Tap Town is a City Simulation game in which players are required to build and design their own city, on their iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. It was created by BayView Labs, the creators of Tap Fish, which is one of the most popular games for the iPhone. As with most of their games, the game is free to download and play, but there are in-app purchases for players to access the best items. It will appeal to all ages and will be appreciated most by fans of Facebook games.
In Tap Town the player starts with a small street, with one factory, a couple houses and some restaurants and shops. The tutorial will guide the player through increasing population, building more factories, building more shops and how to decorate the town. Some players will be required to suspend their disbelief as seemingly two houses can support a population of six hundred people, but it's not that big of a deal. The logic of the game is that more residential buildings mean more population can live in the player’s town, and therefore more factories can open because there are more people to employ. The more factories the player has, the more coins they earn, and the more coins the player has, the more fun they can have designing and building their town.
Each factory needs to be given a certain task by the player. There are over twenty different jobs to choose from that will be unlocked as the player levels up. These vary from producing Cookies to Trainers, and each product takes a certain amount of time to complete and earns the player a set amount of coins. Once the time is up, the player can collect by tapping the factory and then can assign a new job. It is also important that the player keeps the town clean by tapping the buildings which will then take a certain amount of time to be cleaned.
There are over 70 different buildings that can be added to the town, ranging from supermarkets and book stores to sky scrapers and revolving restaurants. Many items cost money but some can only be purchased using Town Bucks. As with most BayView Labs games, this costs real money and is how they make profit from releasing these games. Some players will be willing to spend money on bundles which range in cost between $1.99 and $99.99.
The game is quite boring to start with and the tutorial is very short and leaves players not quite sure of what to do next. A lot of the more fun items are locked to begin with and the first play doesn't do enough to make players want to come back for more. It is also important to remember the game is by BayView Labs who famously caused a lot of upset with their Tap Fish game which charged hundreds of dollars to accounts when the game was played by children, because it does not ask for a password or details when charging for "Bucks". So parents are advised to disable in-app purchases for this game if they are letting their children play. The game is enjoyable enough, the graphics are nice, but it is annoying that players cannot rotate buildings. This means the town is always fairly lop sided with all the buildings facing towards the screen. The game is free and that is never a bad thing, so it is worth a play; some will take to this game and others will never come back.
