Decent resource hoarder with role playing elements. Very good for the platform it currently resides on.
Start out with basic buildings and then expand by planting crops and buying animals. As you slowly harvest the resources when the appropriate time has passed you then continue to build up your island with fruit trees, additional structures, and other decorations which all yield either money, energy, experience, food, inventory items, or collectibles.
When you start to turn a decent profit from resources you'll start to see that the real issue is not getting money, it is finding the inventory items needed to complete structures and goals. The premise of the game from the developer's perspective is to try and sell you totems which allow you to trade 1 to 1 for all resources and also use various amounts for other in game items. In addition, totems will allow you to skip goals you feel you would rather not tackle. This is the crux of the game, you will get the odd totem here and there for goals completed, leveling up, or trading your amulets, but you'll never have enough to just breeze through the game without buying them for cash. This isn't a bad thing, because it forces you to be conservative and use them only on required items which makes the game feel more like you're stranded on an island and very limited by your surroundings.
My suggestions would be to never spend totems on bypassing goals and wait longer periods of time to complete buildings as you may save yourself some totem/resource trading by finding the items needed in the landscape of the island.
The other issue that concerned me at the beginning was increasing my tribe which allows you to complete various side quests and opens more doors to you. Seeing as I play solo and I'm not involved with social media, this was starting to weigh on my mind. The simple solution I found is to this is to sign up in game with OpenFeint. You can then navigate their forums to find other people who play Robinson. You simply add them as friends, and then post your own forum reply asking for people to add you, eventually you will find your tribe will increase as people are added to your list and begin to add you in turn.
Another important aspect of the game is collecting. Everything you can harvest in the game has a collection of five types of drops which will periodically show up based on drop rate percentage. When you collect one of each drop in the collection, you can then turn around and cash them in for a reward. Each collection has a different reward which gets better as you cash in more of the same collection repeatedly. Use these rewards to improve your economy and help you along the way.
Tips:
Early on, make sure you constantly harvest melons. They will help you level up, and for every 10 you harvest, you essentially get 1 energy as the food points can be traded in the energy section of the store. They also yield you 1 gold coin back from the investment.
To increase your chance of getting specific collection items or if there is a particular reward you need from the collections screen, make more of that resource as you can then increase your chances of harvesting the collection items needed. There is one rare item in every collection which only harvests at a rate of about 1/100, so keep that in mind. I always try for 10 of each resource so I can diversify when needed.
As you move on in the game and find there are resources you don't need any longer, sell that particular animal or tree so you can free up the money to invest in new resources.
As stated previously, use OpenFeint as early as possible so by the time you need tribes numbers, they are already in place.
Try to keep you resources laid out together and tightly to save room on the island.
Focus your energy usage to complete certain goals. Don't clear brush or fish when you could be getting yourself closer to completing a goal and getting rewards.
When events make themselves available in game either from the developer or based on a timeline progression in game, make sure you complete them quickly as they are often time sensitive.
If you just sit any watch your island for hours on end, at least play the game at twice a day, not only will you harvest your higher end resources optimally, you will gain small daily rewards for chaining together days of gameplay.
******
All in all, this is a game that won't be for everyone, but if you are into resource collection, subtle roleplay and you're a sucker for Tom Hanks in Cast Away, then this might just be the game for you.
Review by: Dirtylimerick
Date: August 13, 2012