Tiny Death Star: The Bux Bug and more

Update: As of 12/17/13 version 1.0.1.4 has been released and the negative Bux bug has been fixed. 30 bitizens bug is still active on my phone however.

As I previously mentioned, I had been playing Star Wars: Tiny Death Star religiously. It’s the first game I actually played more than for just a few minutes on my phone. Nothing ever really caught my attention, and despite really being a game about nothing, SW:TDS was keeping me hooked. Until I ran into a problem.

I had been keeping my levels fairly balanced, but was currently wanting to build a new imperial level. When you add levels, the game randomly picks one of that classification for you, if you want to unlock a specific level, you can do so at the cost of 1 “bux.” Due to the fact that the imperial levels are for crafting items, there was a side quest (not a mission from the Emperor, rather one of the crafting quests from Vader) to build a communications level. As such, I wanted to utilize the level selector, pay my bux and get the level I wanted so I could craft a new item and gain more coin for completing the quest. I had just saved up for a long period of time to buy the first upgraded elevator, and that was making the game less monotonous. The game had other plans however, and after having created that new communications level, I suddenly had -29 bux:

What is this??

I did some searching around the web, and apparently this isn’t something that is a bug only on windows phones, or my particular model of phone, it’s apparently affect the game as a whole. Most people triggered the bug in the same fashion as me, but others reported it happening in other instances. I assume that Disney is aware of this fact, as just yesterday I had to patch the game, but the bug hasn’t been cleared yet. I have a feeling that even if they were to clear up this bug, that I will have to restart my game anyway, but if I can do so without fear of losing everything all over again, I just might do it. The game really is that addictive.

There’s a secondary potential bug, in that it feels like a bug to me, but some people are saying that it’s working as intended. There is a mission from the Emperor that asks you to move in 30 bitizens. I hit the 30 bitizen mark even before the negative bux bug hit me, but I thought that maybe it was because I didn’t have them all employed. Once all 30 were employed and the quest was still not giving me my reward, I looked around and found that I was not the only person with this problem either.

From what some people were saying, the quest starts the count once you receive it, meaning if you had 25, you would have to hit 55 bitizens before the quest would clear. Other people are stating it’s a bug. Whatever the case, I can’t skip the mission as it requires bux, and earning more bux takes away from the negative, but who wants to earn up 29 bux that do absolutely nothing for you? And to hell with buying something that a little patience will get me. So until the game is fixed, I’m not playing it anymore. What a shame!

Because of  these unfortunate events, I decided to see if I could find some other games that were worth playing. I ended up downloading a trial version of Civilization Revolution, which is a watered-down version of the Civilization series most of us know and love. I also downloaded Kingdoms and Lords, which is being advertised as semi-new, and appears to be a similar civ-type concept. I haven’t tried either game just yet, but I will be reporting on those by Tuesday.

I should also mention that my birthday recently passed, and I was gifted a copy of Faster than Light, via Good Old Games. More to come on that title as well.