Speak to anyone who plays mobile games and you’ll probably discover that they’ve spent at least a small period of time hooked on one of the games from King. We know we’ve lost countless hours to their titles including Papa Pear Saga, Bubble Witch Saga, Farm Heroes Saga and the most addictive of all – Candy Crush Saga. When we hear that King have launched a new game we know it’s probably worth checking out.
Paradise Bay is the first game from King’s new Seattle studio. Having mastered the Match-3 genre, this time they have gone for a completely different genre. Paradise Bay fits into the popular Builder genre and feels a lot like a more relaxed Farmville. It’s a genre that players seem to either love or hate with no inbetween. There’s no denying that the genre can be a huge time-sink but you can play as little or as much as you like.
The game puts you in the role of a trademaster who is tasked with rebuilding a tropical island paradise. Initially only a small part of the island is available to you. Similarly you only have a few tradeskills available to you. After arriving on the island you meet local residents Keani and Finn who help teach you the game.
Residents constantly put in requests for things that they need. It’s your job to fulfill their requests by growing, collecting or crafting what they need. So for example if Finn wants some fish you need to make nets for your turtles and send them out to fish. When Keani requires pineapples you need to grow them for her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I35fEktsh4
To grow crops you need fields and after planting seeds you need to wait a certain amount of time for them to grow before you can harvest them. Waiting is something that this type of game has you doing an awful lot of. After asking a turtle to get fish you need to wait a few mins. Want to make some wooden boards? Guess what? Yep, you need to wait while they are made. These wait time start off small like a minute or two but as you progress and items become more complex the wait times for those go up a lot.
One option you have if you don’t like waiting is to spend gems to skip the wait. For example to turn 2 cotton into a heavy rope takes 3 minutes of waiting. However you can also spend 2 gems if you like to get the rope instantly. Or you could wait a minute and then just use a single gem. Gems can also be used to purchase additional craft slots.
Acquiring gems through play takes time but there is also the option of buying them via in-app purchases for real money. 100 gems costs £1.49 and there are various other bundles available up to an insane £79.99 for 7250 gems.
Building new features on your island and hiring helpers costs coins which you earn from trading. If you want you can also turn groups of gems into large amounts of coins.
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Everything you do on Paradise Island earns you XP which eventually increases your level. When your level increases this opens up new things that you can build or make and also unlocks more of the island. Unlocking everything is going to take a serious time investment but that’s fine as it means the game keeps changing and providing more things for you to do.
Paradise Bay is hard to play for long sessions unless you’re prepared to throw money at the game. As a casual game though it works rather well and it’s one you can pickup and play for a few minutes every so often and feel like you’ve made a bit of progress.
Like all of King’s games Paradise Bay is well put together and very polished. It’s easy to learn and the presentation is gorgeous. It’s also impressive technically and features lovely cartoony 3D graphics with lots of bright colours.
Overall Paradise Bay is another impressive title from King, it can be a lot of fun and has that addictive quality about it. We recommend that fans of the genre should give it a try.
