Prolly messed up by now. This game has turned more frustrating than something I would enjoy (granted, I did enjoy it at first) I only have 80 jobs and 150 lands, I probably need to start over. Or I may just delete it for that matter. I really wish I can get rid of those beginning houses.
There should be an update sometime this week. Hopefully it'll bring the ability to sell houses. But might as well at least play until then!
I think this part is especially interesting, in regards to housing vs land efficiency: For those of you unfamiliar with "astro-glass", just tap on any road or waterway in your game and it will explain that because of astro-glass those paths do not count toward land limit. So this heavily hints at future housing options NOT COUNTING toward land usage. Expect these new dwellings to be insanely expensive however. They also mention that "Every animal counts, and rewards are not far away." I hope that this means that every duplicate animal also counts as I have about 400 so far.
Currently, you can put up a new Shiny Tower without affecting your land limit (in effect) for 14u + 200k coins, utilizing the "donation" at the Astro Church. Therefore, it wouldn't make any sense for the astro-glass housing to cost more than that.
So now that I finally have 150/150 clones, all buildings, max heart upgrades, and a max discount, I decided that I wanted to design the most efficient "town center". So now whenever I get the "Return to town center" message it is actually helpful. This is what I see when I return to town center now: As you can see, all of my houses are grouped for easy heart collection, all my trees are grouped for quick harvesting, my Town Hall is there for obvious reasons (to center things), my Arrival Center is visible so that I know when new clones arrive, and my Business Center is there so that I can check on all my businesses at a glance (by checking my current production vs maximum production). Below all that I have placed one business from each "working time" group. From left to right, top to bottom, it goes 4m, 6m, 8m, 10m, 20m, 30m, 40m, 50m, 1h, 1h 30m, 2h, 2h 30m, 3h, and 4h. These act as timers or reminders, for instance if my Nursery has an icon on it I know that it is time to go restart all of my 1 hour businesses. It makes it really easy to keep everything working all the time. I also tried to pick the most useful building from each group when applicable, such as the Utopium Mine so that I remember my daily reward, the Police Station for quick access to achievements, or the Law Firm when I start using Legal Loopholes. In my opinion, this is about as optimized as I can get, it's also pleasantly easy on the eyes. The next step is to arrange my other businesses clockwise around my town center in groups based on working time. I will probably add more trees at some point since I need to plant 25 more to get the achievement. But other than that I think I'm done. So, what do you guys think? Any suggestions on improvements that I could make to my design?
^^ I never thought of doing it that way. I was trying to make my city look normal. Haha Maybe you can make it look nice with some roads/waterway here and there to fill up the voids Do you have any duplicate buildings at all?
My place is the least efficient place ever. My trees are everywhere! But I dont mind. This game wouldnt be as fun for me if I didnt get to design it.
I don't have any duplicate buildings. I am trying to keep my town somewhat "normal" I guess. From a design standpoint I can't really justify a town with like 8 Stadiums. I know that having multiple Stadiums or City Squares would increase my towns income, but for some reason I want to stick with just 1 of each building and as many clones as it takes to run them all, which would be 120 to be exact.
Since people have posted articles that show that Pixel People isn't making as much money as some other more aggressive Freemium games, and that the housing inefficiency isn't as dramatic as most people think, I suggest that Chillingo releases a special housing upgrade building that costs $2.99. Then everyone can be happy. Chillingo gets a little cash boost and people can optimize their housing if it's really killing them not to.
Theres already articles on them not making enough? It's only been out a month, so it's relatively juvenile to compare it to other freemiums. But they could do stuff to get another source if income like add ads to the TV station - choose to watch up to 3 commercials per day for utopium.
Love the game, but the nag notifications are killing me. "Pixel People needs its mayor!" Pixel People is codependent.
Game Impressions Finally finished the first portion of the game. Now I have 4 citizens with no jobs because I haven't build any duplicate business. Now comes the hardest part: finishing the achievements. The slowest part will surely be the ones related to the animals. And I really hope I can finish it before the next update. I've just left a space suitable for 35 trees (I still have to buy three land upgrades to do so, I'm still with 11 trees on my city). Next, I'll fill my Decor part, and after that I'll go for the heart upgrades. Probably will take a week or so to do it... But this game is great. The only complaint that I can do is that it is INCREDIBLY heavy on my iPhone 4S. My phone gets all hot in a normal gameplay (maybe because of the constant iCloud updates?) and there is no real multitasking: each time that you go to another app, the game has to be reloaded. This kinda sucks. I've supported Chillingo on this one with 5 bucks already. The double timer and two x50 Utopiums. I guess that they deserved it. Other than that, it's a great freemium game. Maybe EA/Square-Enix can learn a thing or two from Chillingo's idea.
I would gladly buy special items with real money cause this game is my fav and hopefully the update makes it bigger. Just also hope that make the loading quicker.
Article was posted earlier: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showpost.php?p=2662667&postcount=696 They make money, but not nearly in proportion to downloads, or compared to other freemiums that most of us would consider "greedy". That's why I'm suggesting other non-rude ways to add a few more tip jars.
They took out iCloud? I loved taking my iPhone to work and playing and using my iPad at home without hassle :/
To the not making money posts I've bought around 25 dollars myself to support them. <3 Sorta pissed about iCloud though :/
