It's on the Google Play Store now so I'll give it a shot, but from the sound of things it's exactly the same as every other sim/builder game on mobile... Makes you wonder why it took them so long to make it.
No idea. I mean this was built by Gameloft who basically stamp these things out on a production line.
Conversely, Disney's Infinity Toy Box 3.0 is probably one of the best free(mium) games I've seen. I checked it out after getting into the AppleTV version, and it's pretty close to identical. You don't need to spend any money to play the Toy Box aspect of the game to completeness. Spark prices for unlocking toy box items, are the same (AFAICT) as for the console versions, where paying to unlock is *not* an option. So the grind is set to real game levels, not freemium levels.
If you want specific characters, as with the console versions, you pay for them, but the price is far (far) lower. The same is true for expansion play-sets. If you happen to own a physical 'toy' character, a code is included in the box that unlocks it for the mobile version.
I'm sure Disney/Avalanche are making plenty of money from Toy Box 3.0, and probably pushing sales of the console version/add-ons at the same time.
This is a huge wasted opportunity, IMHO.
Also, Gameloft.
[edit] Oh, and: "it's exactly the same as every other sim/builder game on mobile". This! A thousand times: this! Can someone please build a decent city builder game for iPad please? I'd take a gussied up Sim City 2-a-like, if and happily pay 20 bucks for it.