A beginners' guide to NimbleBit's freemium iPhone build-'em-up Tiny Tower

Placed in charge of a building, your job is to construct floors, fill them with restaurants and comedy clubs, decorate the interior, keep one eye on a busy elevator, and make stacks of cash.

Your attention will be focused on three specific areas when playing - the building itself, the people in it, and the elevator.

Master all three of these and you'll be well on your way to a stuffed wallet.

So, let's begin.

You begin Tiny Tower with just one floor – the lobby – so it's your job to build upwards, and upwards, and upwards, and… well, you get the picture.

When it comes to building a new floor on top of your tower, you'll have the choice between five categories - Residential, Recreation, Service, Food, and Retail.

Residential, naturally, is apartments for up to five of your hardworking citizens (or bitizens, as they're called in Tiny Tower) who'll then staff all of your other floors.

Food is also self explanatory, and comes in the form of restaurants and other eateries, while Retail provides a number of different shops.

Finally, Service is represented by the likes of barber shops, with Recreation constructing comedy clubs and the like.

Each category has a varying demand displayed in per cent just underneath it - always choose the category with the current highest demand.

If two floors have a equal demand, be sure to choose the one that will create a greater number of dream jobs for your bitizens. For example, if a bunch of your bitizens want to work in a diner, choose the food category.

It's also important to remember that if a shop, restaurant, hairdresser, or any other service is unstaffed, then it's useless. Build plenty of apartments so you can pull in many punters and put them to work.

The majority of your floors will need restocking on a regular basis, otherwise they'll lay dormant and won't make any money. Although this is easy to keep under control during the earlier stages of the game, it can be confusing later on.

Learn to use the icons that pop up at various intervals in the bottom-left of the screen. Simply tap on brown icons - which mean a floor needs some attention - to be taken there automatically.

Remember: Although your building will need near constant attention to keep it up and running, you aren't penalised for allowing your floors to run out of stock.

As your bitizens are the ones that staff your floors and earn you money, it's important to use them to the best of their ability.

Each floor in your tower can be staffed by a maximum of three bitizens, each giving you access to new stock as they are added to the team of workers.

Always try and staff each floor with three bitizens, instead of spreading them out thinly. You'll be given access to stock with a higher sale value and a lower sell through speed.

Tapping on a bitizen will allow you to have a sneak peek at their dream job, and a 1-10 rating for each of the floor categories. If possible, take both into account when hiring and firing employees.

A bitizen in their dream job, for example, will award you with double stock, meaning your stores will be open for longer. Similarly, placing a bitizen with a food rating of nine in a restaurant will give you a nine per cent discount on all of the stock you order.

Try to strike a nice balance between the two when you are employing workers, but if push comes to shove always favour the dream job.

Finally, don't be afraid of evicting tenants. If one of your bitizens has low stats or doesn't have the dream job you had in mind for them, kick his backside out onto the street and make room for somebody else.

Although the elevator doesn't require the same amount of attention as the other areas of your tower, it's still wise to keep one eye on it.

Why?

Well, it's your job to ferry the bunch of lazy pixelated bitizens that frequent it, to the floor of their choosing. Worry not, though, as they'll tip you with cash for delivering them to their desired destination.

Again, tap the red icon that appears in the bottom-left of the screen to snap right to the crowded lift.

As your tower becomes taller and taller, the slow elevator - which is bearable during the initial hours of the game - will need upgrading to a faster model - unless you want to be there all day.

Unfortunately, you can only upgrade your elevator with Tower Bux - Tiny Tower's premium currency.

Although it's tempting to spend Tower Bux on a variety of different things, you should always reserve premium currency for items that aren't achievable in any other way.

Like most freemium games, Tiny Tower contains two forms of currency - coins and Tower Bux.

Coins are earned by selling stock in your shops and other services, or by ferrying passengers in your elevator, and are spent building new floors, or restocking your current ones.

Bux on the other hand are earned in very small amounts throughout, and can be bought in bundles starting from 59p for 10, up to £17.99 for 1000.

If you ever see a blue icon appear in the bottom-left of the screen, tap it. You'll often have to find a specific bitizen in your tower, for which you'll be rewarded with one Bux.