Tiny Tower

Tiny Tower from studio NimbleBit was released in 2011 and is one of the first titles to show on a mass scale what a freemium simulator tailored to a touchscreen phone looks like. The player builds a vertical skyscraper, floor by floor, fits it out with shops, restaurants, and apartments, and populates it with characters called Bitizens, each with their own name, dream, and favorite job. Controls rely on simple tapping – you choose the type of floor, move the elevator up and down between levels, and take on new tenants who look for work themselves based on their interests and skills.

The whole game keeps running even in the background of the phone: materials for building the next floor accumulate over time, shops need regular restocking, and profits grow slowly but surely even when the player doesn't have the app open. Anyone who doesn't want to wait for construction to finish or for stock to be restocked can buy off their impatience with the virtual currency TowerBux, purchased with real money. Tiny Tower is among the games that popularized this model on a mass scale and essentially defined it for an entire generation of mobile titles, and it also inspired its own sequel, the casino-themed Tiny Tower Vegas.

Visually, it's cute pixel art in pastel colors, complemented by light humor in the Bitizens' lines and their small personal stories that unfold as time passes. The game's appeal rests on gentle, unobtrusive progress without stress or time pressure – ideal for a few minutes between other activities, exactly as mobile gaming at the start of the decade was starting to call for.

Why play it: suited to players who enjoy calm building games running in the background of their phone and don't mind the waiting mechanics typical of free-to-play titles of that era.