Castaway Paradise - live among the animals

I love a cozy game, especially one with a quirky art style and a silly vibe reminiscent of Animal Crossing, but this was just not good. The controls were super jank, even with the free patch for controller support; the characters felt bland and forgettable; the customization on offer for your character was lacking; but worst of all, it was very obviously a free-to-play mobile game that got badly ported to PC. I don't hate mobile games either, they can be well done, just look at Hello Kitty Island Adventure, or the mobile versions of Stardew and MTaP, this just clearly wasn't. And in this day and age, where actually good cozy games are coming out monthly, there's no reason to waste your time here.

Purchased it on sale for under three bucks. The most action I got out of it was trying to widen the screen. I get stuck at the logo and nothing in the community shows a fix. Not even worth it on sale, returned it within 7 minutes of fighting with it.

This game is just like among us apparently according to the devs

Game is abandoned and the DLC can no longer be downloaded and used in the game as the servers they were on no longer exist

At first, I really enjoyed this game. Even though I have some differences of opinion about the Animal Crossing comparisons, overall, it does fill in that gap for the PC market. It's the type of game you lose yourself in for a few hours, and I appreciated that aspect among others, like unlocking areas of the island, daily login rewards, tracked quests, etc. Things this game should have but doesn't: interactivity with the stores you unlock, more of a general purpose or reason TO unlock things, and a reworked economy system. As is, I've made BANK and finished 98% of the game in under 10 hours; the remaining 2% requires me to log in every day to respawn cobwebs and seashells for achievements. That playtime is almost laughable in comparison to games of the same genre, like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, etc.

Unfortunately, an endless amount of bugs ruins any charm this game has, and it's been abandoned by the devs who said back in 2019 they'd fix those issues... A free DLC is bugged, and you are unable to meet one of the villagers, locking you out of two achievements. Numerous times, I've encountered bugs while changing my equipment slots, and when I logged in today, I couldn't use one of my items AT ALL. I don't know why or how it's bugged, but the fact that the game has gone on this long without these bugs being addressed is RIDICULOUS.

If you care about achievements and stress-free gameplay, I highly advise against buying this game unless it's on sale like right now, where it's basically one dollar. It'd be a waste of your money otherwise.

I previously posted a good review (below) after 6 hours of play but nearing the 'end' of the game, I have to take it back. I use the term 'end' loosely.

The devs seem to have disappeared, the dlcs don't work, certain achievements are literally unachievable, and worse than all of that... there's no storyline. Like, nothing. Not even a cutscene or conversational acknowledgement of a milestone. Just nothing happens.

This game could be so good. But in it's current state, it's not. Too bad.

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Good, honest, fun. Hope to see ongoing development of the game.

Very mildly buggy but nothing game breaking. (For instance, one of my 12 garden plots is glitched, but I'm hoping rebooting the game will fix it.)

I played this game for a short while on mobile until I bought it on PC to get away from the in-app purchases. I've been playing it off and on for years and decided to redownload it recently to try to grab all the achievements over the summer. Now, I can't get the game to boot past the Stolen Couch logo screen. I tried the controller version and while it boots up, I can't get out of my house. I've already spent 7 hours on this save, I'm not going to start a new save just to see if I can get out of my house on that one. This game was never perfect, but I did like it when there were no other real-time Animal Crossing-like games on PC. Now, there are so many games like this. Castaway Paradise could have kept it's small section of the market if the developers put more time into it and listened to the community.

I'm disappointed that the devs have abandoned this game even as they still release it on Switch and other consoles just a few months ago. It's not even like the game never worked! I've spent hours in it, it's just the recent updates that have broken it. I don't know what to do, this game shouldn't be on steam if it flat-out doesn't work and the devs aren't interested in updating it.

The mad lads thought releasing this on Switch was a better idea than fixing the game on PC. Shame, I had fun with this game before they went on hiatus for like 3 years or something only to do something has batschitt crazy as this. RIP

I would completely recommend this game to Animal Crossing fans if it weren't for one thing:
This game has bugs. The game breaking kind.

If you play the beta (that is, controller support) you will eventually get locked inside your house.
When I stop playing the beta I can leave my house, but I still can't turn in an important quest to the mayor, so I can no longer progress the game. Not to mention the many, many non game breaking bugs.

The developers used to be very vocal and helpful, but they've gone silent on these issues, not answering questions or concerns for about a year now. Others have my same problems, and at the moment it doesn't feel like they'll fix any of them.

I had planned on eventually buying copies for my aunt, sister and girlfriend as the game is very good.
Do not buy this game. It is broken.

