Triple Town
Triple Town is a freemium match-three puzzle video game with city-building elements. It is available for social networks and mobile devices and was developed by Spry Fox.
The casual game was originally released for the Amazon Kindle e-reader in autumn 2010, and was ported to the Facebook and Google+ social networks in October 2011. It was published on January 2012 for iOS and Android devices.[1]
Gameplay
The premise of the turn-based, single player game is that the player must build a new settlement. The game takes place on a square grid with 6×6 fields on which some tiles are randomly placed.
Players are given random tiles, most often grass tiles, which they must place on the grid. When three identical tiles adjoin, they merge into one more advanced tile at the position of the last tile placed: three grass tiles become a bush, three bushes a tree, three trees a cottage and so forth. Special tiles include bears, which walk around blocking building sites; crystals, which can be used as a wild card to make any match; or robots, which remove individual tiles. The player may keep one tile in reserve and use it when needed.
The object of the game is to upgrade one's settlement's tiles to as high a rank as possible, earning an accordingly high score. The game ends if all fields of the grid are filled with tiles.[2]
Reception
Triple Town received positive reviews. Reviewers praised the game's innovative extensions of the match-three mechanic as well as its strategic depth, unusual for a casual game, which requires players to plan several moves ahead in order to be successful.[2][3] Criticism focused on the game's limited content[2] and its implementation of the freemium business model: While the game is free, it comes with a limited number of turns. Once these are used up, they regenerate slowly, or may be purchased with in-game or real money. The turn limit can also be permanently removed with a one-time payment.[3]
Casual gaming website Gamezebo named TripleTown the best Facebook game of 2011,[4] and second-best game of the year 2011.[5] Triple Town was also Edge's runner-up for indie game of the year 2011,[6] and Gamasutra's runner-up for best social game of 2011.[7]
Copyright infringement dispute
In January 2012, Spry Fox filed a lawsuit against LOLAPPS Inc. and 6Waves LLC. The complaint alleged that these companies had published, in violation of Spry Fox's copyright, a yeti-themed game – "Yeti Town" – which according to Spry Fox was substantially an exact copy of Triple Town.[8] LOLAPPS and 6Waves had previously denied these allegations.[9]
References
- ^ "Triple Town launches on iOS and Android". Gamezebo. 19 January 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ a b c Rose, Mike (25 January 2012). "Triple Town". Pocket Gamer. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ a b Bedford, John (27 January 2012). "App of the Day: Triple Town". Eurogamer. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ "Best Facebook Games of 2011". Gamezebo. 7 December 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ "Games of the Year 2011". Gamezebo. 30 December 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ "The 2011 Edge Awards: indie". Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ "Gamasutra's Best Of 2011: Top 5 Social Games". Gamasutra. 20 December 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ "Triple Town developer files copyright infringement suit over Yeti Town". Gamezebo. 29 January 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2012.
- ^ "Lolapps (sort of) denies cloning Triple Town". Gamezebo. 28 January 2012. Retrieved 29 January 2012.