Simple and Simply Addictive: Triple Town

I recently came across a Top 10 Mobile Games article, and stumbled across a game called Triple Town. I downloaded it in the morning and played it a bit, on my way in to work. I played it a bit on the way home from work. And in less than 24 hours, the game has inserted itself into those small spaces of time between events.

Note that the game is free to download and play (iPhone, Android, Facebook). But just how long it remains free is up to you. I ended up lasting about 15 hours before I ponied up. More on this later.

The gameplay itself is very simple: try to build the largest city that you can, given a basic 6×6 grid. You are continuously given different objects to place on the grid, and your goal is line up three of the same objects in order to make something larger.

For example: lining up three patches of grass results in a bush, three bushes in a row creates a tree, and so forth. Eventually, you end up building small houses as a result of combined items. And like any good tile-matching game, you can perform combos where multiple items can be upgraded at once.

To thwart your building progress, bears will appear in your queue. If left free to roam, they’ll move around the board and block you from placing tiles in certain areas. To remove bears, you’ll need to trap them in to a specific tile. A single trapped bear results in a tombstone (which blocks the tile). Trapping three bears results in a church (for some reason).

There are a few more items, but that’s the gist of it. Really simple, and really quite addictive.

The one catch with the game: it’s based on you having a specific number of “turns” available. The free version comes with a few hundred turns loaded up, but eventually… you run low and can’t keep playing. At this point, you can either use the in-game currency of gold coins to buy more turns, or you can simply wait for more turns to generate. Which it will do, albeit slowly.

The freemium model makes this game free to download and play, but allows for in-game purchases. You can purchase “unlimited turns” for $3.99. Ultimately, I caved and shelled out the money because I got hooked on the game so much. Well worth it, as I’ve been playing it pretty nonstop ever since.

Triple Town is created by Spry Fox, and is available for iPhone, Android, and Facebook. And I think it’s on Steam for PC/Mac as well.

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