Tiny Tower's Forgotten Valentine's Day Update
Happy Valentine's Day! <3
After I started playing the original version of Tiny Tower on my 1st Generation iPad, I started doing a bit more digging through the different versions of the game, amd while doing so I remembered something very interesting that is apparently just lost to the internet.
I vividly remembered something happening around February 2013, but when I've looked it up I haven't been able to find almost anything about it. The most I've been able to find information-wise is this article from Pocket Gamer and the version history page of the Tiny Tower Wiki which bring it it up, but I have only found a single photo of it online from /r/TinyTower. Today I hope to change that.
I wouldn't exactly call this "lost media", as it is very much downloadable from the NimbleBit iPA Collection on the Internet Archive, but I might be the first person to think about this in a long time. This is Tiny Tower's Valentine's Day 2013 Update.
This was update 2.1.5 of the game, released on January 30, 2013, over two weeks before actual Valentine's Day. This was then reversed in update 2.1.6 right after February 14. Aside from a few very minor bug fixes, the only changes these two updates brought were strictly visual. (By the way, in the iPA Archive this is version iOS4.3-(Clutch-2.0.4)-6 )
Almost everything about the game was changed to fit the Valentine's Day theme. The app icon was changed to a bitizen with a heart costume (as seen in the header image of this post), and the loading image was changed so the tower and crane were both pink, and it adds a little heart to the crane.
In the game itself, the lobby was changed to a fixed pink and purple colour scheme, and also featured a heart above the door and a swirly texture for the pillars. The elevator shaft was changed similarly, with it now featuring purple bricks, pink rails, and reddish-pink doors with a bright pink heart above it. Even the dirt in the bottom was changed to have a pink tint.
The tower itself kept its standard silver colour, but the roof (the roooof) was changed to be completely pink, similar to the title screen image. The crane is the exact same as well, though it is also holding a heart, and the "Build Floor" button was changed from its standard blue hue to a very vibrant purple.
As mentioned before, the elevator shaft changed, but all of the elevators changed as well, albeit not as much. All of them now have three hearts adorning their top, but aside from that they all keep the exact same look as usual.
And lastly, there were some Valentine's Day-themed BitBook messages, and a lot of the bitizens that popped up in the elevator were wearing heart costumes. Also the overlay for the finder missions were changed to be pink (the ones where you have to find a specific bitizen), but I haven't been able to find any other interface change.
And that's it for all of the changes I could find in this version! Again, pretty much all changes were aesthetic, but I still feel like all of this is in some way worth sharing, especially since — like I said earlier — I have barely found anything from this version online.
There isn't really anything important to take away from this post. I was just doing some video game archaeology and came across something that has gone pretty much undocumented. I am happy that I was able to shed some light on this forgotten bit of one of my favourite classic mobile games, and hopefully you found it as interesting as I did!
Also if any of you are wondering, I will still continue to play the 1.0 version of the game for a while. I did upgrade to this version temporarily for this, but nothing will be lost if I downgrade back to 1.0 since I haven't touched any of the features that were added after it.
I also want to give a shoutout once again to the Internet Archive for this. You can find the source images for this update in the afformentioned NimbleBit iPA Collection, though you may need some decompilers to see them.
Lastly, just for fun, here's my current tower over a week after my previous post:
