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7.1 excellent
What kind of vacation would you like to experience on Fantasy Island? I think it would be nice to live in a world without nasty partisan politics and where everyone who is overweight realizes that all they have to do to lose weight is: eat less colories. But that will probably never happen. Unfortunately the show and later remake were canceled... who knows when they'll bring it back again?
In Coconut Queen, from iWin, you play Liz Roarke, Queen of Lui Lui Island in the Pacific. Formerly (and still part time) an accountant for the Colorado Coconut Company, your boss sent you to the island in person to oversee its development into a resort and font of all things tropical fruit. In fact, the tropical fruit production is failing. It's up to you to turn things around. Your "Tattoo" in this endeavor is Kane, one of many hundreds of very broad-chested masculine native handymen. Indeed, there are no women on the island besides yourself, making you one very lucky queen!
Similarly to Build-a-lot, in each level of the game you have one or more distinct tasks to complete. You may have to increase your island's commercial income to $10,000. Or demolish five industrial storage warehouses. Or attract 200 tourists. And so on. Completing all the tasks finishes the level and earns you a rather sizable gemstone. And then it's on to the next area. The challenge is in correctly managing your resources and completing a level before the timer runs out.
Gameplay primarily involves buying, selling, building, demolishing, and upgrading various structures on the island. From your hotel base of operations, you dispatch muscular natives out to gather supplies or do construction work. There are two primary types of buildings: rental properties and commerical properties. Rental properties like cottages and cabanas house tourists. Every minute or so of game time, a slow-paced progress bar in the upper left corner of the screen fills. When full, you receive rent from all the tourists staying in your properties. The more rental properties you own, the more income is added to your total. The second type of property, commerical buildings, covers restaurants and smoothy bars. These also have their own progress bar at the top of the screen. The more tourists visiting the island, the more commercial income you receive when its progress bar cycles.
Money earned from rental and commercial income can be spent on blueprints for new building designs and the necessary raw materials (lumber, for the most part) used in their construction. You can also buy workers if needed. (As your subjects, they work for free, but you have to pay for their training and school tuition. If it's not one thing it's another!) Some buildings or improvements are two or three man jobs, and if workers are busy on another part of the island you'll have to wait until they're free and able to jog over and begin whatever job you have for them.
Tourists are always breaking things. When that happens buildings need to be repaired before they can once again contribute to your cash flow. You can upgrade rental properties for increased income - the more stars the better. Curb appeal plays a big part in game strategy: nearby improvements like beach umbrellas or natural beauty like the ocean will increase a rental properties income. Eyesores like factories and industrial sheds subtract from a building's appeal. Hints: Build near the beach when possible! Always max out curb appeal early if possible, because it pays off in the long run.
If you run out of room to build, you can clear some jungle (earning more lumber in the process). You can also plant new trees to replace the ones you chopped down. And if worse comes to worse you can always salvage existing buildings for more land and raw materials.
Coconut Queen is a pleasant, light-hearted game with lots of engaging art and high-quality voice overs to complement the many cutscenes. The plot is slow and meandering, but cheerful. Your highness smiles and frowns and exclaims in the lower left hand corner, based on what's going on during the level. I noticed a few graphical glitches: sometimes an animated tourist would become a block-shaped gap for a few seconds, or even worse Liz's representation in the lower corner would disappear! You'll have to replay some of the later levels many times before you hit upon the right combination of actions to complete the tasks, but once you finish you can continue to enjoy the Pacific island lifestyle in freeplay mode.
Bored while your workers are busy? You can always catch crabs on the beach at $5 each!