Beachtown Review

Beachtown takes the traditional city-building elements found in other games, but inserts some rather interesting twists. While this certainly makes the game unique, is the departure from the norm for the better?

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In Beachtown, boredom will get to you long before Jaws does.

Beachtown takes the traditional city-building elements found in other games, but inserts some rather interesting twists. While this certainly makes the game unique, is the departure from the norm for the better?

As you start up Beachtown, you are greeted with an island theme and welcome that informs you that you’re in charge of a small beach oasis. Your task is to create fun activities for your friends to do, and in the process earn money and run a successful business.

Activities make up most of what you’ll be doing in Beachtown, and are exactly as they sound, things for people to do while visiting your beach. The game simply starts you out with a few trees and a long-boarding activity. To start an activity, you must drag your friends using your mouse to the activity and they will automatically start doing it. Long-boarding takes just a few minutes to complete and then your friend can move on to another activity and you will receive an experience point and coin bonus. After a few activities though, your friends will tire out and leave your beach for a while. Other friends will enter just as they leave though.

Beachtown

Other activities that you can add to your beach include jet skiing, snorkeling, and hula dancing. A lot of further activities can be unlocked as you level-up and some will cost Clams, the game’s premium currency. After your activities have been used for a while, you can then upgrade them in order to receive additional rewards upon completion.

Of course, it just would not be a Facebook game without droves of decorations for you to coat your beach with. Standard beach items are all that are found right now such as umbrellas, beach huts and tropical trees. While there is quite a selection, a little variety outside of the standard fare would have been a nice touch.

Beachtown

Besides the activities and decorations we just discussed, there really isn’t much else to do in Beachtown besides collect treasure chests. Collecting the chests presents you with either a coin bonus, which you can use to purchase new activities or decorations, or a collection item. When you collect a certain number of collection items, you can turn them in in order to receive a healthy coin bonus as well. This feature is obviously ripped from other popular Facebook games such as FarmVille or CityVille.

The biggest issue I have with Beachtown in its current form is the lack of interesting things to do. Within 10 minutes of playing, I was stuck without anything to do except wait for my friends to complete activities. What could have helped this situation is maybe some further elaboration on the activities, perhaps an optional mini-game or two to break up the monotonous portions where you’re simply left waiting for something to happen. I know Facebook games in general have timers so that eventually you’ll have to come back later, but Beachtown honestly will likely leave you without anything to do very quickly. Goals also tend to help games like this, where the player has a certain idea as to what to do or focus on next.

Beachtown

As it stands, I can’t really recommend Beachtown in its current form. While there aren’t really any bugs present that would stop anyone from playing it, there isn’t really anything interesting present past the initial 10 minutes either. Play Beachtown if it really interests you, but be warned of its shallow waters.

The good

    The bad

      50 out of 100
      Talor is a video games writer who enjoys playing all kinds of games at every opportunity. On top of games, Talor enjoys traveling and considers himself a roller coaster enthusiast.