You’ve probably heard that Miniclip is offering four of its Xbox Windows Phone games for free right now. And as of last week, the Xbox Deal of the Week is back. So with a bunch of games gone free at the moment, does that mean we don’t get a new Deal of the Week today? Heck no it doesn’t!
This week’s deal game is another blast from the past, as it’s been on sale once before. But it’s actually a pretty awesome game that many players might have overlooked: Tiki Towers from Game House. Even better, the sale price is 99 cents this time, the cheapest Tiki Towers has ever been.
Now is the part where I remind you, our dear readers, that the Windows Phone Store doesn’t always update like clockwork. Sometimes price changes take time to go live. Case in point: I’m not seeing Tiki Towers on sale yet. But Microsoft assures us it will go on sale, and I believe them. So just be patient and check later tonight or Thursday; the sale will eventually go on.
Update: The sale is not scheduled to go live until Thursday for some reason. That explains it!
Bananarama
Tiki Towers is part of that scarcest of genres on Windows Phone, the physics puzzler. But don’t hold that against it; the gameplay is actually super fun and different from any other Xbox Windows Phone title. The object of each level is to help five hapless monkeys reach the exit safely. Left to their own devices, they’ll either fall to their deaths or simply get stuck and give up. Build bamboo towers for them to climb and they just might make it to the exit, if the tower doesn’t collapse first.
The gameplay is surprisingly intuitive and reasonable in the challenge department. A normal player could actually complete the whole thing without turning to YouTube videos or FAQs, which I can’t say for some of its brethren. The delightfully colorful art style and adorable monkey animations certainly don’t hurt either. On the downside, the Achievements can be a bit glitchy, but I didn’t run into any problems with them myself. Check out our full review for more details.
Tiki Towers is on sale for 99 cents for one week only. It runs on both Windows Phone 7 and 8. Get it here at the Windows Phone Store.
Tiki Towers 2 no more?
Way back in April 2012, Game House announced that Tiki Towers 2: Monkey Republic would be coming to Windows Phone as an Xbox Live title (along with Sally’s Spa and Droplitz Delight). I was understandably excited, having loved the first game. Well now, it’s been a year and those other two games came out, but not Tiki Towers 2. Did the tower collapse like a stack of bananas?
Unfortunately, that looks to be the case. Game House was a very active early Xbox Windows Phone supporter, sort of the Miniclip of 2011-2012. But behind the scenes in 2012, something changed. A key Microsoft executive left the team and Microsoft’s commitment to Xbox on Windows Phone dwindled. Around the same time, so did Game House’s enthusiasm for the platform and the Xbox certification process in general.
The publisher hasn’t written off Windows Phone entirely, but not long ago they told us they don’t have any new projects in the works (including Tiki Towers 2). They recently ported one of the Delicious games to Windows 8 and RT (with another one on the way), but neither has Xbox features and neither is announced for Windows Phone.