I will be requesting a refund.

This is going to be a very mixed review. In all honesty, I'm not even sure whether I can recommend it or not.

To begin, there are some things I love about the game. The graphics are wonderful, the characters are very well developed and the dialogue is some of the best I've seen, and the island itself is a lot of fun to explore.

However, I also have a lot of complaints. When I first started playing the game, I found it quite difficult to move around (PC). Basically, it feels like you're using top-down controls (WASD) to navigate in an isometric (diagonal) map. It gets pretty frustrating at times.

I also dislike the vast majority of quests, one of the only ways to make money. Most of them involve running errands for other characters, errands that they're perfectly capable of doing themselves (such as picking up items they've ordered from the local shop, burying old shoes, attempting to settle gambling debts, etc.). I feel like the town slave, as opposed to a valuable member of the community.

Which brings me to another aspect I really dislike: You have to use your hard-earned money to fix things such as bridges and NPC's houses. Why should you pay 8,000 gems (or more) to fix another character's house? The quests, in my opinion, should revolve around collecting building materials, fixing the bridges and buildings, and then getting paid for the work you do. You shouldn't have to run stupid errands for every character on the island, and then hand over that money to fix their houses.

Just thinking about it makes me annoyed....

But, as long as you don't mind that aspect of it, I suppose it's a good time waster.

Castaway Paradise is the textbook definition of a slapdash mobile port.
- Timers and level bars litter the game, obvious holdovers from the game's mobile days.
- A thing that you would have paid for on mobile, the 'VIP status', remains pointlessly in the game behind a level bar. Which is odd because of the things it offers. It gives you more clothing, which is a thing the devs already use the level constraints for normally, and more 'daily quests', which they should have gave you to begin with.
- One generic, looping music track through the entire game.
- There are little to no sound effects, and what’s there is really bland and usually consists of a single tone. There's not even a stepping sound when you move.
- All of the "characters" in the game are not actually characters. They are either walking stereotypes or just really obvious and bland (of course the bird is a pilot and the fox is a pirate). Sometime a character is even both (there's a llama clothing dealer/hairstylist).
- Very little you actually do in the game. You can fish and catch bugs, both of which are stupidly easy and require a single mouse click and little to no thought or timing. You pick up trash and weeds, and remove rocks, which is as fun as you think it is. You wait for crops and trees to slowly grow (the trees take an hour or more to produce fruit). You also do those stupid back and forth missions everyone has always hated.
- The quests you do for characters are also just holdovers from the mobile version. There is the magical sidebar with character pictures that all scummy mobile games have, and all of the quests were obviously roadblocks in the mobile game. Very few of them have to do with going back and forth. Most of the quests either involve planting something (which, in the mobile version, you would have to wait for a long time for it to grow unless you paid up), or buying something for them (which, I'm assuming, you'd have to spend a high amount a buyable currency to do).
- Rather bland art style. Which means that the two things the rely on visual appearance, the clothing and furniture, are also rather bland. The art is not even that high effort, as I'm pretty sure anyone can create things entirely out of a small number of flat planes.
- Finally, the price, which is the worst offence in my book. I'd be perfectly happy with paying five dollars for this game. It's not very good, but it would serve as an alright filler game that you buy with other more interesting titles. However, I can't justify paying fifteen dollars for this. You can get way, WAY better for that price.

Addictive game. I wish the bugs and fish were endless as I have many quests requiring them and hate leaving the game!!!! I want to keep playing!!! MUST KEEP PLAYING. Love the adorable graphics and the ease of money making if you are willing to work at it a bit. Advice-DONT clean the whole island right away, you will have quests for those weeds and debris.

I've played this a lot, and my animal crossing nostalgia made me look at it thinking it was better than it was. You overlook obvious bugs, flaws and the RIDICULOUS amount of grinding you need just to unlock every flower.

Development is slow. The controls are frustratingly unresponsive. The UI is obnoxious. The developer does not listen to what the players want. The music is one track and better believe it's terrible.

I'm at level 31. You will 'finish' everything by around level 15.

The fatal flaw is the lack of ownership of your town. It is the same as everyone else's town in layout and villagers. (Not like you could visit other towns anyway) There is zero reason to spend a lot of time on personalisation.

Every town in the same with characters that are at the same time highly charicatured and forgettable. I couldn't remember half of their names if you asked me and I closed this game ten minutes ago.

In summary... Fine if you want a fleeting moment of nostalgia. Does not stand as a game on it's own.

