Review: Castaway Paradise

Do you love games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley at a cheaper price? A unique play and art style? Weird characters that send you on conceptually odd and strange missions? Farming and decorating? Catching fish, bugs, and shells for museums? STONKS?

Then you’ll adore Castaway paradise!

Castaway Paradise is a 1-player life simulation sandbox game on both PC and Nintendo Switch, and it is the perfect game to relax. I honestly spent my time in-between work and study sessions working my way up through levels, tending to gardens, planting many, many trees (you’ll see what I mean…), and running back and forth between each character to do their quests. I also adored the fact that, despite the fact that it makes you choose a set gender and does not let you change it (this only impacts pronouns that the characters use, from what I could tell), the game lets you choose any clothing style to wear without any gender constraints. Whatever you feel comfortable wearing, you get it!

The game first drops you into a short tutorial after you wash up on a storm-burdened island. It shows you how to walk, equip your items, water plants, harvest plants, and after a bit of talking, sets you free right off the bat. There are also little tutorials scattered about in the beginning quests that the characters give you, but otherwise, it lets you do as you please. You then start off much as you do in Animal Crossing: a tent to upgrade, basic equipment, three animals to befriend, and additional characters and areas to unlock via puzzle pieces that you can either buy yourself (at an expensive 2000 Gems per piece) or get via quests. Speaking of-

QUESTS

Each character always has a quest to give you and there’s no recharge time for any of them, and the rewards range from XP, Gems, items, and puzzle pieces. These quests go from simple things that take two minutes (picking up garbage, harvesting trees, etc) to more complex things that run over the course of a couple of days (planting rare plants, catching rare fish, etc.). Even though these quests consist of running around and doing chores, the humor involved with them makes them fun and odd. For example, Angus once made me fish for three specific fish (which took me three hours because of their rarity), then turned around and made me bury them far from him, then finally laughed when I came back, and sent me on my way as though I didn’t just make an impromptu funeral for three fish (those fish turned into skeletons, found this out when I went to clean up my island). Another quest sent me on a marketing campaign of the weirdest sorts. The shop owner heard of the concept of “spam emails” and took it to the next level. He had me deliver spam mail packages to the other animals to advertise for his store, who all thanked me for this spam in the cheeriest way possible. Those were about the oddest quests, and safe to say, after the shock wore off, I needed to put my switch down for five minutes to compose my laughter.

MAKING YOUR WAY – FARMING AND STONKS

Quests aren’t the only way to make money in Castaway Paradise. You can also fish, catch bugs (more on both later), farm, and invest in stocks. For farming, this is where the game starts to feel like Stardew Valley. Farming is one of the better ways to make money, especially farming trees. For tree farming: you can plant trees anywhere you like and once they grow, they give you their designated fruit twenty minutes after each time you water them. For regular farming: you originally only get one plot and a silo for it, which then expands to two and more storage in your silo with the addition of the left-most part of the island. Here, you can grow a variety of crops, from peppers to mushrooms, and you can upgrade each crop up to three times to make the maximum profit. However, each crop (and type of tree) takes a different amount of time to grow depending on the type of seeds. The most expensive and most valuable crops, mushrooms, took upwards of 3 days to grow, but the good thing is that when you level up, your crops and trees grow too! All the more motivation to accomplish other tasks. So really, the amount of time it takes to grow these crops depends on how much you play.

As for STONKS- I mean, stocks, the game has its own stock market system with which to make money, located within the bank portion of the town hall. This was a good way to make some quick (albeit small) money if I needed it and saved me a bunch of time whenever I was assigned an expensive crop or tree to grow. You just gotta time it right, and you’ll get a good chunk of change from it!

DECORATING

Castaway Paradise has an impressive decorating system, it has the same feel as AC: Home Decorator but is a little limited in that you can only place from what is in your player inventory instead of what is in your storage (though I personally enjoy that because it doesn’t feel too overwhelming). However, as opposed to AC, the game makes up for that with the option to decorate outside with the same features. The ability to buy the furniture you need outright from your catalog and have it right there for you to place where you want is also a bonus. Want that cool beach party vibe for your beachfront home? Buy your umbrellas, beach chairs, tiki torches, and get some coconut trees and put them down. Boom! You now have a pleasant place to chill or party outside.

This also works with planting/farming too! Just line up where you want your trees to be with holes/farm plots and place the seeds over the holes. Neat!

MUSEUM + BUGS, FISH, SHELLS

Also like Animal Crossing, Castaway Paradise has a pretty decent museum to unlock on the right portion of the island that can hold a wide assortment of bugs, fish, and shells. Catching bugs and fish can stack up a lot of money fast as well, and I found it to be easier than with AC because you can catch your hunt with a simple press of the button. Just make sure you’re not running around, as bugs can get scared and dart off (though they don’t despawn, which is much more forgiving than the regular Animal Crossing player’s heartbreak of an atlas beetle fluttering away forever because they didn’t see it), and fish tend to swim to another spot when you run in the water. In the summer months, you can also gather shells that wash up on the beach alongside trash and Gem bags, and donate these to the museum owner.

I have to say, after nearly completing the museum, I walked through it after having played this game for 50+ hours and it made me feel accomplished to see the podiums filled up. Though they aren’t actively running/flying/swimming around the room, they felt more like a beautiful art exhibit to behold.

IN CONCLUSION

For its price of $14.99, Castaway Paradise far exceeded my expectations in terms of life simulators. It replicates a good chunk of the feeling that both Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons bring with their decorator, farming, and overall concept of living among the animals, while also managing to bring its own unique qualities to the table. True to the spirit of life simulators, Castaway Paradise gives you the freedom to do whatever you want to do and build up your island into your own personal paradise.