It’s fair to call Tapped Out a shallow game, but if that’s true then it’s a king among shallow games. As a licensed property, it manages to deliver the kind of funny, sarcastic experience fans would expect, but non-fans won’t care about the game at all.
As a free mobile game, it has a shocking number of schemes to part you from your actual cash, but it does so with a wink and a nudge and never forces you to pay to keep playing.
Tapped Out walks a delicate line between miserable money-maker and actual entertainment. So far it’s done a good job of being fun, but it’s a balance that’s easily upset. Just take a look at Angry Birds Go!.
Personally, I tired of tapping and waiting and ignored the game for months until a new game event lured me back. Luckily, its shallow nature meant that I could easily ignore it for a quite a while before deciding that yes I really need to buy that popsicle skyscraper. I suspect that this will keep happening for some time.