Off the Shelf Media

Friends, I come at you today with tears in my eyes and a pit in my stomach. News dropped that The Simpsons Tapped Out will officially shut down in 2025. The Simpsons has been my favorite TV show since I was a kid. Every night at 7:30pm, my dad, brother, and I would sit down as a family and watch our favorite yellow family from Springfield, USA, get into shenanigans. 

The longevity and success of The Simpsons speaks for itself and have been a staple in American society for decades, but all good things come to an end. No, I’m not talking about the TV show (although I must admit, it’s overstayed it’s welcome). I’m talking about the free mobile game where you rebuild Springfield from the ground up. 

I’m a sucker for city builders and for 11 years, this game has been in my life and part of my routine. Every morning I wake up, The Simpsons Tapped Out is often the first app I open. 

I’ve done it all.

I’ve bought all the buildings and decorations that don’t require premium currency. I’ve completed all the missions. I’ve unlocked over 450 characters, reached the max level of 939, and have $746,396,935 in the bank. I knew this day was coming but now that it’s here, it’s bittersweet.

Consider this a thank you and a eulogy to the greatest mobile game ever made. 

Gameplay: 2

The gameplay is simple. You manage and rebuild Springfield after Homer fell asleep at the nuclear power plant and blew it up. You unlock characters and put them on jobs to earn money. That money is used to buy buildings and decorations to give your Springfield some life. 

The game allows you to build your town however you want. You can build parking lots filled with cars, neighborhoods of expensive houses, parks with benches, bushes, trashcans, and jungle gyms for the kids of Springfield. Or you can do what most of us do and put buildings wherever you can find the room. I tried building roads and ponds at first but after 5 years I gave up and threw things into chaos. 

It’s hard to keep a game like this going for over a decade without changes. Tapped Out tried new mechanics like Krustyland where you build a theme park outside your town, or the real estate expansion where you have to use other resources to buy buildings, and if you build enough you unlock new characters. In case you’re wondering, my real estate value is $1,085,775,500. That’s more than the max. Once I unlocked everything there was to unlock, I never returned to it.

There was the Homerlayas expansion where once you reach a certain level, you unlock one member of The Simpsons family for your Mount Rushmore of Simpsons. The last one was Maggie, who you unlock at level 742.

Some of the expansions worked and some of them did not. In classic Simpsons fashion, they made their failures a gag. I remember the day when I blew up Krustyland and moved all the rollercoasters into my Springfield. 

This is a free mobile game, so it inevitably has microtransactions in the form of donuts. These donuts are used as currency to buy exclusive charters, buildings, or decorations so you can brag about how cool you are to your friends who don’t care. However, the game can be fully played and enjoyed without spending $1 on donuts. 

Once you level up, you get a donut. When you reach the max level of 939, you can get three donuts per level up. There are daily challenges where you get donuts. If you finish 10 of them, you unlock more donuts. You can use those donuts to buy a specific character who has a job that gives you three donuts every 24 hours. There was an expansion where characters can unlock deeds to land. Three of them give you a premium deed. If you get X amount of those, you unlock a land tile (that number for me is up to seven). That land tile has a donut mine where you get a random number of donuts. 

I have done all of these faithfully and can proudly say I have never spent $1 on this game and have unlocked over 450 characters. It’s a grind, but the game gives you options. If you’re patient enough, you can unlock Barney or the Springfield Gorge for 250 donuts. 

This game is a massive city builder with thousands of items to buy and organize. Throughout the years, mechanics have been added to make gameplay efficient. They added an icon in the top left corner to go directly to a character and send them on a job. That eventually became the office of unemployment where you can send all of your characters to do a 24-hour job at once. 

They added a shockwave that would automatically collect money from buildings and finish jobs. That eventually became the Sky Finger Statue that collected everything all at once every 24 hours. 

Due to these mechanics, I only had to spend 5 minutes every morning managing my city, collecting my donuts, and sending my characters to do the same job over and over and over again like it’s Groundhog Day. 

Other city builders could learn from this because it’s all about efficiency and simplicity. 

