Likewise, the island itself is partitioned by gateways that have been placed very deliberately in the way, and you have to remove the obstacles before you can gain access into new areas. In Castaway Paradise, your house is huge from the start, but most of the rooms have been literally roped off, and you have to earn access to the rooms that you already own. In Animal Crossing, your tiny starter house can be added to, with new rooms, a basement, and a second story. An early example is the house that your character can build for themselves, and decorate if they see fit. It may seem like low-hanging fruit to criticise the narrative flimsiness of a gentle life simulator, but Castaway Paradise is full of design decisions that beg the question 'but why?'.

In Castaway Paradise, apparently the villagers are fine with an empty museum, and a bank that they never use. There's a distinct lack of narrative reasoning given for these buildings existing but not being in use - to use Castaway Paradise's own comparison, Animal Crossing: New Horizons at least explains that the island was deserted before you got there, and you have to install a museum and shops yourself. On the island, you'll find a museum, a bank, a shop, and a house that belongs to you, all of which need a fix-up. It's up to you to restore it to its former glory, although the villagers seem pretty content to live in this trashpile, continuing to assert that it is, in fact, a utopia, even as broken umbrellas keep washing up on the shores.Ĭaptured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked) Littered with trash, broken-down buildings, and gigantic-headed villagers that seem to do little in life other than waving at you every single time you break their eyeline, the island is in desperate need of a facelift. The island upon which Castaway Paradise takes place is far from the paradise it claims to be. Once an in-app-purchase-riddled browser game, it migrated over to smartphones in 2015, consoles in 2018, and now (presumably because it's performed well enough on other platforms) it's on Switch, too. Likewise, if a game bills itself with the actual tagline 'It's Like Animal Crossing!' and then attempts to meet your lofty expectations with a Facebook game from 2014 retooled as a $20 eShop purchase that combines the joys of 'Doing Chores' with the excitement of 'Doing More Chores', we wouldn't blame you for throwing it so deeply into the bin that it re-emerges somewhere on the other side of the planet.Ĭastaway Paradise is that game.

If you told someone that you were a huge fan of gourmet homecooked meals, you'd be well within your rights to boot them off the nearest cliff if they came to your next party with a lasagne dish full of wet cat food.

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