Tropico, a new game still in development by PopTop Software, is a building sim with a few RTS elements thrown in for good measure. The game takes place during the Cold War on a small Caribbean Island, with correlations between you, the President, and Fidel Castro being imminent. The purpose behind the game is to make your island productive and successful, and keep the inhabitants happy. Once you begin your own game you will begin to see the large variety of options available to you. First off you as the President chooses a face from a file of men, then you get to choose flaws, so that there are certain things you do wrong also. These traits affect the rest of the game, so if you are sympathetic to communists, the capitalists and the USA will not like you much no matter what you do. Once you start you will realize how diverse the characters in the game are. There are 46 character types available in the game each with their own set of 50 traits, so you might have a shopkeeper that belongs to a communist faction, he is unhappy with you, has a wife and 3 kids, and they all have names. Yes indeed characters are named in this game, a nice little addition to make things a bit more personable. Also if just one character is upset with you, they might stage a protest spreading dissent among the general population, so you must be careful, otherwise you will be overthrown or voted out of power.

This is still primarily a building simulator, and as such, you have 10 categories of buildings to choose from, using the standard tech tree idea to allow access to better buildings. Buildings don’t build instantly, and you can set their priority, the wage for anyone working on that building, hire out educated people from abroad to do any complicated work, and just generally control most aspects. Buildings appear as yellow after you place them, until they are finally built, which can take some time, especially if the wage is low and no one wants to build it. You may also have to hit the political side and issue an edict of some sort before you build, such as padding construction costs 20% to deposit into your Swiss Bank Account (very sweet indeed).

You start with an island, islands of course being different in shape often. This shape can mold what you build, what you can grow for agriculture (shown with colored maps indication good and bad areas for certain crop growth), the placement of structures, and other things. The way this game is setup it really makes you glad you aren’t a real dictator, as problems in society often pop up with you unable to successfully appease all parties involved.

The biggest problem with this game is the amount of diplomacy required from you, as the population grows, so does dissent and unrest among your people, particularly the rival factions. This game definitely follows the “to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction rule”, while a physics rule, you sure see that happening in your island. If you decide to have a small military, the militia will be unhappy, if they are too large and you lay off people, they may start a coup. The balance in this game is incredible, you really do have total control, even firing individual workers from projects if you have too many or don’t want them working there.

Well after playing this for a while, keeping in mind that this is of course a beta and missing certain things such as scenarios, I am expecting great things out of the final product. We’ll have a full review when the game is completed, until then, I must continue padding my Swiss Bank Account.

For more info on Tropico, visit the official site.