After a lengthy wait, popular construction simulator Tropico finally arrived on the iPad this month — and it’s just as glorious as fans hoped it would be.
You play the newly-elected leader, “El Presidente,” whose mission is to provide the residents of Tropico with a better future. The island boasts ample untapped resources and enormous potential, but it’s underdeveloped and in desperate need of modernization.
The opportunities are endless, and there are countless hours of fun to be had — but you’ll need a fifth-generation iPad or later to enjoy it.
There is no need to present the Tropico management game series that started in 2001 on PC. Since then, several episodes have emerged, but none on touch devices. Thanks to the Feral Interactive studio, it is now possible on your iPad, you will be able to take you for the president of a small island in the tropics and do whatever you want … while keeping in mind that you must stay in power, divert some money, please your citizens, but especially think of your own happiness … and your retirement … because yes, you are El Presidente, the all-powerful, reigning of an iron fist on the imaginary islands of Tropico . Let’s go for a ride in the Caribbean to confront your citizens.
The main objective in Tropico, which will guide you throughout your games, lies in staying in power throughout your tenure. To achieve this, you will have different possibilities each time involving the need to build different structures such as clinics, schools, bars, police stations, casinos, churches, etc. Only, your mandate will be complicated, and you will not be able to do it alone, the world situation can strongly impact your possibilities, you will sometimes have to promulgate special laws, ask the United States or the USSR to help you with foreign aid, raise rents if you think you’ve been too generous, etc. This management phase is important to succeed in your term.
Only the majority of your time will be spent trying to make more and more money. If your reserves are dry, you are nothing, you will fail in your mission that you have entrusted the citizens of Tropico. You will have to find ways to make various items, grow and sell different crops, and attract tourists to earn money. When you get tired of it, you will not have to rest, but rather take care of your fellow citizens, the employees of the various places of the island, so that they are happy to be punctured by the money they win by working for you … To do this it will be necessary to know them, by consulting your Almanaccontaining all the information you need. You will then have to decide how to organize their time … and secondarily try to make them happy.
To take care of your fellow citizens, to satisfy their basic needs such as sleeping, eating, staying healthy, cultivating their spiritualities, having fun with shows, etc., you will have to build different buildings. If you can not make them happy, they will protest, rise up against you, or not vote for you in the next election. Your task may seem quite overwhelming at first because of the many things to keep in mind … between the multifaceted laws, building, security, and happiness of your people, find the best way to lead your island to fill the boxes (using the passage). Fortunately, Tropicohas been designed to guide you in your actions, with many aids and various readings, tools to look at very regularly, starting with a two-step tutorial well thought out, opulent, but effective in terms of learning.
In this version of the Tropico iPad, you will have two main game modes, whether the campaign or the sandbox. These two modes are directly accessible, there is no purchase built into the game, everything is available at no extra cost. In the first mode, you will need to complete missions and unlock new islands as you succeed, allowing you to diversify scenarios and ways of playing. You will start on the island of St. Helena with the modest goal of exporting 8,000 units of bananas … but it will be complicated in the 15 available islands, rest assured. At each game, you can also choose your avatar by going from Fidel Castro to Che Guevara, and some more zany characters. The Sandbox mode will offer you great freedom in the way of exploring places and techniques, leaving you free to test different tactics in this management game.
You will also be able to create your own character with a rather rudimentary avatar editor. You will be able to choose its appearance, name and some of its character traits and qualities, as well as other important features that will shape your game. It does not add much to the way you play, but you’ll feel like you’re getting a little more Tropico. But be careful, whether you choose a character or you create it from scratch, your skills and character traits will bring you advantages as disadvantages at stake. For example, if you come from a comfortable background, you will have a length of ‘advance on the level of industry but a certain part of the population will be less inclined to understand you in case of economic difficulty. This allows to give a power of replayability very important thanks to the eclectism of the personalities.
But, all this is well-known players who have already worn their iron hands on this game before. The biggest difficulty, and where the work of the studio was important, is in the fact of making touch a game and an interface that was originally planned for PC, without distorting the essence of Tropico. This iPad version of the game offers a specially redesigned interface to play on mobile devices. You can zoom in / out, re-orient the camera, move on the island, all with one or two fingers on the screen by learning gesture described in the tutorial. The whole is well thought out, overall, but becomes somewhat tedious when you have to navigate large areas. At times, if you are not precise, your controls may be misinterpreted, but fortunately, that is rare enough. By dint of play, you will master more and more the gameplay.
At the bottom of your iPad screen, this version also has the dictator’s desktop, a kind of quick access to some of the game’s most important functions or commands, be it you, the build, the almanac, the laws, etc. This makes it possible to offer a much more user-friendly aspect than a simple taskbar on the screen, although it can sometimes be regretted that this desk takes up too much space on the screen. You will feel very quickly at home, and will quickly taste to lead your citizens to ensure that their happiness is optimal … uh, your happiness … yes, you are El Presidente anyway! You just have to show what dictator you are in the paradise islands of the Caribbean, thanks to this fabulous management game that is Tropico, portage of very high quality.
Conclusion
This touch port of Tropico is of very high quality, offering all the strategic power of one of the best series of management game. The studio Feral Interactive managed to retain the essence of the license while changing its control system to adapt to the touch of an iPad, allowing any fan of management game to play in it. any circumstance, even if the controls are not perfect so far. But beware, the difficulty is important, it is not easy to be a good dictator, there will be a lot of things to manage in order to prevent maximum money for your retirement … uh, no, for satisfy the needs of your citizens, of course!