Castaway Paradise is a simulation game by Rokaplay released on Facebook in 2014, mobile and Steam in 2015, XboxOne and PS4 in 2018 and finally for Switch in 2021 (Wikipedia). You have become washed up on the shore of an island after falling asleep in a small boat and encountering a significant storm. When you awaken, you encounter the friendly mayor of the existing village that needs your help to recover from the storm.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Price: Paid $5.94 out of MSRP $19.99
Recommended: Yes, if you like Animal Crossing types of games
One Word Description: Short
- Pros: Knockoff Animal Crossing, high progression speed, flexibility, fulfills a genre fix, variety, gathering, good pickup game, changes and rewards with season
- Cons: Short, Small map, ugly graphics, repetitive, slow start, knockoff Animal Crossing, low replay value
Why I Bought it: This game had been on my wishlist for a while because I like the type of game. What pushed me to buy it finally, was that I had a strong desire to play a game like Animal Crossing and it was on sale. I’m not one to knock graphics easily because I believe that if gameplay and story are good then poor graphics can be forgiven. The initial dislike of the art did not turn me off.
Game Review — It starts off well enough. A short cut scene to explain what happened. You wash up onto the beach of the island, a kelp monster, and meet with a cow that happens to be the mayor of the nearby town. The islands had also been hit hard by the violent storm that caught the character, and she starts the tutorial section by having you pick up a few items and plant a tree. Then you get to choose boy or girl and that’s it for character creation (later, you can customize with found items like clothes and hair). The initial tutorial is over, and she gives you a tent to stay in for the moment. Then the tutorial continues with different villagers having you run errands and eventually you get all the equipment necessary to plant, grow crops/flowers, chop down trees, catch bugs, and fish.
Then it’s up to you! The goal for the game is to open up all the bridges by doing quests, selling things, and generally forming the island and later islands into whatever you want. Unlocking access to the other islands offers new fruits, new bugs, different trees, more fish, and other amenities. It also allows you to find other villagers. You make your own house, furnish it, and then expand it through your efforts. You eventually unlock a museum where you can donate your fish, shells, and bugs. The game offers lots of flexibility, so you can plant wherever and whatever you want, landscape trees to your whims, do or don’t do quests as you will.
Overall, I do recommend the game. It’s simple in concept and delivers it, too. It’s open and flexible but gives you enough direction and constraint to keep you on track and playing. The fast-forward speed of the game was fantastic mostly because you can tell that it’s a mobile game at heart. I, for one, am happy to not have to deal with annoying action points. Even though you have to earn puzzle pieces to unlock the bridges, you can simply buy them, too, which is really, very nice. As a completionist, I love the ability to gather and complete collections. They do a great job here in that regard. It gave me exactly what I was looking for (albeit short, with lack of replay value, or this case: play-on value) and fulfilled that desire for this genre of game.
However, I just could not get over the ugliness of the characters, despite my generally lax attitude towards game graphics as a whole. I understand that it’s an old game (8 years old now), but goodness. I mean, it’s not that much different from Minecraft, yet where the rest of the game was acceptable, the character design really annoyed me. There are also useless functions in the game like the bank, which is supposed to earn you interest over time, but they max you at a set maximum where the return is mere pennies especially when you quickly progress to the point where money doesn’t matter at all. The in-game shop never has a new set of items to buy, but it really doesn’t matter because you just buy everything in the menu of the game, so… yeah. What is overly underwhelming, though, is the very last part of the island you unlock. Typically, as you progress through a game like the way this one was building up, you’d expect something really big and exciting or maybe a new town or even a new villager or a big place to build a house or lots of new fish, but it was nothing. Just some new trees. So I planted all my trees and flowers and watched them grow and…that was it. It was anticlimactic and rather disappointing. I was left at the end thinking, so…that’s…it. I guess I’ll just stop playing now? And so, I just stopped playing.
Worth $20 MSRP? No.