The story will certainly not win any awards for originality or depth, but it does serve its purpose well of giving your Sim something to do as you learn the game. Later, more Sims will be found, and your little avatar will find itself in the middle of an evil plot involving magic staves and a possible fountain of youth.
At first alone, your first hour of gameplay or so will simply be a test of survival as you encounter angry orangutans and poison-spewing statues. After choosing your alter-ego, you find that your Sim has shipwrecked on the island. To break up the monotony, and to stick with the idea of "stories," the game ships with a single scenario that tracks one Sim and his or her adventures on the island. You're stuck on this island forever, baby. There is no real "end," there is no rescue ship that you can summon after so much time. And in fact, that is what your Sims' entire virtual lives will be comprised of: going out into the wilderness, getting food and resources, converting the resources into useful objects, trying to maintain their mood meters so they don't die, repeat. This isn't exactly the miracle feeling that will convert non-Sims fans to pick up the game, but regardless, there was something extremely appealing about the concept. That is, whether a shower costs 600 Simoleons (in the core game) or 480 resources (in Castaway Stories), you're still exchanging Item A for Item B. Strangely, despite being Sims players since literally day one, we were rather amazed at how very different the changes felt even if they, strictly speaking, were only name changes. This will make their "job" on the island to go out and find food and the generically named "resources." The latter gives you the ability to buy items, and the former gives you the ability to avoid staring into the Grim Reaper's beady undead eyes for at least another few hours. Jobs in the game are replaced with survival options: you can tell your Sims to work as hunters, gatherers, or crafters. Rather than housing your Sims in houses while they juggle work and family crises, your Sims now find themselves on a tropical island with no escape. However, what makes Castaway Stories different is the setting. Again, nothing new, and nothing you haven't heard before.
With the technical issues out of the way, what is there of the game itself? Naturally, The Sims is all about taking care of your little virtual people as they live their virtual lives, while you either play God by ordering their every action, or watch them act on their own accords with the Free Will option turned on. We ran the game on a couple different machines, including a low-end rig that barely met minimum requirements, and it ran without a hitch (provided you keep the graphical settings low). To that end, The Sims: Life Stories, The Sims: Pet Stories, and now The Sims: Castaway Stories all succeed. So early last year, Electronic Arts came up with a solution: make a modified version of The Sims that is slightly dumbed down so it can run on machines that are below the gaming curve, especially laptops. Personally, my Sims save folder is 1.11 gigabytes large, and that doesn't include the backups I frequently make. The myriad of expansion packs and "stuff packs" just made the game (and its technical requirements) that much higher.
The Sims has always been a rather resource-heavy game that drained the life out of many a processor, especially when the series switched to an all-3D graphical appearance with The Sims 2. It's built on the The Sims 2 engine, although this is the first Sims game that truly feels different despite the coattails it is riding.īut before we tell you about the new features, we need to discuss the intention of the game. It's a stand-alone game, needing neither The Sims, The Sims 2, nor The Sims: Life Stories to play. The Sims: Castaway Stories is the newest game in the long-running franchise. If you don't know what The Sims is, and haven't seen any news or features of it since it debuted in 2000, then you really need to quit your job and start reading IGN more. For The Sims: Castaway Stories, I believe we can dispense with the usual introductory summary of an add-on game's core title.