Bitizens rejoice: Tiny Tower is back in the Play Store

The popular sim game Tiny Tower is back in the Play Store after an eight-month hiatus.

First developed for iOS and then ported to Android in 2011, Tiny Tower is a simulator that tasks players with developing and managing a building. You can add various types of floors and use the virtual money that you earn to attract tenants called bitizens.

A dedicated community formed around the addictive 8-bit-style game, and players were understandably disappointed when the game was removed from the Play Store last September.

Now Tiny Tower is back, and developer NimbleBit has an explanation for what happened.

Basically, Tiny Tower for Android was a port created together with Mobage, a Japanese gaming developer owned by DeNA. The game used Mobage’s login system and Mobage decided it would stop supporting it last fall. The game was removed from the Play Store and because the login system was disabled, Tiny Tower stopped working for existing Android users.

At the time, NimbleBit said it won’t port the iOS game to Android again, but left the door open for a new version. That new version is now available in the Play Store, just in time for the game’s fifth anniversary.

The new Tiny Tower was rewritten in Unity and its codebase now matches iOS, meaning that the Android version is now a first-class citizen. Google Play Games replaced the proprietary login system and gameplay has been enhanced with a number of new features:

• Tons of new floors, costumes, lobbies, roofs, elevators, missions and BitBook posts!
• New QuickStock features makes managing your tower even easier!
• Pixel-Perfect Retina graphics!
• Trade bitizens with friends!
• Rename your bitizens!
• Earn new Golden Tickets!

You can sync your game data from the iOS version, but unfortunately, you won’t be able to recover data from the old Android version.

As for the two other NimbleBit games that Mobage took down – Pocket Frogs and Pocket Planes – there’s still hope. A NimbleBit representative said that if new Tiny Tower proves successful on Android, Pocket Planes and Pocket Frogs might make a return. Just don’t expect the same for Star Wars: Tiny Death Star – that game was owned by Disney and chances of it coming back are close to zero.