Triple Town builds its way to Android and iOS

Spry Fox's popular "building puzzler," a cult hit on Facebook (130,000 MAU and 30,000 DAU according to our traffic tracking service AppData) and Google+, has made its way to the iOS and Android mobile platforms. Triple Town is a puzzle game that tasks players with creating a settlement on a 6x6 grid. This is achieved by matching groups of three objects together, with the last object turning into something "better." Grass becomes bushes, bushes become trees, trees become houses and so on. Besides careful management of the limited space available, players also have to contend with bears, which move around the board as objects are placed. Trapping a bear so it cannot move turns it into a gravestone, and creating three or more gravestones in a row creates a church. Social features of the game include Game Center compatibility in the iOS version for both leaderboard and achievement support. We weren't able to test the Android version at the time of writing to see what service, if any, it uses for leaderboard support. Leaderboards are completely separate from the Facebook and Google+ versions of the game, and it can also be played offline if players don't have an Internet connection available -- or if they don't want to compete against that one friend who consistently scores considerably higher than them. The game monetizes through sales of the in-game soft currency, used for purchasing specific pieces to complete matches. There is also a daily turn limit, meaning that players can only play a certain amount each day -- though this can be removed through a one-time in-app purchase. As with many popular independently-developed titles, the issue of "copycat" apps is rearing its ugly head, this time with 6waves Lolapps' Yeti Town -- a game with uncanny similarities to Triple Town, albeit with a winter-themed skin. The mobile release of Yeti Town preempted Triple Town's portable version by about a month, and as such, many mobile gamers unfamiliar with the original social network version of Triple Town will incorrectly assume that 6waves Lolapps are the innovators. This is of considerable concern to David Edery, CEO of Spry Fox. "We’re hoping that our fans will support us, go and download [Triple Town] and give us good reviews," said Edery in our interview with him last week. "I think everyone realizes that Triple Town was the innovator here. I also think this is an issue for people in the industry. Innovation in the social games platform is something that’s relatively rare and its threatened by activities like this. At the end of the day we’re going to keep plugging away and keep making games, but every time someone comes in with something that’s very similar it obviously makes it very difficult because they’re eating into our market and decreasing the profits from our successful titles. All we can do is reach out to the community and ask them to help us if they want us to keep doing what we’re doing."

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Triple Town builds its way to Android and iOS

Pete Davison

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Pete Davison