Castaway Paradise is a clone of Animal Crossing : i.e: a casual game with small fetch quests, farming and social simulation. You care for a village, plant stuff, do tasks for your people etc. As a fan of AC I played all the versions, from the Gamecube to the Wii, not forgetting the handheld versions. Somehow the Harvest Moon series never 'clicked' for me, didn't like the very tight schedule (you sneeze and it's nighttime already! Wow!) and the marrying thing. My World, my rules.
So yeah as a 'veteran' of those casual no brain farm games, I highly recommend Castaway Paradise. You'll be planting, harvesting, chatting, pulling weeds, fishing, catching bugs, filling a museum etc The graphics are lush and colorful. The blocky look is very well done, it looks like a Lego world made 10 times more beautiful, or like a MySims in HD. The camera is fixed and you can only zoom in and out - but it's way enough. You mainly play with the mouse, can also move with the arrows. The world looks alive with bugs flying by and the NPCs walking around, it's really fun to watch. The system uses the internal clock just like Animal Crossing and each new day new stuff appears: herbs, trash, rocks, there's also a daily tasks system which is really well done. The map is very handy, scrollable and animated.
You can only have 3 quests at the same time - plus the daily tasks which are numerous - and each villager have quests more or less specific to his character. The best one is definetly Angus, a grumpy ape, because some of his specific quests are the opposite of what the other villagers ask you to do: destroy flowers! (That others required you to plant!) He always give you bonus trash - which you can sell, or dump! The quests texts are all fun, the birdie character always reminding you that she has no opposable thumbs so it's up to you to do her shores, Angus always nagging about the others, the mayor who keeps partying all the time... Really cool. They all feel totally different, with different texts.
Sure it has flaws: For one it lacks a lot of sounds, like when you walk or when you talk to someone; I often think there's a problem with the settings and go check the options. And unlike Animal Crossing there's no night and no weather (except snow on the ground). There's no celebrations for events like for Christmas for example but there's special sets of items available and deco spread out - like snow, Christmas trees, snowmen etc. There's also no move-in or move-out: your population is static.
Reading some other reviews I was worried of the mobile version leftovers like time counters and limitations, nag screens and such but didn't find anything hair pulling: yes the tools have to 'reload' their charges/uses but they reload really fast - in fact it makes so much sense that it's disappointing that the reload is removed at level 15, they should have left it in until the end. Plus you can upgrade your tools if you really want to have a faster reloading before that level 15 (just buy them at the shop). All the prices are reasonable, and just like AC you'll soon be wading in dough. Sure, it's not Animal Crossing, but hey it's not Nintendo either; it's an indie game, and those devs surely deserve some money and recognition!
I really like it, it's relaxing and lighthearted. You'll launch it for 5 minutes and still be playing an hour later :). No zombies, no super mutants, no dreadful choices to make; just some trees to shake and fishes waiting for ya, silly texts to read... It's the perfect game to unwind. Plus there's a LOT of stuff to find and collect, you'll need a lot of time to find everything!
