DESERTOPIA

This is a very cute and beautiful game. If you can push through the first week of gameplay, it gets to be more fun. It feels quite redundant at first and there aren’t enough explanations for consequences of certain actions or lack of actions (hint: don’t let the gorilla on your island), so it can be frustrating. You also have to watch ads to make it worth playing until you earn enough gems to power up your windmill. Much of the gameplay revolves around watering the tiles that make up the island so that plants will grow and animals will move back to the island. As time goes on, your work dries up and you have to re-water at least twice a day, but ideally more. It is frustrating to come back after a night of sleeping to find you have to use all of your windmill power to get back to the point you left off at when you went to bed, which then means either watching an ad or tapping the windmill a million times (which has an awful sound upon multiple tapping). However, it’s a pretty peaceful game and I like seeing the new animals. I hope they update it to fix some of these issues.

The game is adorable, and really fun. You don’t have to spend money to go far in the game and have fun, but it does unlock cool things and is worth it to me. I just don’t understand a lot of the game. I wish the instructions were more clear. Like it says that the picture of the mountains in the thought bubble means it’s not the right terrain, but the terrain is preset and you can’t change that? It doesn’t explain what the exclamation point in the thought bubble means, what it means whenever there is a sad/happy/surprised face, etc. I don’t understand the rain gauge? When I click a tile to either water it or make it sunny, the gauge doesn’t tell me at all if it needs more water or sun??? It seems like it needs more and more water, but then it says “this tile is *too* wet,” which I am under the impression that’s a bad thing? I wish their was a better legend/key and better instructions.

I really love this game, I do, and after spending a slow first week, I managed to breeze by getting most of the animals. The only thing that really bothers me is how we no longer can pick up 10 pieces of trash after the work ship update, and how they really don’t tell you how to get the oasis landform. Does it require a dessert to be changed to a wetland? Please tell!

I have been enjoying it so far, but the weather not effecting tiles is odd, and the overall function if you know a little about geography is odd. When trees come water comes. So when the trees suddenly disappear if water goes down it feels really sudden and odd. Please give more information earlier on in the game about the terrain that can be made, recycling, how long tourists stay, how to make the talking cloud either talk less or turn off, and the ability to not have a constant rainbow. As an early player I cant fine a good idea of what I should be doing to progress or any way to upgrade my windmill to make gaining energy any faster.

It was fun and interesting by now and I am at the point where everything is watered 100% and there’s not much to do at this point. I keep getting energy but I have no use unless I want to dry up the land just to water it agin which is counterproductive. It doesn’t really tell you what to do at this point and it gets redundant. I wish there was more to do at this point or at least more guidelines to go off of.