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And if you prefer to play without those nasty realities, you can do that too. Says Schilling: “There’s also a sandbox mode where you can turn off the economic and political realities and play with the island and do whatever you want.”
Virtual Reality?
Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction. Felsl related one of their stranger moments while developing Tropico. “There was a bug that was persistent till just a couple weeks before master,” he notes. “Seems that the teamster — and, more notably, the dock worker — would on occasion decide to steal your goods. Once in a while during their hauling routines they would just stop and decide to go home for some rest. Instead of putting down the load they were carrying, they’d just take it home. Then they’d pop out of their home with empty hands like everything was just fine.”
It’s important to remember that Tropico is not a real time strategy (RTS) game, at least not in the same sense as other RTS titles. Tropicans go about their lives and, if you play it right, will allow you to rule them. That’s the game: play well and stay in power!
It Sounds As Good As It Looks
What stands out in Tropico is the wonderful music. This is a game with a soundtrack that can stand-alone from the game. Felsl explains: “It was important to us to have music that fit the look and feel. We’d heard a variety of styles and were torn between Bachata and Reggae. It came down to Bachata because it had a slightly more serious sound to it and fit the Cuban style more closely. Reggae just had a bit too much party slant to it.”
Graphically, the game is very comfortable for anyone who has played Railroad Tycoon II. Tropico opens up with a rather enjoyable cut-scene that sets the mood for your island paradise. PopTop’s goal was to have a generic but Latin feel that could be like Cuba: colorful but somewhat dated or run down. They also wanted a consistent feel so that all pieces could be viewed together without feeling out of place. Early indications are that they succeeded admirably in that goal.
Layers and Layers
Tropico has all the makings of a game that you will play for months. In addition to pre-designed scenarios, the random map set-up creates more combinations as you set the levels of vegetation, minerals, water coverage, population, map size and elevation. There are 10 different elevation settings and 14 map size settings before you even get to the rest.
In this case, less is more. More difficult, that is. Reducing the vegetation, minerals and population supply significantly increases the difficulty level. But that’s not all: multiple victory goals, political stability levels and even up to 70 years of game length all guarantee that this is one game you will not finish quickly.
Come fly away with me to Tropico.Upbeat About the Mac
Mac gamers won’t be left with any regrets when they buy Tropico, according to Pop Top head honcho Phil Steinmeyer. “We’ll have at least two extra scenarios in the Mac version,” he says, “and I have a few other goodies in mind, but I’d like to keep them secret for now.”
In fact, Steinmeyer is very upbeat about working on the Mac. “I am definitely enthusiastic about Mac OS X,” he says. “[The short time] I have spent [with it] and what I’ve read gives me confidence that it’s the OS that Apple has been needing for a while — stable, fast, modern, and attractive. The multi-tasking and better memory management are big pluses.
“As a developer, I like the fact that after the transition to Mac OS X (which I expect to happen very quickly), I’ll have a single target OS on the Mac, with a narrower amount of hardware that is more tested and stable than the counterparts in the PC world.”
There are almost 50 different kinds of Tropicans who can inhabit your island. Want to keep the people happy? Build a soccer stadium or a cabaret and you will attract plenty of athletes or showgirls. Want to produce goods to make money? You’ll need factory workers and laborers. And what country would be complete without bankers and bureaucrats? Watch out for the journalists if your reign as El Presidente becomes corrupt: they will spread the truth to the people and possibly spark a revolution. Each Tropican has 50 attributes that dictate how they interact with each other and respond to your decisions. Given the wide range of types of Tropicans who live on the island, it won’t be easy to keep them all happy. At any time during the game, you can take a closer look at what they are doing and even follow their lives as they have children, grow old, and die. Given Tropico’s 70-year timeframe, you can chart the lives of a few generations of Tropicans if you want. There are also 60 different types of buildings for placement around the island. You will be able to modify some of them as the game progresses and your country grows. For example, you can modify a building that houses a TV station and tell it to broadcast only political propaganda, or perhaps religious programming. Each building will also emanate one of six “auras”: crime, tourist appeal, residential appeal, governmental respect, governmental repression, and pollution. That aura will affect both the surrounding populace as well as the Tropicans living in the building, so you will need to keep it in mind when you modify the structure or make certain decisions. Six political factions — military, religious, intellectual, environmental, capitalist and communist — will give your island complexity and probably give you additional headaches as you try to maintain control. |
Minimum System Requirements:  200MHz PowerPC G3 64MB of RAMRecommended System Requirements: 266 MHz PowerPC G3 64MB of RAM
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