Ok, I gotta be the negative review guy because there needs to be one.

First of all... There is only one freaking song and it will drive you crazy...

Second: It's not very magical like Animal Crossing. Theres no hidden gems like UFO's, contests (fish catching, bug catching, etc..), A.I. rankings for how well your room is decorated, or how well your town is beautified. Not even a day and night cycle were different things happen..

Third: You don't feel like your achieving anything, even for a casual game. You get all of your tools in the first, like 5 quests. You can decorate your house, dress up your person, and beautify the town which is nice. But that goes on too my next point.

Fourth: The game and quests are pretty repetitive (planting, catching, fishing, talking to people). I get pretty bored of it, and I cannot play for very long.


Fifth: You can grow virtual crops but it's like the biggest pain in the *** having to rake a field, and slowly, akwardly water things like, 5 tomatoes, 7 times in a row (space bar, space bar, space bar)... The controls are pretty clunky as well as your characters response to them.

It's essentially a skeleton of a game. The stock market is cool, but besides collecting badges clothes, furniture, bugs and fish... There is really not much else.

But I bought it on sale, so hey if you can get the deal, try it for yourself.

In my opinion I would say that this is definitely not a $15 dollar game!

What is Castaway Paradise Complete Edition?

Castaway Paradise, for short, is a casual game where you land on an island and just help rebuilding it. For that you earn gems and puzzle pieces that you can get by doing various actions. Since there is no real objective to the game, it is very much a decoration sandbox game where you can unlock parts of the island and decorate everything at your will (provided you have the gems first).


Controls:
The game is completely controlled with the mouse and in most cases this goes very fine. When it doesn't, you just need to be careful. There are cases where icons appear that you would not want to click - for example, after digging a hole the game usually suggests you to plant a bug you caught earlier in the hole, instead of the flower seeds or fruits. So you must click one or two times extra. No big deal, but annoying.


Gameplay:
There is no way to permanently mess up, and so there are also no missable achievements. When you first start the game, you get a tutorial quest series, and you will want to just do quests for a while to learn all the basics of the game. There are various activities you can make, such as catching bugs and fish (and donating them to a museum), planting and harvesting vegetables, growing fruit trees (and of course also harvesting them), and rebuilding bridges, gates and houses. On top of that, you can decorate the island at will.

The game is definitely not made for someone who wants a deep story or gameplay, but aimed at a more casual audience, although it will require quite some time to achieve everything.

I heard comparisons to Animal Crossing, but as the versions I have I didn't play much, I can't tell.

Here is only one example, the most rewarding and involved of the various things you can do: You come across a field of 4x3 squares. First you remove the weed and stones (only once before you use it). Then you rake the field and plant seeds in it. You get seeds by buying them in the shop or the store menu. Everything is bought with ingame money, and even the VIP status is reached by leveling up enough. Conveniently you can access that store at any time - and that means also while you are at the field and just looking at the raked square, so you can buy and plant seeds with one click (two or three if you must choose another seed first) without having to enter the actual store menu. After that, you need to water the plants. Then it takes some time for them to grow. Then you water them again. Possibly you repeat that once more. Then you harvest the plants (or at any step before but then they give less plants), go to your silo and sell them (again, conveniently without having to go to the actual shop). You can expand your silo to hold more plants, which is highly recommended at least once. As a tip, I found peppers to give the best reward (508 gems profit per field in 30 minutes, possibly plus water refill time or minus water refill gems if you have many fields). You read the last sentence right - instead of waiting for the water to fill up in your can, you can also buy that with the ingame money. Convenient!

Of course you can upgrade the can to have more maximum water or deliver more water at once. When you get to the VIP status by reaching level 15, you have infinite water, but delivering at least 3 water at once still is useful.

On top of everything, the game doesn't take itself too serious - the characters are over the top, and that is a good thing. The always grumpy Angus who hates flowers, the partying Mayor Viktoria, the francophil baker Gustave - the characters you meet are all lovable!


Music and Sound:
Unfortunately, at the music it falls badly. Sure, the sound ingame is nice, but the music is too few. You hear the same music over and over - especially noticeable when entering and leaving a building.


Graphics:
The graphics are in two distinctive styles. First there is a 3D blocky style for most objects and subjects, without ever getting pixelated as in Minecraft (see the screenshots on the store page for how it looks like), second there is a 2D style for the rest, such as flowers and the ground. With everything it does, the game looks not bad but could be better. Probably it was made to resemble the abovementioned Animal Crossing games.


