Condos are a good aside to the usual Tower Unite riffraff of plaza, minigames, and game worlds. However, and I’m going to be 
with you on this, they sorely lack in any true interactivity.
As it stands right now, condos have next to nothing to do in them besides watch TV. You literally just go into the condo section of the game, slap down milestones and random plaza items, and then stare at it until time stops (or you just leave the condo, eediot.) Yes, co-op building exists, but it is still entirely on players themselves to come up with meaningful entertainment after all is said and done. Extended condo stays are a rare sight and the purpose for such is rarer still.
Condos are boring, 'nuff said. -Sum Dum Guy, China, 1880
The prospects for actually playing with friends inside a condo are barebones at best and nonexistent at worst outside of the new, and let’s be honest here, desperate gambit of turning your condo into a PVP condo. People are willing to kill each other repeatedly just to have SOME prolonged interaction within their meticulously designed and thought-out condo (or they just want to kill each other, the clowns.) As such, it’s officially time to put my foot down and begin discussion on how we can improve the sorry state of condo’s gameplay.
FIrst of all, let’s begin by making a decent list of suggestions for games and other methods of interactive goodness we can stuff into condos at some point down the line:
- A bowling lane within the condo is a GREAT idea to tackle two problems at once: condo interactivity and bowling’s lack of proper milestones. I have already mentioned this idea in a previous thread, and it bears repeating here as well.
- At the time of writing, Arcade will be getting its Phase 2 soon! However, there will be a lot of games to choose from and there are a fair selection of same as it is now. We’ll have to see where Arcade stands after Phase 2 has released to determine which games would be best suited for becoming condo-ready place-able objects.
- Casino Phase 2 will be rolling out soon enough as well (hopefully) so now would be a good time to put forth the idea of playable condo tables. Such games included would be: Craps, Blackjack, Roulette, obviously Texas Holdem, and any other casino games that may or may not be shipped out in Phase 2.
-On the note of casino “games” Spin-2-Win is currently a functional yet superficial milestone to slap in your condo. It’s fine on its own, but there needs to be some way to make it more like the real wheel without interfering with Condo’s lack of real payouts. - Billiards will be getting another pass soon on its physics and gameplay, combined with nightclub’s eventual achievements for the game. Maybe now would be a good time to consider adding a table for condo use after that pass?
- Condo fishing would be a decent idea, but fishing zones are pre-determined and only a few condos have water to begin with (the aquarium volume should not count as a fishing zone.) It would be a situational addition for condos as a whole, rather than an object usable across any condo you happen to own.
- There is a chess board item available through trash fishing, AND IT IS COMPLETELY NON-FUNCTIONAL! How is this even allowed to be? That would be an easy in for condo games! We could suggest even more board games but that’s an absurdly massive rabbit hole, so for now we should just stick with the one that’s already an object within Tower Unite. We can maybe expand to checkers from there at some point.
- The Mini-Posiedon Milestone currently is not rideable, yet this is more of a minor disappointment than a real issue, as I assume it would take a bit of effort to make the coaster work as intended in all situations. The Mini-Ferris Wheel is rideable at least.
- And last but certainly not least, brand-new small games that would be wholly unique to Condo, and only found in Condo milestones or what have you. This is a point I’ve yet to truly delve into, as for now I think it would be best to just go with what’s already in the game as a starting point. Feel free to reply with any ideas you might have for a truly unique condo experience!
When I had initially come up with these ideas, I had figured it would be easy to slap together a bowling alley as a milestone and just leave it at that. After all, we can buy half the alley in the stores; all the assets already exist! Since then, I’ve spoken to MacDGuy about this in-game, and gained some insight on how arcade and bowling currently work. The biggest takeaway was making a fresh alley for the condo is not even close to being simple. The placeable alley would basically need to be made from scratch to make sure the physics wouldn’t jank out the second it was placed. I assume all condo games would need equal amounts of work done, considering they are freely placeable and scalable as any other object would be. Every condo game would be that much more work to pile on top of the massive pile of features yet to be added to Tower Unite. EVEN SO, i would consider this topic to be worth exploring fully, and see only good fortune and fruitful results ahead.
Second, we should talk about how condo games will fit into the greater gameplay of Tower Unite. Condo currently has no milestones, and no real payouts. Personally, I am not concerned about the fact that condo doesn’t churn out units. Others may have differing opinions on the matter, however I assume the lack of unit gains is intentional to give condo a different focus from the rest of the game. My first priority with this thread is not to give players a cash flow while in condo, my prime objective here is to give us something to do. If condo gets more playability, we could see condo visits becoming much more common and lengthy than before. Dipping in and out of a condo would become less commonplace as you would be given an incentive to stay, regardless of any unit-farming capabilities therein.
XP is still earned for condo, and yet there is literally no benefit to having this XP. Condo games would be a good way to build XP if and when milestones are added. While talking to MacDGuy, he put forth the concept of Condo having its own separate currency. No real details were given about this, but it would be interesting to discuss and hypothesize the overall dynamic of condo with this idea in mind. It would give condo games a sensible payout method, for one. He mentioned that the use or benefit of this currency would be entirely unique to that specific condo. Again, this idea hasn’t gone past the “single-sentence concept” stage. We’ll have to see (or discuss here!) what currency/payout system could or should be implemented, if anything at all.
I quickly want to mention performance here, as performance may be a key factor in deciding when, how, and which games get added to condo. Performance in condos, and Tower Unite in general, can be shaky at times. Arcade is one of the more demanding aspects of the game right now (soon to be fixed hopefully?) and adding a massive dump truck of real physics games and the like might make huge condos tank FPS even more. This is a subject I’d like the devs themselves to chime in on, so we can get some better clarity on how these games will impact condo both under the hood mechanics-wise and on the surface performance-wise.
Lastly, I would like to encourage people to voice their opinions and thoughts on the matter here. This is a topic I believe needs to be spread; shared to anyone that cares even slightly about their general condo-going experience. When I’ve mentioned this to other people, they always show their support for such an idea and everyone has a different game they want added. Condos aren’t a huge part of the game right now, and probably never will be, but it could become a thing at all for a lot of people if just a few of these ideas were implemented in the game. I’ve seen tons of different condo styles from all sorts of players, and I know for a fact condos can only benefit from having real deal games and the like added in the future.
