Vacation season is wrapping up in many parts of the world, but that doesn’t mean the fun has to end just yet. Kairosoft’s Tropical Resort Story puts you in the shoes of the owner of a resort spanning an island chain. You’ll build hotels, discover new fish to populate the waters around your resort, attract new guests, and work to build a popular vacation resort.
Tropical Resort Story falls into the “town building” Kairosoft game archetype, where you work to build up the area and satisfy visitors to your retreat. You can arrange the various stores, plants, and decorations you unlock around your hotels to unlock new vacation packages for that facility. Combos aren’t as difficult to discover as they are in some other Kairosoft games, and many are listed within an in-game menu even if you haven’t already discovered them.
Visitors to your islands fall into one of four categories, and different packages will appeal to different demographics. When visitor goals and satisfaction levels are met, you will receive items or other gifts in return. Visitors will also accumulate research points you can use to unlock new facilities, items, or store products when swimming in the ocean. Increasing the appeal of your facilities and attracting new forms of wildlife to your resort will help with both.
Increasing the water quality around your islands is another important factor in this game. Placing various rocks, seaweeds, and corals in the waters around the islands will attract new fish and help increase water quality. Increasing water quality to certain thresholds will help attract new varieties of fish and marine mammals and increase visitor satisfaction.
Fishing is another way to gain new wildlife to fill out the waters. As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock different locations to send a staff member to go fishing. The various sites you can choose from have additional fish available at different depths. Collected items can be equipped to the member of staff you select to send out and will affect their fishing stats such as stamina, fish weight limit, and casting power. These factors will help determine what kinds of fish they reel in during the trip.
Rather than staff having individual stats, they all use the same stat pool which is increased through the work the members of staff do or by acquiring items. However, each staff member can be assigned a special trait that affects things such as how fast they can complete construction on new buildings, how fast they walk around your islands, or the weight limit of fish they can reel in on a single line.
Collecting stamps is the main way of moving forward in this game. You will receive various stamp books to fill out and will be awarded stamps for completing designated goals such as reaching a certain Attractions appeal threshold or getting a high enough wildlife population. There are still plenty of goals to try and reach post-game, and you can carry over certain statistics or get other bonuses in a New Game+ based on your score when you reach the end of the game. Kairosoft’s games have always been “light” or “fluffy” in terms of simulation games, with this game being one of the most so. There aren’t any contests to enter, and even when you get an end-of-year evaluation, you’re given a flat score without any rival resorts being listed.
I had concerns at first that the lack of rivals would lead to the game’s pace feeling too slow or the game getting boring by the end, but this turned out not to be the case. It works well with the game’s overall theme and creates a relaxing atmosphere. I enjoyed expanding the resort and seeing what new buildings and wildlife I would unlock next. It’s not the most in-depth game and there’s no real risk of failure here, but it still manages to stay engaging start-to-finish. It’s a fun game with decent replay value, and is definitely worth trying if you’re a fan of either simple management games or Kairosoft games.
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