Parents' Guide to Lego Tower

This quirky tower building simulator, based on an older game, is back -- this time teaming up with a brand known for its creative building, although its repetitive play hampers the fun. For fans of the original Tiny Tower game from 2011, Lego Tower feels like a natural evolution, with its vast amount of customization options and, of course, that signature Lego brick appeal. There's constant incentive to revisit your tower each day, not just to check in on the residents and to add to your tower of commerce, but to unlock more bits, pieces, and even special mini-figure characters to add to your community. That's not to say, though, that the game doesn't have a few small cracks in its foundation.

The biggest problem with Lego Tower lies in its repetition. The gameplay is a nearly infinite cycle of making sure shops are stocked, keeping apartments filled with random mini-figures, and adding more levels to your tower. There are occasional quick mini-games that require you to find a specific item or character somewhere in your tower. This can be a simple task when you're dealing with just a few floors, but after a while, it can get frustrating to scan 50 or more crowded floors for one thing. In fact, that's a general problem throughout the game. The more successful you are and the higher your tower is, the more frustrating and time consuming it can become to maintain it. What started out as a fun distraction for a few minutes a day eventually turns into a full-blown chore. Played in shorter doses, though, Lego Tower is still an entertaining time sink, and a game that's quite literally primed to build more onto.