GAME REVIEW: Pinoy-made 'Elevator Joe' will take you on life's ups and downs 

Looking for a new game for your mobile device? Something with exciting highs and lows, challenges, and unexpected monsters? 

 

Try riding an elevator!

"Elevator Joe" is the brainchild of Filipino game developers Erick Garayblas and Ryan Sumo. Erick is best known for his hit game "Streetfood Tycoon", and Ryan is best known for being the artist of cult indie title "Spacechem" and "Prison Architect." 
 

 

Earn your chibizens 

 

In the game, you play Joe, an elevator operator who has to keep doing his job despite dinosaurs, cops and robbers, random superheroes and irate customers. Think of it as a metaphor for life being more fun in the Philippines: be it typhoons, earthquakes, or political corruption scandals, we plod on, smiling and working!

 

If you’ve ever played NimbleBit’s “Tiny Tower” or the recently released “Tiny Death Star”, you’ll find this game quite similar. As Elevator Joe, your job appears simple. You operate the elevator in a tower, and you pick up the tower occupants and bring them to their destinations. You have nowhere to go but up or down. Sounds easy, right?

 

Your tower starts off with only a few levels. Over the course of your work, you earn coins, called chibiyens. As you earn chibiyens, you can add levels to your tower. The higher your tower, the more occupants it has! The tower’s occupants are aptly named chibizens, because they really look like those short dolls you see in toy stores.

 

So, higher tower, more chibizens, more chibizens. And just one elevator. Perhaps it’s not as easy as you thought?

 

Time to panic!

 

To make things even more fun, you have to operate the elevator within a time limit. One round of approximately two minutes simulates one day—7am to 7pm—in the life of your tower. Throughout the day, chibizens line up, waiting for the elevator to pick them up. If you can pick them up and deliver them to the right floor quickly, they’re satisfied customers. But the longer you keep them waiting, and the longer you take to bring them to their destinations, the angrier they get.

At the end of each round, you’ll see how many chibiyens you earned, and your satisfaction rating based on whether the chibizens were happy or angry. 

 

Like many games, it’s all about managing resources. You have a certain population and you have to meet their needs with your limited resources. But really, it’s all about the mad scramble to pick up and deliver chibizens before they get too irate! A low satisfaction rating at the end of a round can be quite the disappointment.

 

To liven things up, the game offers challenges as well. Make 30 chibizens happy in one round. Deliver five chibizens to the ground floor. You even get VIP chibizens who give youmore chibiyens. Sometimes these VIPs are aliens dropped off on the roof by a UFO. Some of the chibizens look like very familiar superheroes with white stars on their shields. You can also use your chibiyens to buy points and improve your elevator. 

 

Elevator Joe is a simple, colorful game that reminds us how the simplest job can actually be the most complicated work. With its cute graphics and quirky music, it’s a great way to pass the time while watching Pinoy creativity at work, right there in your phone. — KDM, GMA News 

 

Elevator Joe is currently available for iOS and Android, and coming soon for Windows Phone and the Amazon App Store.