Paradise Bay for iPhone

Who knew paradise could be so boring?

Paradise Bay is a strategy game from King, the developers behind the immensely popular Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga. This time, you must build up your (paradise) island by making goods from raw materials and then trading these with fellow islanders and friends.

Just a word of warning: Paradise Bay is currently only available in the Canadian App Store.

Time-consuming and boring

Paradise Bay is an island with a lot of problems: much of the island is abandoned, weeds are everywhere...etc.

Your role is to rejuvenate the island using all kinds of objects and tools, for example a grill or a knitting machine. With these machines and raw materials (such as bamboo or fish) you can create new objects that will help the other inhabitants of the island.

This is pretty much how it works: carry out random and banal tasks to level up, get new tools or recipes to make objects, complete more tasks, level up again and so on.

Creating these objects is a long process that requires little or no skill. For example, when preparing the fish you must first plant seeds, then collect bamboo and then use this to make a net. You then give the net to the turtle who goes to catch the fish. You pick the fish you want and then put them on the grill.

Each part of this process takes time, which you can speed up by buying some diamonds or through the (by now) usual in-app purchases. If you don’t pay, the game can be slow and boring.

This makes Paradise Bay another game where you are always waiting for something to happen, in the same predictable way as Farmville 2 and company.

Pretty but unoriginal

Visually, Paradise Bay is too bland. The island and its inhabitants are pleasing to the eye but, on an artistic level, the game doesn’t offer anything new. Although this isn’t surprising given that it’s made by the same people as Candy Crush Saga and Bubble Witch Saga 2.

Paradise Bay’s controls work smoothly but are so simple they don’t require any skill: it basically involves dragging objects around to complete tasks.

We hope we don't get shipwrecked on this island

Unfortunately Paradise Bay failed convince us of its merits and gave us no reason to want to continue playing. This very troubling when you consider that King, the queen of addictive gameplay, is behind this title.