Story: 2

The game opens with a cutscene where Homer accidentally blows up Springfield. You wake up and find Lisa and begin your quest to find your friends and family to rebuild the town. That’s it. That’s the story. It’s straightforward and to the point. 

When you unlock characters, they have their own storyline and quips and quirks. Moe opens his bar and is looking for business, Sideshow Bob is looking to kill Bart, and Apu does whatever it is Apu does when he isn’t working at the Kwik-E-Mart. 

You can unlock different skins for characters that give you a new story. The Stonecutters expansion gave a dozen or so characters a new story so that’s appreciated. The writers were clever enough to keep the game going. 

There are over 800 characters in total and I appreciate the game giving away free donuts by the thousands so you can go back and buy the characters you missed. Shoutout to EA for doing right by the fans. Make your calendar, friends, because I’ll probably never write those words again. 

Once the main story ended, the writers relied on their events to keep players engaged. There have been over 140 different events with new characters, new jobs, new unlockables, and new storylines. The main screen would have new graphics, there would be snow on the ground if it was a winter expansion, and you’re treated to a brand-new story.

The classics were the Halloween special Treehouse of Horror, Pin Pals, The Springfield Games which was a knockoff of the Olympics, and many more. My first one was Wacking Day, which was the 4th major event and debuted on April 10, 2013. 

At the end of the day, this is a free mobile game. I don’t need a story as deep as The Last of Us. As far as mobile games go this game goes above and beyond what other city builders will do. 

Atmosphere: 2

The Simpsons first aired in December of 1989. We are currently in season 36 and over 750 episodes deep. There are dozens of main and supporting characters and hundreds more who show up once or twice. This game somehow manages to get all of them in here. There are obscure references that only 1% of fans will know. 

As a fan, I appreciate that one character who was in 1 episode in season 6 is in the game. That character was memorable and it may be bottom of the barrel for you, but for me, it takes me back to sitting on the couch and laughing at a ridiculous gag. 

This feels like Springfield. It feels like The Simpsons. When I’m reading Homer’s dialogue, I hear his voice in my head. The dialog feels like something Lisa or Marge will say. The wit and sarcastic tone of The Simpsons is present in this game and that’s all it had to do. 

Value: 2

What is this game worth to me? Let me tell you a story. 

There was something wrong with my EA account and I couldn’t sign into the game. EA added two-factor authentication, which would send a code to your email. For whatever reason, the code wasn’t coming through and I couldn’t access the game. 

I reached out to EA customer support for help. That’s right, I cared for this so much that I waited for EA to email me back and troubleshoot the issue. I had to transfer my EA account to a new email address to log back in and not lose any progress. 

Would any of you go through that trouble to play a free mobile game? Well, I did. 

Duration: 2

In terms of logging hours, I don’t think there is any game I’ve played more than this. I have played this every single day for over 11 years. 

I was in High School playing this game. I went through four years of college playing this game. I am a full-grown man still playing this game. I have seen wannabe Tapped Out games from Family Guy and Spongebob Squarepants debut and shut down while playing this game. I will remain playing this game until January 2025 when the servers shut down forever. 

The Simpsons are known for their longevity, so it’s to be expected that their free mobile game does too. 

Total Score: 10/10

This game is an easy 10/10 for me. A 10/10 for this game is not the same for other games. Comparing this game to a AAA game isn’t fair. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. 

I rate this game through the lens of its format. It is a free mobile game. How does this free mobile game compare with other free mobile games? The story is stronger, the innovation and adaptation are better, and longevity speaks for itself, and the fans stay loyal to the product. 

That’s a perfect score in my book. This game sets the bar too high for any other mobile game to reach. I still play other city builders, some of them for 9-10 years as well, but The Simpsons Tapped Out was always the app I opened first because it’s better than all the others. 

So I say thank you to EA and The Simpsons. Thank you for the past 11 years. It’s been a hell of a run, and I don’t regret a single second of it. 
That will wrap it up for me, friends. Thank you for reading this far. Next time I’m going back to my Harry Potter reviews. Next up is Goblet of Fire and spoiler alert, it’s hot garbage on a summer day, but that’s a story for another day. I’ll see ya there, but until then, y’all take care.