Recommended?
It is really hard to give you advice. I love the game, but I also see that beyond the humor the mechanics are relatively simple and shallow. For me it was worth the money (I paid around 5 Euro in a sale), and I got over a dozen hours out of it so far and will spend more, probably until I have all achievements.
If you want a game that you can return to every now and then, but then also are willing to invest some time to do the daily quests (that are optional but help you, and also reward you with badges not gotten otherwise for an optional collection), like half an hour for three or four times a day, then you have a small gem that can give you joy.
If you however want to explore a lot, do epic quests, save the world, have battles - no, this is not for you then. Go back to Skyrim! Here you can only save a small island and spend all the time on it.


PS: From some of the ingame things it is obvious that the developers might have wanted to make a F2P game ot at least modeled some mechanics after that. It is good that they didn't. There are no real money transactions inside the game, everything is bought with ingame money or - the VIP - by just leveling up, i.e. playing the game. It is only the second game from the developer that I find on Steam, and the first one that is a major project. The developer loves this game, he makes events for it, gives out free DLC every now and then. So as far as I can tell by this review, it would just be worth buying for that reason, just like Nation Red was back in the day.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/304950/discussions/0/458606877329466148/

As for the recommended price at which to buy, I can't tell. Personally I feel fine with the 5 Euro I paid, but depending on what you expect and how much you get involved in such games - or if you like it at all, it is as much a hit or miss at all or at any price I would tell. You must decide for yourself.

A casual game where you control a villager on a small island. The island has multiple NPCs who all give you quests, often of the type of 'collect three apples' or 'plant four flowers', and the occasional fetch quest.
This is very much a mobile port, all the controls are done by big buttons and there are cooldown timers on just about everything, but the developers have removed any microtransactions and there is a lot of free DLC.
The development team is also active on the forums.

It has a cute art style and soothing background music, there is no voiced dialogue but there are good soundeffects to make the world seem more alive. As usual for games in this genre there are a lot of incentives to keep you playing, free items, lesser cooldowns, etc.

Another nice feature is that the game continues playing when you're logged out, so if you have to wait for a particularly long cooldown you can just quit and come back later, to find it completed.

I like what I've seen of this so far and will keep playing it for a while. It's currently still on sale, don't skip it!

The long and short of it is, this game just fell short and wasn't much fun in execution.

I enjoy both Animal Crossing and many of the Harvest Moon/Rune Factory games and it looked like this game might be a game with aspects of each. Sadly this game has neither the charm nor the fun of any of it's predecessors. Most of the aspects of this game are unnecessarily grindy and tedious with little reward. I realize this had once been a Free2Play microtransaction nightmare, and the one thing going for it is that they removed the real money payment type but they left all the extra time sink requirements in.

As far as a farming and life sim goes, the controls are just too awkward to make doing anything a pleasure. The targeting is a chore, especially if you are trying to put down a fence behind a house that you can only barely view behind. And the farming and planting takes just a few too many clicks to select your actions all so that after a 10-12 min wait (and a few extra clicks) you can harvest a vegetable from a plant and then turn around and sell it for exactly what the seed to grow it costs.

There just isn't enough personal customization to really make doing all the chores (tasks the other inhabitants want) and waiting around to be able to do more chores, worth it. Everything on the island is already in its place and just requires you to raise gobs of gems to fix up and make them useful. The house you start out with is a tent and requires another gobfull of gems to turn into a house, but when you go inside said tent, it's just an interior of a house with the back rooms already visable and just roped off with an "under construction" sign. If I'm living in a tent, my room should look like a tent so that the reward of raising all those gems really adds up to something. Somehow the whole thing just feels like a community service simulation executed in real time.

Maybe it's because there are no good Animal Crossing or Harvest Moon Games available on Steam that this game has gotten such raving reviews, but this game just didn'y scratch that simple, life-sim itch like it's 3DS predecessors do.

Normally, I write reviews after I am done with a game. However, I don’t think I will retire or complete this game in the near future and I believe it deserves more attention, I just write down some thoughts now. May edit later.
At first glance, Castaway Paradise resembles the famous Animal Crossing game a lot. They indeed have several things in common, but CP has its selling point too, like farming and its unique square art-style.

