Review of Mobile Game "The Sims 2: Castaway"

It appears that IGN is not ready for a Sims 2: Castaway (mobile) review yet, so it'll have to go on my own website! Here's their link for it though.

Sims 2: Castaway is a fine mobile game, though it doesn't measure up to "Stranded" (reviewed earlier).

You are one of the Sims having a fine time on the high seas on a yacht... until your yacht (USS Llama? That makes no sense...) met with some disaster... You all went overboard... and washed up on this island. You'll need to collect items on the island, build shelter, gather food, find the other inhabitants, and eventually, get off the island.

As in any Sims game, you have multiple needs you need to fill (hunger, rest, friendship, etc.), and try to make friends with everybody. And they will give you quests (called "goals" here.) which is basically beat someone in some sort of contest, and you'll get the item you need. And each person will usually have one "game", such as "surfing", or "dancing" (which takes care of "fun" need).

The different areas of the island, as you unlock them (by getting tools) can be "jumped to" by accessing the map, and simply selecting the area, and you'll instantly go there.

There aren't that many hazards on the island, but there ARE some. Don't shake trees with a bee's nest on it, and don't step into lava pools or quicksand pools. And that's pretty much it. So the game is quite forgiving.

Getting food is easy... find trees with coconut or bananas, and shake the tree. If you manage to locate a spear later (as one of your quests), you can start spear-fishing.

So basically the trick is finishing the quests, then learn the different quests, and see which quests can unlock areas, which will unlock other quests. Eventually, you'll get to the raft.

Example. Crazy Carl won't leave the caves unless you bring him a fish stew. So you have to go to Brandi to get a fish stew, except you lack some of the ingredients, and the only way you'll get them is start your own garden, and get some chili peppers from Greg the nerd/scientist's area up at the cliffs. And the garden, must be built by another inhabitant, and then you need seeds. Except you need to get seeds back from someone else by beating him in a surf competition. Then you wait two nights so the ingredients will grow right (and you need to fish at night to catch the right fish) and finally go back to Brandi to get the fish stew cooked, and take it up to Carl. THEN he'll give you the next quest...

Obviously, you need to be on speaking terms with people for them to give you quests, and so on. Chatting is okay, gift giving is best. Romance is possible, if you want to go that far.

All in all, Sims 2 Castaway is basically Sims 2 meets Lost, albeit in a PG style (did I mention you need to "shower" once a day for people to even want to talk to you?) It's simple, it can be finished in a few hours, and it's a short diversion. Your stats are recorded so you can compete for things like fastest escape (I got off the island on the 8th day), most friends (I got all seven), and so on. If you wish, you can reset the stats and start over. However, once is enough for me.

Overall: 7.5

Pluses: big sprites, easily recognizable Sims control interface and needs, pretty good 2D isometric graphics

Minuses: short game, needs too simple, adventure game rather than Sims game despite the name