and bux, you can set up airports, fly passengers and cargo around the world, and slowly build up your tiny little (gigantic) airplane empire. A lot of people have noted that the game's more complicated than NimbleBit's previous titles, but only in that there are slightly more interesting choices to be made: You get to set your planes out on routes you choose, and given that fuel costs gold every time you fly, it's always possible that you'll spend more on gold than you are able to earn by delivering your cargo. Some cities are snowed in or otherwise blocked off, too, so making the right choices about where to send your planes for the most money isn't immediately apparently. Experienced gamers will probably like the extra complexity, however, and I have a feeling that even casual players will learn that making the right choices can be more fun than just tapping away for profit. And there are plenty of fun extras in the game, too. NimbleBit has clearly learned a lot from Tiny Tower and its various patches. You can take on flights to a randomly selected town every three days to earn extra money and items, and you can even join a "flight crew" with other players, which allows for some very light, very anonymous multiplayer gameplay. The "BitBook" fake social network is back from Tiny Tower, and the citizens post some hilarious updates. With tons of planes to build and collect, hundreds of airports to open and upgrade, and lots and lots of great characters and production value, Pocket Planes is a great iPhone title. It's another jewel in NimbleBit's very profitable crown, and unless freemium titles cause you to break out in hives, it's a must-play game. Download it now for free in a universal build. Oh, and join the "#schramm" flight crew -- we're #311 in the world and growing!
NimbleBit talks about the release of Pocket Planes, and what's next
Brothers Ian and David Marsh's NimbleBit is finally releasing its latest freemium title today (following on the company's success with Pocket Frogs and then the hugely popular Tiny Tower) called Pocket Planes. The app borrows Tiny Tower's little pixelated denizens and moves them over into a growing worldwide airline, tasking the player with building airports and planes, guiding planes around from one real life city to the next, and ferrying cargo and passengers all of the world to earn in-game coins and "bux." Just like Tiny Tower, the title is free to download and depends on in-app purchases of bux for monetization, and just like Tiny Tower, it's completely addictive and super charming. And just like Tiny Tower, it's probably going to be a huge hit. Ian Marsh met up with TUAW here at WWDC in San Francisco today, and while he says he is a little nervous to be flying home to San Diego tomorrow as the game launches worldwide, you can tell he's not panicking too much. He's been through this process a few times already with his previous titles (though given how big Tiny Tower got, this game certainly has the highest expectations NimbleBit's ever faced), not to mention that he and his wife had a baby girl last December. In fact, NimbleBit's biggest issue with Pocket Planes, says Marsh, was that it took so long to make. Most traditional games can take years to put together, but NimbleBit is used to a much shorter production schedule, so Marsh says that Pocket Planes' development, at nearly a year, was a little too "stretched out" for the brothers. They've had to spend a lot of the last year dealing with Tiny Tower's success rather than making the game. And they have hired on a few more part-time people, but Marsh tells me that even with the success of Tiny Tower (and the presumably pending success of Pocket Planes), he still doesn't want to make NimbleBit bigger. "We like making cool games," he told me. "If we have a team of other people making cool games, I'll be jealous that I'm not making them." What would NimbleBit do if Pocket Planes fails, if the brothers start to face issues with their current Tiny company structure? Marsh grins at the thought of Pocket Planes failing. "Make the next game," he says. NimbleBit has done so well with its current titles, and has kept things so compact, that even if Pocket Planes falls out of the sky, they'll just make another game they like. Right now they're in the concept states of their next title, which will be a word game. Marsh says they're returning to an old NimbleBit title called Textropolis, from before the company's freemium days. That game requires you to make words from the names of places, and Marsh says the new game will play in a similar way ("We really enjoyed Textropolis," he says), but it will be very much influenced by Tiny Tower's aesthetic, presumably in the same way that Pocket Planes is. That's further down the line (the brothers' main task this week will probably just consist of getting feedback on Pocket Planes), but Marsh says that NimbleBit does want to make development a little quicker and simpler. "We like making relatively simple games," he says. In the future, he hopes to bring NimbleBit back to the point where it's releasing a few games a year, much like the company did when it first started on iOS. Other than that, Marsh is happy to just keep on making games that he and his brother love. "We always can," he says. "That's the great thing about not answering to anyone else." Pocket Planes should land on the App Store this evening -- we'll have more on the game itself later on this week after release.