Good:
+ A lot of furniture and outfits to get/change. I mean a lot of. XD
+ Free DLCs and festival updates. These introduce new contents, including items, island decoration and more, in the game and are often time-limited. I myself is busily farming gems to buy all the Thanksgiving items now.
+ Various ways to make the profit. You can farm seeds, grow trees, catch fish, water flowers, sell stocks or help out the island dwellers. By doing so, you are well paid back.
+ Daily challenges: This is by far my favorite part. Completing daily challenges to get the new dress, gems, and even new bandages. Why not? And even better, bandages can be displayed in the mysterious room now! I’ve always been curious what function that room will serve.
+ Easy control. I play Animal Crossing on 3DSLL and also tried CP on the phone. But Steam version is far easy to control. I usually use both keyboard and mouse.
+ Colorful art-style which makes me really happy.
+ Welcoming community and responsible devs.
+ No microtransactions or social media accounts needed.

What I think will be better if added/modified: (Some of these features are beloved ones in Animal Crossing)
- Multiplayer. It will be much better if we can visit our friends’ islands.
- Larger fish/shell/bug variety. Seasonal fish or bugs.
- Ability to decorate more houses. Like town house and other dwellers’ houses.
- More dwellers.
- Use the boat to travel to another island.
- I want to be the mayor! XD

In sum, this game is fantastic, especially for casual gamers! If you are into cute and colorful things or if you have some minutes to spare or if you like farming/decorating/dressing, give this game a try. It will amaze you.

9/10 for me!

This game is fun, the game still plays when you are away so everyday I find myself checking to see what has happend to the Island. The Island has great NPCs that you get to know, lots of quests, lots to find and do, unlockable parts of the Island, leveling up, and alot more. I am used to fighting games but this is a nice change, its a very well done game.

Slow paced, dip in and dip out Animal Crossing type game.
Content is added by the Devs on a regular basis currently, hope this continues.
I keep dipping in for 5 minutes and playing for 15 so it must be doing something right.
Good cartoon graphics, reasonable sound.
I'm casting away my vote with a thumbs up.

An Animal Crossing inspired game is always good, but hard to master without it being a carbon copy. This game defies that logic and provides a breath of fresh air while providing the same gameplay you know and love!

I created a wiki for the game if anyone would like to help edit it : http://castawayparadise.wikia.com/wiki/Special:WikiActivity!

Stolen Couch proved to be a step above the rest of the social/mobile game developers.

The original development plan for this game was merely to be a PC port of the mobile/social version: a free-to-play microtransaction disaster. To my surprise, however, Stolen Couch Games actually listened to user feedback and ultimately removed the pay-walls entirely from the STEAM version. Because SCG knows that the F2P microtransaction model is far more profitable than the premium model, the fact that they still chose to go premium is that much more commendable, and deserves a lot more attention than it is getting.

If you like Animal Crossing, buy this game. Hell, even if you don't like Animal Crossing, buy this game just to support honest developers, and show that good games are sustainable, without the freemium model.

Kudos to the entire team at SCG for having artistic integrity in what is turning out to be a fantastic game.

Castaway Paradise is the name of the game, but is it really a paradise to play in? Well let's find out. So far i have around 4 hours of play time in this game. Not a whole lot but for such a game that would give already a good impression on what to expect. Story wise the game is pretty simple, you are stranded on a island and the villagers need your help. Cause like every other game they cannot do anything them self. So during the course of the game you will preform many quests to earn XP and Gems. The higher you level the more items become available to you. Which you can then purchase with Gems.

Besides those quests you can also plant crops, flowers, trees and so on. Catch some fish or bugs and rank them against other players around the world with their online leader board. All these things work very well.

However, the game misses a couple of points/features that would have made the game exciting for the long haul, and i am gonna compare it with Animal Crossing(as the developers do as well) The main reason why that game is so successful is the aspect of collecting stuff. You go around finding new fish during certain seasons or catch bugs, and then you bring them to the museum. Here you catch them, and they will end up in a museum but there is no real sense of collection. no catalog to keep track of what you got, or no sense at all when something will appear or where.

Another thing that is missing is new members joining the island, or the fear of someone leaving the island. Here you have a handful of NPC's that walk around and not doing much, no interaction with other NPC's or any interaction with the world. They walk around and that is pretty much it. In short it could have felt more alive if they where doing something.

Some other smaller things that i would have liked to see is a day and night cycle that for all i care is linked to your computer clock or the servers, to make the world feel alive. Also a missed thing is not being able to swim and dive up stuff. There is a boat and submarine docked at your island but for now those do not do anything. perhaps at a later level. Also events, the game has them, but as far as i can tell it's just store items you can buy to make it more seasonal and again no real exciting things (could be wrong here, just seen the mothers day event)

In the end i can say that Castaway Paradise is a solid game, and for it's price worth it. However i do fear that in the long run it will become boring with the lack of interaction and collections.