Tower Bloxx: New York

Let me admit something frankly embarrassing: I have a habit of giving inanimate objects personalities.

I've often given my cars names. Not something that's especially out of the ordinary, you might think, but then you haven't seen me wailing and gripping onto the bumper for dear life, when the time comes to sell.

Mental health issues aside, it's not uncommon for people to try and give what would otherwise be boring commodities a sense of character in an attempt to liven them up.

If Tower Bloxx: New York is anything to go by, Digital Chocolate is very familiar with the practice.

Blocks away

From the game's various menu screens through to actual play, Digital Chocolate's stacker sim makes every effort to pitch what's on offer as cute, cuddly, and ultimately entertaining.

Even the skyscrapers themselves – which you're charged with building, dropping one block on top of the other in succession – look less like the kind of glass laden shards of ice you see in your average metropolis than they do Roger Rabbit's Toon Town.

New in town

With the tower split into scores of cubes, laying them on top of each other is a case of simply tapping the screen when each one – perilously swinging side to side while hanging from a crane – dangles directly over those already in place.

While each piece doesn't have to be stacked dead on top of the other, naturally the higher the tower gets the more it sways in the breeze, making future match-ups harder to make.

Conversely, stacking each piece exactly on top of the last one triggers a score multiplyer, which can come particularly in handy when playing a one-off challenge.

It's here that you're given virtually no limits. With three lives on offer, you can build to your heart's content, the idea being to stack the cubes as high as you can until too many fall by the wayside.

Building on boredom

No doubt aware that such a setup passes as little more than a rather tired mini-game, however, Tower Bloxx: New York attempts to string together the art of tower building into a SimCity style boardgame.

On the surface, it appears quite a canny move. With your actions directed via a series of action cards, the idea is to raise the city's morale by building one tower after another – some commercial, some residential, and some monuments – as instructed.

It's where you place the buildings that's key, with the higher ranking towers lifting the spirit of residents in neighbouring blocks.

In truth, it's not as easy a prospect as it sounds. With the cards themselves limited, you only have a set number of moves within each neighbourhood before your skills are judged and graded.

Nevertheless, it's a setup that would hold more value were the main game it's designed to support not so dull. There really is very little to get excited about once you've totted up a few towers – Tower Bloxx: New York is the kind of title that's played all its tricks within its first few minutes.

By attempting to stretch itself out via a full campaign mode, all Digital Chocolate has done is highlight the narrow appeal of Tower Bloxx's core, proving that even reaching for the heights is a fruitless task if the foundations are found lacking.

Tower Bloxx: New York

Something of a one trick pony, stacking Tower Bloxx: New York's building blocks is a solid enough task, but it soon becomes repetitive and ultimately rather shallow
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Keith Andrew
Keith Andrew
With a fine eye for detail, Keith Andrew is fuelled by strong coffee, Kylie Minogue and the shapely curve of a san serif font. He's also Pocket Gamer's resident football gaming expert and, thanks to his work on PG.biz, monitors the market share of all mobile OSes on a daily basis.