Previews

Hands on with online freemium hotel building sim VegasTowers

Make mine a Bellagio

Hands on with online freemium hotel building sim VegasTowers
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| VegasTowers

There are plenty of freemium games available in the App Store, and plenty more about to be released.

VegasTowers from developer Kathy Fung - one half of the team who made online freemium game Castlecraft - takes a different tack from those other freemium games.

For one thing, in its current incarnation, it's more of a single player experience in a lite SimCity-style, which has you building a luxury hotel in Las Vegas.

It's also important to note it's a fully online game in the sense you'll need an internet connection in order to play because most of the game logic happens on the server, not your iPad.

Into the reception

To start, you need to register with a username and password, then naming your tower, you start off with an empty, two storey-high, 20 block-long base in which you can build your dreams.

The gameplay consists of adding storeys and building various types of units, ranging from staircases and lifts (you have to join up the floors), to hotel rooms, restaurants, shops, amenities and entertainment venues such as nightclubs, strip shows and wedding chapels.

Each of these costs money and, over time, drops cash too. The game runs on a real-time day/night cycle and the countdown timers for things like money and construction tick even when you're not in the game, as the game state is run on the server - hence the online requirement.

The other in-game currency is favors, which is required to build your facilities, as well as being an option to get your buildings completed immediately, rather than hanging around.

As is typical with freemium games, you can buy cash and favors, with the in-app purchases ranging from 99c for either 20 favors or $20,000 cash to $99.99 for $5 million cash or 5,000 favors.

Dial 9 for the front desk

Another key game feature is noise, with everything you build having a noise rating. Obviously, you don't want to be putting nightclubs near hotel rooms so planning where to place everything is important and gives the game a doll house-type mechanic.

Similarly, as you build more floors and expand your facilities, so you'll unlock different types of people, who will be happy or sad depending on the entertainment available.

Population is a major goal in terms of how well you're doing compared to other players. It's based on the individual population of every unit you build as each unit has a variable population based on factors such as elevator or stair access, its neighbouring units, and noise and productivity around it.

As Kathy tells us, "Nearly every unit has a noise attribute and a productivity attribute. Units such as nightclubs and pubs produce lots of noise, while security rooms and cashiers increase productivity. Every unit is affected differently by noise and productivity, so unit placement becomes a major source of optimisation."

So, the better you arrange things within your tower, and the wider range of shops and restaurants, the more profitable they will be, creating a virtuous circle.

The game's role-playing mechanic is enhanced as you have to buy various licences in order to unlock more advanced options i.e. the Gaming Commission licence must be bought before you can build a casino. The game also has over 100 goals to achieve, each of which gives you more cash and favors.

Bring the family

At the moment though, the game's major gap is social interaction.

You can see where your tower ranks in the overall VegasTowers' world by checking your tower statistics, or you can hit the Neighbors button and check out how other players are building their towers.

There's also a useful Chat option that allows you to talk to other players and get help and hints. But, there are no options in terms of directly helping other players such as doing quests or tasks for them, as typically happens in other freemium games. There's no integration with Game Center or OpenFeint either, although you can log into the game using Facebook.

According the developer, more social options due in the first big update. VegasTowers' will also being coming to iPhone and iPod touch - to that extent, this iPad release is something of a beta version to iron out any bugs and tighten up the gameplay before it's made available to all.

Hence, it's not yet the most polished freemium game, but equally it's not one which forces you spend money to make progress, and there's always something to do, so if you're into the SimCity-style of gameplay, it's worth checking out.

You can also get some idea how it plays in the following video.

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Jon Jordan
Jon Jordan
A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon can turn his hand to anything except hand turning. He is editor-at-large at PG.biz which means he can arrive anywhere in the world, acting like a slightly confused uncle looking for the way out. He likes letters, cameras, imaginary numbers and legumes.