trenchant.org

CryEngine tech demos make me want to go on holiday. Beautiful, lovingly crafted locations deserve to be explored with a cocktail in one hand and a camera in the other. To those who were annoyed when alien-mutant-monsters showed up in Far Cry, I say that you should have been annoyed when men with guns showed up. They ruined the laidback adventure of a lifetime. The trailer for The Good Life promises a tourism tycoon game about escaping the nine-to-five, which is far more desirable than being stuck in a war. Despite having typos and 94% less graphics than Far Cry, at least everything in it doesn’t keep exploding.

Rock, Paper Shotgun — Tropical Tycoon: The Good Life

The Good Life available November 2.

Although not as cerebral as most of what people are categorizing as not games, simulations like this are a design direction that I always find interesting — repurposing FPS engines for a completely different style of game without a focus on combat.

(The problem with simulations like this, I often find, is that they too “game-like” rather than focusing on open-ended exploratory play, and that the simulation gameplay suggested is too complex and inaccessible without significant investment of time and effort.)