Tropico: Paradise Island Q&A

Welcome back to the island, El Presidente.

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.

There are 20 new scenarios in the Paradise Island expansion.

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.