Hello my fellow internet…ers… Hmm.  I haven’t written a post all week so excuse me if I need to warm up a bit.  Today we are going to do something unheard of for this site.  We are going to talk about a game that has NOTHING to do with Disney.  Alright everyone, calm down.  Sir, I’ve got your inhaler right here.  Madame, here is magazine to fan yourself with.  Normally I am not in the habit of writing about every mobile game that pops up on the shop.  I’d never get anything else done ever again.  But upon playing Farmville: Tropic Escape for hours on end, I find that I simply have no choice.  I am absolutely loving this game and I wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight if I didn’t share why with all of you lovely people.  So close your eyes and imagine a far away place, where you can farm pineapples, play with dolphins and send your tour guides scuba diving for hours on end.

I’ll ask you to excuse my lack of photographs or step by step commentary which I normally do for games like this as I did not set out to write about this game in the first place.  Instead, my photos will be taken from my current place in the game.  Tropic Escape starts with a basic premise.  Unhappy with your boring life, you head for the tropics to become the owner and operator of an island resort, in hopes of making it the best it can be.  It’s simple and if you’ve played any farming sim ever, you probably know it by heart.  But let’s face it, you didn’t come here for the story.  You came here for the dolphins!  Or maybe that’s just me.

Not to mention all these other animals which unlock. Oh God! There’s a Sea Lion! I Can’t DEAL!!!

Tropic Escape plays like many Freemium sim games.  You plant things, which take a certain amount of time to grow.  Then you harvest them and use them to make things.  Then you use those things to fulfill tasks and quests, or potentially sell the things you are making in order to get some cash.  As you do all of this, you are leveling up, unlocking new activities and new buildings, which in turn make new things with the crops you are so eagerly planting and harvesting.  So what strikes me about Tropic Escape so much that I just had to write about it?

Grow my glorious garden! GROW!

First off, the look of the game is great.  It has a beautiful charm to it.  I, for one, am always going to love the backdrop of an island resort.  I love that look of the blue ocean and the palm trees.  It all has this great sense of serenity and calm.  In fact, this could be the exact same game set in a country farm and I guarantee I would not be as into it.  I know because the original FarmVille was such a game and I never even bothered downloading it.  So maybe I have a little bit of bias.  Yet, what is also great about these wonderful visuals is that with the sparkling ocean, your crops growing, dolphins swimming and monkeys DJing, everything still manages to run at a very smooth frame rate.  It’s rarely, if ever, choppy, and this in turn makes you never want to leave this comfy resort.  Why would you?  Everything seems to run so smoothly.  Unlike real life, where people are honking there horns and sirens are wailing, things in Tropic Escape just work!

That’s right Monkey DJ, I see you.

That sense of things working extends to the freemium style of gameplay as well.  Look, I have played a lot of these free to play games.  I know how it works.  Click, click, tap, tap, oh hey, this game is neat.  I can’t wait to play more.  What’s this?  Wait 10 hours to do the next thing or pay $5 to skip now?  Oh…but we were doing so well.  We had a whole thing going… Many games feel like this.  They’re opening sprints last maybe an hour before you are left with nothing to do for hours on end.  It’s unfortunate because 9 times out of 10, I won’t be returning after that long stint of waiting.  Even if the game is great.  The recent release, Paradise Island, which in many ways is very similar to Tropic Escape, shares this folly.  As soon as you get into the game, the wait times become astronomical.  Tropic Escape, at least for now as I sit at level 10, avoids this trap.  Yes, certain things have started to take a bit more time.  Certain buildings have taken a couple hours to build, but the important thing to know is that there is ALWAYS something to do when I open the game.

Like Fullfilling orders

Or raising my resort rating.

Or making sure that these two hapless souls never stop scuba diving!

That’s because Tropic Escape does a great job of mixing up the tasks.  While one of my current tasks requires me to make scented soaps, which take quite a bit of time, another is asking me to plant and harvest a whole bunch of rice, an early crop which grows very quickly.  This means that while I might not be able to progress in the main story every second, I can always work towards something.  This is also aided by the fact that there is always something to work for.  The main story quests are the big ones, but there are also orders to be filled, DJ monkeys to be appeased and the ever looming need to expand to fit more stuff into my resort.  This becomes even more of a need as you can see in the distant shrubbery lots of things that unlock later on and look like fun.

I will have you volcano.  You will be min.

So what is there to make me have to buy gems as a means of keeping this game afloat?  Well, so far, there isn’t anything.  I haven’t really had the need to purchase gems just yet.  BUT, that might just end up being the reason that I do throw a few dollars into the game.  Certain things like extra slots on workshops or speeding up production do cost gems, but the fact is that these are all nice extras, which in no way feel like necessities.  I’m much more willing to spend money in a game that allows me to play and progress in a fantastic world than one that immediately throws the brakes at me and claims PAY OR WAIT in big annoying neon letters.  Okay, no game does that, but sometimes it feels that way.  My point is that Tropic Escape is the sort of game where you spend money because you genuinely want to support it, and not because you feel like you have to or the game will be less fun.

Oh…thanks for the eggs…I’ll just, um, put them with the others?

This is not even mentioning the social element of the game.  Tropic Escape allows you to join clubs, places where friends can mingle and sell their extra goods.  This comes equipped with a chat feature, which means that you can discuss your love of the game with other like-minded individuals and there are already plenty of clubs, in lots of languages to choose from.  From what I’ve seen, these groups are super welcoming and full of people who just want to shout to the heavens how much they love their own slice of tropic paradise.  It’s also great because it allows players to ask questions and find solutions without always having to wait for a reply from tech support.

Buy my fish. Do it!

What strikes me most about Tropic Escape is the sheer amount of stuff to do, with the promise of more as I gain levels, and the intense need I have to get back to it.  This article isn’t even that long, but I’ve been frequently distracted from writing it by the game, which seems to be calling to me the way that the force calls to Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens.  JUST LET IT IN!  The animation is adorable and the game runs at a very slick frame rate, with little to no issues for me so far.  I am currently playing on an Iphone 6 plus.  If you are a fan of sim games, farming, dolphins, or sim farming while playing with dolphins, I simply cannot recommend FarmVille: Tropic Escape more.

Luxury Status? We just got here!

Download on iOS

Download on Android

And make sure to add my GameCenter so we can send each other sunshine!

My GameCenter is Ezeekat

What do you guys think of the game?  Let me know in the comments below!!