Paradise Island: Exotic for the iPhone and iPod Touch promises to fulfill the island fantasies that many people dream of. However the path to progress is long and difficult, as well as a bit of a bore. Without much to do and little payoff, Paradise Island: Exotic is not the island you’re dreaming of.
Paradise Island: Exotic for the iPhone and iPod Touch promises to fulfill the island fantasies that many people dream of. However the path to progress is long and difficult, as well as a bit of a bore. Without much to do and little payoff, Paradise Island: Exotic is not the island you’re dreaming of.
As stated previously, Paradise Island: Exotic is nothing more than a game that provides you with an island, a bit of cash, and the challenge to build a tropical island paradise. Much like the games Tropico for PC and Happy Island on Facebook, this game has you playing ‘God’ in that you do not have a visual playable character on screen but rather you’re simply just manipulating objects and decorations.
As you begin playing, you are given a short tutorial on how to play the game. Simply tap on the item store to purchase items, tap where you’d like to place them and you’re done. Once time passes in the game, certain buildings will allow you to collect rent from them, and tapping on them once ready is all it takes to complete that portion.
After playing the game for about 10 minutes, I began to notice the several flaws which are apparent in Paradise Island: Exotic. The first and most important is that there is a severe lack of activities for you to complete while playing Paradise Island: Exotic. While playing, the only real activities you can do involve placing buildings, decorations and resorts down and collecting from them. There are no additional mini-games or anything else to complete while playing. The second issue elaborates on the first in that the challenge to climb the ranks and build a bustling resort island is rather steep and requires several days of playing to gain any progress of significance.
Perhaps goals or mini-games would have helped improve the gameplay in Paradise Island: Exotic. Goals would be an easy fix and would at least set out some clear guidelines for new players and have some sort of goal embedded in their minds as they play. Mini-games can break up the game so that it is not as monotonous and can add thrilling and fast-paced gameplay to what is otherwise a slow-paced city-builder.
Graphically, Paradise Island: Exotic is not the prettiest game I’ve seen on the iPhone. Pixel-laden buildings, rashly detailed faces and other anomalies riddle Paradise Island: Exotic. While I’ve seen worse, this game certainly does not do the iPhone justice. Sound is at least somewhat pleasant if but a bit repetitive in that you’ll hear a loop of the music frequently and a constant blaring horn of a ship in the dock.
On a positive note, Paradise Island: Exotic appears to have a great variety of items to purchase in the store. From casinos, waterslides to space conventions, the in-game market appears to have just about everything. The only trouble comes once again back to the progression taking far too long.
Overall, Paradise Island: Exotic could be fun for those looking for a bit of an island taste to their city-building game. Unfortunately though, Paradise Island: Exotic doesn’t appear to have near enough gameplay elements in it to warrant a download. If the developers had spent less time on the high-level content and more on adding interesting ideas in gameplay, Paradise Island: Exotic would be a much more exciting game.
