Greed City developers boost game's performance, publish new trailer

Greed City, the Windows Phone 8 exclusive location-based game from Torchbear creator Lighthouse Game Studio, seems to be growing almost as fast as a real city. Since we first reported on the game in April, the number of players has jumped exponentially. That surge in players and the businesses they create was slowing down the game (which requires internet connectivity) in a big way.

Thankfully, Lighthouse has just published a major update that increases the speed of checking in to businesses and leaving comments on news feed items tenfold. You can now boot the game up, check in to your businesses, and get on with your day quickly and free of hassle once more.

That’s not all, though. The update adds more than a dozen changes and fixes that each make Greed City just a bit sweeter. And to celebrate the update’s arrival, Lighthouse has released a snazzy new trailer extoling the game’s virtues. See the video and more update details after the break!

Greed City version 1.18 release notes

• Added "Purchase Business" screen to make it easier to find a business to purchase
• Added "Local Leaderboards" to the Leaderboards screen, can now view top players by country & state/province
• The Total Worth bar is now clickable and shows a breakdown of how it's calculated
• Added "Flag as Duplicate" option to help remove duplicate businesses (the duplicate owner is refunded, the original business is calculated by date added or correctness of details added)
• If your GPS (Location Services) is disabled on your phone, we now prompt you as well as giving you quick access to turn your Location services back on. This should prevent the "unknown location" businesses from receiving so many check-ins.
• Added Map icons for all categories
• Help & FAQ can now be translated into 20 different languages
• When viewing a business we now display the 3 key reward points (Customer, Owner & Business value increases)
• Business: The map now animates to the position of the selected business to get a better feel of where it is located
• Business: Added help to the stock tab
• Business: We now display how much stock remains on the main tab
• Business: We now remind the owner if he forgets to add stock to a business when he leaves the business screen
• Business: You can now tap the Map to have it view the map full screen and it will show the nearest 25 businesses to the currently selected business
• Performance Improvements on adding comments
• On the Nearby/Check-in Screen we now do not include businesses without stock
• Performance Improvements on the map view
• Misc GUI Changes

City fixes

The Local Leaderboards are a nice new feature. Any way you slice it, people who buy credits and diamonds through In-App Purchases will be at the top of the leaderboards in this game. But now players can compare themselves with people in their states – the same people who they directly compete against and whose businesses they interact with.

The ability to report duplicate businesses will come in handy as well. It’s one step towards allowing players to report problematic businesses – fake businesses, misspelled titles, offensive language, etc. The fun of Greed City comes from adding real-world businesses and seeing who checks into them, so misbehaving players (and people who can’t spell) need to be kept in check. By the way, did you guys know there’s an apostrophe in McDonald’s? I ask for no particular reason.

Other promised improvements that we’re still waiting on include the Live tile updating when check-ins are available and the ability to connect or remove Facebook accounts at will. Hopefully Lighthouse adds these important features soon.

Move to Greed City

In Greed City, players purchase and manage real life businesses at the locations of their choosing. In-game business owners then earn credits when other players check into their businesses, as do the visitors. The goal is to build as vast an empire as possible. If you’re new to the game, check out our quick start guide to learn the ropes in a hurry.

Greed City is a free game and a light 2 MB download. Windows Phone 8 users can grab it here from the Store. Don’t forget to follow yours truly, EastX within the game! Just head to your profile page, tap Search, and then swipe over to Player.