The Sims Castaway Stories
All right! It shipped, so I can finally talk about it!
The Sims Castaway Stories is the third in the Life Stories series of games we here at Aspyr have done based on the Sims 2 engine. The Life Stories series fuses traditional Sims 2 gameplay with some more directed story elements to great effect. Castaway Stories takes this even further - it’s actually an adventure game (you remember those, right?) done in the Sims 2 engine.
Reasons why you should buy Castaway Stories:
0. I worked on it. That’s reason enough, right?
1. It’s got a story-driven mode, so if you were never turned on by the completely free-form gameplay of the original Sims 2 we’ve got you covered. Explore dangerous jungles! Collect resources so you can make things! Make animal friends! Make native friends! Find your true love! Solve an ancient mystery! Visit a ruined temple! Appease the volcano god! Use lots of exclamation points!
2. On the other hand, if you’re a Sims 2 fan but you’re not that interested in the story mode you should still buy Castaway Stories because it gives you some things Sims 2 fans have been asking for for years but no other Sims 2 game has given them. In particular, big lots! That’s right, not only do we have lots that are double the size of the largest available lot in Sims 2, we’ve also removed the roads so that the entire lot is buildable! Plus, tons of new objects, all done with a jungle theme!
3. It is, in my opinion, the prettiest game ever made on the Sims 2 engine. I mean, just look at this:
4. See great scripted cinematics, more complex than anything done in the Sims 2 engine before!
5. It’s currently at #4 on Amazon’s top PC game list, which means lots of people are already buying it! You don’t want to be left out, do you? Can’t you just feel the peer pressure?
I personally worked on making the larger lots and creating the scripted camera system that allowed the designers to make all those neat cutscenes. I’m actually pretty proud of this game and I’m glad it’s getting a bit of recognition.
10 Comments so far
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Beautiful!
Congrats!
If there’s a story mode(!), do the sims actually talk in some way now(!), or is everything still handled through abstract symbols?(!)
Haven’t seen or played any of the life stories series games, so I don’t know how you’re handling those.
Yes, the Sims do talk in text bubbles now. And believe me, getting all that localized into umpteen languages was non-trivial.
I believe you =) just localizing simple mobile games to the JCK area was painful enough..
I think the island scenes are beautiful and I love the bigger lots. I have a couple of questions. How can you build new lots? You have all these great decorations in the menu but then I can’t find how to build lots as you do in the other stories.
Thanks!
I’m terribly sorry, but…you can’t. We completely changed how the resource system works and redid most of the objects to be island-themed…with the result that when we let the testers use them on their own lots they gleefully, gleefully found all kinds of problems that we could not fix in the time frame required. The only solution was to remove the ability of the players to create new lots.
Thanks for your very quick and honest reply. I admit I’m disappointed but the game is still beautiful. You put in all these cool decorations that I would love to have in a lot. Maybe there will be a patch one day?
Can Someone tell me how many Sims can you Create in one tribe Free Style Mode, is it more than six? I have not played the game yet.
I am disappointed with the fact that you can not buy and build on new lots in the sims cataway stories. I also want to know if you can move you sime from the shipwrecked and single to the other Island. This game is nice but would of been better if you could build you own lots.
I love this game..
but i hate how you cant Build new lots!!!
which means that you can only have limited families.. thats pretty stupid.
but otherwise its a good game