Tower Mogul
by eSoft
Interactive, Price: $11.95
Reviewed September 2003
Are you not making money fast enough selling Lemonade?
Can’t take your Sims with you on your Pocket PC? Worry
not. Tower Mogul comes to the rescue. Developed by eSoft
Interactive, Tower Mogul puts you in the CEO seat and gives
you cash and property to build and manage your own skyscraper.
The only requirement is that you must earn a 5-star rating
to become a Tower Mogul.
Modeled loosely after SimTower, Tower Mogul
was designed and developed from the ground up for the Pocket
PC platform. In this Sim game, you don’t need to build
a city, all you have to do is to build a tower that will
sustain the required number of Virts (occupants) in over
60 building units including offices, condos, apartments,
hotels and more. Other than the required number of people
(called Virts), you must build the support and utility units
a real tower would need such as generator, medical center,
maintenance center and security office, in order to earn
higher star ratings. Of course, building the units requires
money. You are given certain amount of money to start out
with, and then you must earn enough on your own to add more
units in order to attract more Virts.
The AI in Tower Mogul works quite well.
It sets the pace for the game by giving a good balance between
acquiring more Virts and building profitable units in your
tower. Some units can house more Virts but make less money,
others might lose money in the beginning but will make the
Virts happier and give your units a higher rating. I’ve
tried a various strategies and found that the best results
came with the most balanced unit building strategy. The only
limitation I’ve experienced was running out of money
to expand my tower and it can be solved by waiting for more
days to pass in order to generate cash via rent or the shops.
Luckily there is a fast forward button!
The graphics are simple and easy to see
in Tower Mogul, and the game control interface makes gameplay
easy and painless. There is a small line of icons, which
will take you to various game options and menus when you
click on them. You can go to the Home menu for save/load
files or game options, the Build menu to bring up building
units, the Map, the Stats menu where you will find your financial
numbers, advisory tips, and more. The building units are
categorized by their functions. You can easily select the
units you wish to build by clicking on the icons in the Build
bar. The units are very clearly marked and they look sharp
even in very small scale. The Virts can walk around in your
tower in a “fast forward” animation.
The background music tunes are among the
catchiest I’ve heard in a Pocket PC game. You can select
three music styles from Groovy, Twang to Chill, all of which
are worthy of checking out. The sound FX collection isn’t
big, but accompanies unit building action, bomb explosion
and fire, etc. The game supports both 2002 and 2003 Pocket
PCs, and takes about 3MB to install.
For Sims fans, there aren’t
a lot of choices on the Pocket PC. Tower Mogul should be
music to your ears. The scale of the game is well thought
out for this mobile gaming platform with only one screen
to look at and to reach 5 stars to complete the quest.
The number of building units adds enough fun to the gameplay,
while waiting for more money coming in could be tedious
at times. It took me 4 hours to reach 5 stars Tower Mogul
in the beginner’s level. Thank goodness for that
catchy Groovy tune!
Playing Hints and Tips
Try different strategies to reach the goal.
You can pack your tower with offices to get max capacity
for Virts, but you will need to wait long time for money
later on. If you see a bomb threat or fire alarm, go solve
the problem right away. Make sure you build enough supporting
units (maintenance, generators, security, etc.) when you
expand.
|
 |
 ARM & XScale |
|