Pocket Planes gets a trailer, looks great
I first saw Pocket Planes, Nimblebit's next freemium title, running at GDC earlier this year. Being a huge fan of both Pocket Frogs and Tiny Tower, I can't wait to see it in action on my iPhone and iPad. Unfortunately, the game's not out yet (it's still "coming soon"), but Nimblebit has released a trailer below, so you can at least see what the game is like and how it plays. The game uses the same 8-bit aesthetic and characters as Tiny Tower, but instead of building floors in a building, you're growing an empire of airplanes, flying them around the world for fun and profit. You'll need to build up both planes and airports, and different types of planes fly at different speeds and have different fuel capacities, which can limit how far they can travel. The game looks really fun. It's a little more complicated than Tiny Tower, but shouldn't be any less addictive. As soon as it's on the App Store, we'll let you know.
The best mobile games of GDC 2012
We've picked out five of the most interesting new mobile titles seen at the Game Developers Conference this year. One of them is available now, and the others are coming soon, all from studios and developers of varying talents and reputations. Read on to see the cream of the crop from the mobile side of this year's GDC.
NimbleBit builds a tiny empire of quality freemium apps
NimbleBit's David Marsh kindly met with me at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week. While he's not interested in discussing the Zynga/Tiny Tower fiasco (a game he first showed me at GDC last year), the public's interest in that story is understandable. Zynga is a social company that uses analytics and testing to make its games easy to play and monetize. However, Marsh says he and his developer brother don't bother with a lot of analytics. "Part of the thing," he admits, "is that we don't try to figure it out a lot, because that's not the most fun part of making the game for us." NimbleBit consists of the two brothers, another programmer hired last August and David's wife, who manages support. The group is happiest while making good games that monetize themselves because users enjoy them so much. That's a contrast to many of the social and freemium titles out there. NimbleBit makes its games with love, and that's why it's funny when other companies try to copy their success without that key ingredient. When I asked Marsh if NimbleBit would consider acquisition by a larger game developer, he reiterated what he told me last year. "We're making enough money." Tiny Tower has consistently been on the App Store's top grossing list since its initial push, and then again after Apple picked it as the iPhone Game of the Year. "Getting Game of the Year for iPhone was really awesome for us," said Marsh. NimbleBit's next title, Pocket Planes, looks like it will follow the same pattern of success. Marsh gave me a quick demo of the latest build. The look and feel are very similar to Tiny Tower, but the goal is to build a network of planes that around the world, as opposed to an apartment building. Originally, says Marsh, the idea was to make a game about trains, and he even showed me a screenshot with train cars that had interiors using the Tiny Tower floors layout. But they found that running trains around tracks was too limiting and slow to be fun, so the trains became planes. Marsh says taking to the air has inspired a nice "jetsetting feel, about exploring rather than being stuck on rails." The build I saw looked great. You can buy planes with bucks earned either by playing the game or with in-app purchases, and then you can build airports at various cities, "unlocking" them with in-game gold (of course, any of that might change in the final release). Once you've got a plane and some airports to travel to, you can take missions from the in-game citizens, ferrying passengers or cargo from city to city. Each plane has a range, and each trip costs a certain amount, so the game currently consists of figuring out just how money you'll make versus spend on a certain mission. If you think that sounds complicated, you're right. Pocket Planes is the most complex freemium title that NimbleBit has put together yet. That doesn't mean it's inaccessible. While the worst you can do in Pocket Frogs or Tiny Tower is leave your frogs or bitizens unattended, in Pocket Planes you could lose money by playing badly. Could NimbleBit have the same success with a title that's more complex? Marsh says he and his brother are doing what they always do: making a game they want to play. "We're aware of the fact that it might have a smaller potential audience" due to the complexity, he says, "but that's one of the things we're interested to find out." Marsh also says that because it is still early in the development, there's lots of time left to spin the game more casual or complex. One idea he and Ian have played around with is "plane parts," which users could buy, trade, or collect, and use build planes with various stats. But that system isn't quite done, and it might not be included in the final game (or might be added in with a later update). NimbleBit hopes to release Pocket Plans in "summer, hopefully." Pocket Planes looks terrific, and it's great to see NimbleBit make great games that support a solid freemium model with excellent gameplay.
