What's the point of the game?

[DasMatze]

I know this might sound like a stupid question but I am at level 10 now (mostly got there within one play session) and I wonder what's the point of the game. Sure, you can level up and unlock everything by doing repeating tasks. But I feel there should be more rewards.

There are so many items you can buy and place around the island, yet all you can do is look at them. You can't interact with them (apart from storages), the NPCs don't interact with them, not even the game interacts with them as it could in the form of a beauty- and theme-consistency-rating for your island.

Same goes for rebuilding the destroyed parts of the island. I rebuild the well and while I was waiting for it to finish I kept thinking about what new feature it might unlock. Nothing, as it turned out. Not even rebuilding the expensive homes of the NPCs had any impact so far. Not a single "Thank you!" line has been spoken.

The game is clearly improvable in these aspects.

[Sammy Silvers]

Well, the only "endgame" so far is to have fun decorating the island, really.

It is basically a time-waster. If you like farming, fishing, etc., this can be very rewarding in its own right. For instance, I played WoW back then mostly to wander around the continents and fish and I also enjoy farm sims, so this game doesn't really need much more for me.

To be honest, some kind of greater storyline would probably ruin the game for me, because there would be a point when I would have it "played through". Some high-level missions could be nice, though. Something along the lines of "We need a lot of wood and ore to build a ship. Chop 200 trees and destroy 50 rocks." (Basically missions that will take a lot of dedication and time to finish.)

Oh, and crafting could really add to the game as well.

[DarkAlenia]

Ever play Animal Crossing? It's kinda like that.

[Miki]

Yup, yup, crafting or some kind of minigame, similar to some of the Game & Watch handhelds made by Nintendo (that's it if there's no problem with the copyright, Idk how does it work for the Game & Watch games). I'm particularly fond of these two:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D23Y95xtKYo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMwXwV5Bmyo

Though I like more the looks on the old GBC version.

[Sammy Silvers]

Originally posted by Miki:

Yup, yup, crafting or some kind of minigame, similar to some of the Game & Watch handhelds made by Nintendo (that's it if there's no problem with the copyright, Idk how does it work for the Game & Watch games).

Those look a bit tedious, to be honest. (But it might still work.)

I was thinking more along the lines of interactable items and/or characters.
You put your base materials in, wait some time, then get the crafted item out.

A stove or campfire could be used for cooking.
Angus (the grumpy ape) could craft furniture, decorations or something like that.
Francis could craft fish food and pirate-related items.
Steve could craft nature-related items, like beautiful trinkets and decorations made from shells and insects.

Of course, there'd have to be certain items that can only be obtained by crafting or are at least a lot cheaper (to recompense for the waiting time).

[lPaladinl]

Originally posted by Nerd House:

Ever play Animal Crossing? It's kinda like that.

This is what I wanted out of this game, but I was a bit disappointed. There's a lot lacking between this game and Animal Crossing.

There's not much for an economy system in this game, making money is extremely easy and you can afford pretty much anything with very little effort needed. Collecting Furniture is easy as the Catalogue seems to have all or most of the items possible in the game unlocked at all times, to the point where I rarely actually go into the stores or bother to check them because I can just instantly buy anything I want from the store menus that you can use anywhere. I even made sure that there's no price difference between the physical stores and the catalogue, and there doesn't seem to be (at least never when I played)

I also don't see a lot of furniture items having special effects or uses. Like I didn't find much of anything similar to Gyroids from Animal Crossing, or Game Consoles with minigames, music to collect and play on sound systems.

As someone stated above, we unlock new parts of the island and rebuild people's houses or structures on the island, and there's no real reward for it other than you rebuilt something. People don't seem to react to you rebuilding their homes, and unlocking islands never amounts to anything beyond just giving you more space to walk around and there's 2 NPCs to "unlock" by opening up parts of the islands.

There's no real tool progression or secret tools to unlock/find, like making the golden tools in Animal Crossing games that have special bonuses.

There's no HRA system like in Animal Crossing either, so there's nothing to work towards for your home outside of just decorating it however you want. No set bonuses or Feng Shui bonuses for room placement (That I know of at this time anyways).

Also the villagers in Castaway Paradise don't seem to have a lot of extra dialogue or events beyond giving you quests constantly. After a while you start seeing the same repeats very often and realise that they're mostly just quest dispensers with faces more than characters with daily lives or other reasons to exist other than to give you a quest. Which is another point, they don't carry out daily lives. They just wander about aimlessly waiting to give you more quests,

I like this game, and I want to like it a lot more, but I'm afraid Animal Crossing still feels like it has a lot more depth overall to me than Castaway Paradise, and I prefer Animal Crossing quite a bit more. Both games have a strong creative decorative aspect to them, but I feel like Animal Crossing has a lot more "Game" underneath that to keep things going.