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Freaks rejoice – Freak Tower review

lead-inBeing a landlord is not easy, and it gets even crazier in Freak Tower by Gung Ho Online Entertainment. Between cleaning up after the monster in your basement, restocking all the store shelves, keeping your apartments full, and warding off monster attacks there is plenty to do in Freak Tower. It is an entertaining game filled with a whole lot of micromanagement, but it also comes with its flaws.

The goal of Freak Tower is to build your own tower, floor by floor. As you construct new businesses you must also build apartments to bring in new freaks to work for you. You must also restock shelves in your stores to ensure money keeps rolling in, although restocking does take real world time to actually come in. Each resident that works

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will also have a preference of what type of store they would like to work in (service, retail, recreation, and food) and employing them in that job will offer bonuses and speed up the stocking time. Although this all may sound like a rip-off of Tiny Tower, Freak Tower offers its own little twists and extras that make this a unique and quirky take on Tiny Tower’s core mechanics.

One of the biggest draws which sets Freak Tower apart is its giant monster battles. In a bizarre mini-game you can summon giant fire lobsters and octopuses, amongst other monsters, to attack your building in which you can aid your tenants in fighting this creature as it moves up floor by floor. If it gets to the top you lose, but if you manage to beat him it will upgrade some of your businesses along with a small money bounty. The only problem with this whole mini-game is the fact that very quickly the monsters become super powerful and you will need a lot of floors and upgrades to beat them. If you don’t have a ton of jewels (bought with real world cash) they became too strong to beat way too fast. It is a definite pay to win scenario with the mini-game and without jewels the monster hunting comes to a grinding halt.

Another unique but odd choice is the slot machine elevator. Tap the slot machine and depending on what it lands on will shape what freak  comes in next and what floor they FreakTowergo to. You can hit a jackpot which can do anything from bring in a freak that will bring tons of customers to  a store, to instantly restock all the shelves in a business, or even drop coins or jewels off. It is an interesting and bizarre way to bring in freaks  that can be fun for a short time, but realistically gets old quick and loses the fun factor. It is still nice to hit a jackpot but after a while of playing  it loses its appeal and you only use the elevator when you have to, not just for the sake of doing it.

The graphics are simple yet fun in a very cartoony style that makes all the different freaks and monsters shine. The visuals are fun, bright, and  purposely silly, which works perfectly and make the whole game feel very polished. Along with that, the audio is well done and the sounds  seem to fit perfectly with the visuals. However after playing for a long time the sounds will get repetitive and I opted to play without the sound  on at all. The sound fits the game well but is not made to be listened to for long periods. Lastly, the controls are very well done. Freak Tower  feels and handles exactly how an Iphone/Ipad game should control. The graphics, audio, and control all work how they should but never wow  or raise the bar.

 The biggest flaw of Freak Tower is simply the pacing. It takes forever to build and restock. This is not a game you can play for big chunks of  time without dropping serious amounts of money into it for jewels (which can speed up all of those processes). The game is simply not made to  be played for long periods of time and instead it rewards you and works best to play periodically through the day for a couple minutes here and there. It can be a fun and rewarding experience but if you are looking for a game to waste time and play while you are on a road trip, keep looking.

Freak Tower is a polished and fun tower game that has some unique and bizarre extras. The game plays how it should and feels very well put together. It can be rewarding if you are willing to play it over a long period of time in short spurts, but the slow pacing and pay to win feel hold it back from being something great.

Growing up in a small Colorado town, Bryan has always had plenty of time to play games. PC is his first choice of tech followed by the PS4. Graduating at 16 Bryan knew he wanted to be a writer and wanted to combine his love of games into that and found Gaming Trend in 2012 where he quickly became a member and started writing for them as soon as he could. He is still at Gaming Trend, but now has 2 kids, a puppy, and a lot less time to play the games he loves, but he always finds a way to get back into gaming.

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