REVIEW

Paradise Bay (Game) Review

by Luke Walsh, August 26th, 2015

King are no newcomer to the gaming scene but Paradise Bay is not their usual match-3 mobile game. Paradise Bay a freemium resource cultivation title that sees you take on the role of Trademaster of an island to which you must help the inhabitants rebuild and re-stock.

The game mechanics are nothing new when it comes to mobile gaming and if you have played Farmville or similar, then this game won’t tread any new ground. King does do well at bringing colour, magic and high level polish to the resource collection genre but do be prepared to feel like you’ve done this all before.

Being Trademaster means you are like the leader of the island and all the island folk rely on you almost completely, turning to you to produce the materials for them to go about their daily routines. To do this you grow crops, firstly in the form of cotton which you can then make into nets to put on tortoises, who are then able to fish for you and so on. Each different material is needed by the different inhabitants of the island which you can trade with them for gold and experience. As the game progresses the materials can be gained from cooking, mining ores, making drinks and anything you can think of a human might need to live.

As mentioned, if you have played cultivation or resource simulators on mobile you will know the drill. Growing crops take time, building takes time, making material takes time, fishing and mining ore takes time. It all takes real world time to achieve any results.

Storage of your resources is limited and you will have to balance how much of each material you are creating to what you need to help the inhabitants and continue to grow your settlements on the island. Some items in the game seem to be a purely cosmetic addition such as fences which allow you to separate up your kingdom. One feature that I particularly liked was the crop growing system, each time you grew crops you get twice as many back, which meant you never struggled too much at the most basic resource level but still needed some planning to make sure you always had enough.

There is a deal of character story and progression in the Paradise Bay. As you play through the game you meet new characters with their own story and characteristics. The more you trade with them and give them materials they need the more your relationship builds. Each level rewards you with experience and chests which have money and more experience. This is something that is different from other resource management games on the market and adds a slightly different dimension to the genre.

There did feel like quite a lot to do when you jump into Paradise Bay. Crops always need harvested (if you remembered to plant them), fish are waiting to be collected or nets are waiting to be put on the backs of animals. Island inhabitants always want something from you and the trade post is full of their requests. King has done a good job and making the game feel busy and the island feel packed with stuff to keep you entertained but as with all time based mobile games, it can feel quite shallow.

Paradise Bay is not something you can play for really long periods or away from a stable internet connection as its always required to be online, probably for hack/cheat protection. So you will probably jump on, set up your crops, start making some new materials, harvest some ore and other items then move on with the rest of your day. In game there are two types of currency, the in game kind, gold, which is given out as part of the game and premium currency, gems, which you get by paying real money. The push or reason to pay is in the games timings, expanding buildings and gaining more resources.

Rushing can sometime feel forced to the player.

The further you get in Paradise Bay the longer things take to complete, if you want to “rush” then you pay with gems and the longer you have to wait to more gems it costs to speed it up. Nothing new to the style of game but it’s a shame that King did not decide to change their pricing model along with the change of game type. It still pushes quite hard on players about gems from the start, reminding them if they accidentally try something and don’t have enough materials to complete it. You also have to use gems to upgrade your buildings and speed up the time it takes to do anything at all in the game. Rushing is free when there are 30 seconds left but might as well not even be there and gems don’t come for free in big numbers or that often, only getting a couple when you complete challenges.

Overall, King’s Paradise Bay is a change for them; nothing new to the mobile market. The game is well polished in functionality and the art style is in their cute and colourful design which is pleasing to the eye. It won’t be for everyone but casual gamers who like these style of games with a little something different who can forget about and come back to will enjoy the world, interesting characters, art and AAA design. Paradise Bay is a game you can play in those 5-10 minute moments that you have nothing else to fill that gap but it could of had a lot more potential to be a stand out game in the mobile market, if it did not fall back on the static commercial mobile model.