Tropico: Paradise Island Q&A

Without question, one of the most pleasant surprises in 2001 was Tropico, PopTop's city-building strategy game. Set against the backdrop of a Caribbean island, Tropico places you in the role of El Presidente, a political figure responsible for bringing economic and social prosperity to the island. Since the release of the original game, a development team at BreakAway Games has been working on an official expansion to Tropico, appropriately named Paradise Island, that includes a number of additions including new music, new structures to entice tourists to the island and create economic prosperity. There are even natural disasters like storms and disease that can wreak havoc on your island. Tropico: Paradise Island will also include 20 new scenarios, as well as a few refinements to the interface and the general gameplay. We had a chance to speak with Ed Beach, executive producer at BreakAway Games, to learn more about these additions and how they've been incorporated into the game.

GameSpot: Can you give us a little background on the team that's currently developing the Tropico expansion?

Ed Beach: BreakAway did work in 2000 for Sierra on the Cleopatra expansion to Impressions' Pharaoh historical city builder. Our company has grown since then, so there are new faces on Paradise Island, but the core design team definitely has a strong lineage from Cleopatra--well, maybe not from the Cleopatra, but you get what I mean.

GS: How did BreakAway Games get involved with Tropico: Paradise Island? Was it something that the team wanted to do after the release of the original game?

EB: In June, Phil Steinmeyer was in Hunt Valley, Maryland, attending the World Board Gaming Championships. While in town, he got word from Take-Two that they wanted him to do an expansion pack. BreakAway just happened to be at the game convention, demonstrating some of our products. He had heard good things about us, so he approached Doug Whatley--BreakAway's beneficent El Presidente--and they worked out a deal from there.

GS: Obviously, you want to incorporate a number of new features into an expansion, but not so many that it becomes an entirely different game. How difficult is it to come up with content for an expansion for a game like Tropico?

EB: We're getting very comfortable doing expansions. The first thing we like to do is look for elements from the original game that we can further develop. We wanted to add more scenarios and make it easier to play a nasty dictator.

We also like to make sure our expansions have well-defined themes. Phil Steinmeyer asked us to pick a theme for the expansion and we chose tourism--exactly what he had in mind. Although there is plenty of new content in other areas within Paradise Island, we've kept tourism as our focus throughout the project.

GS: One of the complaints about the original game is that the majority of the scenarios are fairly uninteresting. Can you give us an idea as to what type of scenarios players will encounter in Paradise Island?

EB: We really think the opportunity we had to do extensive scenario development for Paradise Island brings the game to an entirely new level. In the original game, PopTop included eight scenarios. But the game engine has always had a very robust scripting engine. These scripting features have let us develop 20 all-new scenarios with a wide range of victory conditions and story lines. You'll find yourself in some very amusing predicaments while running all the various islands included in Paradise Island. The scenarios include Gilligan's Island and Jurassic Park spoofs, spring break destinations, islands of natural beauty for the environmentalists, a few nasty battles with strong rebel factions, and much more.

GS: There will also be 12 new buildings. Will most of these be used to entice tourists to your island, or do they mostly serve a civic purpose?

EB: Some of the new buildings include the army base, beach villa, condominium, duty-free shop, furniture factory, miniature golf, movie theater, nature preserve, and tennis court. In addition, a new undeveloped site--the colonial fort--has been added. It can be developed by adding a dungeon, artifact dig, or museum. All but two of these buildings have some kind of ties to the tourist industry, though the natives of Tropico can use many of them as well.

GS: Of course, another important feature planned for Paradise Island is the occurrence of natural disasters, which includes violent storms and outbreaks of disease. How will players be able to lessen the impact of these disasters?

EB: The natural disasters have been added to spice up play while using a random-map island. Some of the violent storms can do a lot of damage, but overall the intent is not to have any of these prove so catastrophic that they are game-ending events. We also have included a limit on the total number of storms that can occur over the course of a single game.

The random events can also be turned on while playing one of the scripted scenarios if a player wants to replay one of those missions with a few new twists.

GS: Will there be warning signs that a natural disaster is about to happen? In the case of diseases, will mass groups of citizens start to collapse in the streets?

EB: No, there isn't a warning. But like I said, they shouldn't be so disastrous that it's necessary. Yes, the disease does cause citizens to fall dead in the streets, but it isn't quite up to the level of "mass groups of citizens."

GS: Are there plans to make changes to the interface or to include new information for players to look at while managing their island?

EB: One nice new feature is the ability to see the election meter--showing citizens' voting plans--before you have to decide to call an election.

The interface has also been updated to allow all the large buildings on your island to be rotated so they can be placed facing in any direction. This change lets the players create much more natural, artistic-looking layouts for their islands.

GS: Have any changes been made to the general gameplay?

EB: Well, it's a lot easier to play as an evil El Presidente now. The army base can be built to keep your soldiers happy while the rest of the populace suffers. You can conscript uneducated citizens into the army. You can also invoke the martial law edict to cancel all upcoming elections or try and win elections by intimidating the voters--the less courageous ones may vote for you if you keep throwing your election opponents in jail. So we now feel the toolkit for being a proper Caribbean dictator is complete!

GS: One of Tropico's greatest features is its music. Can players expect to hear some new songs in the Paradise Island expansion?

EB: Paradise Island includes 20 brand-new tunes from the same artist as the original game. We've doubled the total amount of music in the game.

GS: When do you expect development to be complete?

EB: We wrapped up development of the US version over Thanksgiving weekend. Since then, it has just been a matter of helping with the localization for each foreign-language version. A simultaneous worldwide release of Paradise Island is scheduled for January 2002, which should be nice for fans of Tropico worldwide.

GS: Thanks for your time.