I’ve been keeping myself rather busy with a multitude of games for the past couple weeks. One that was brought to my attention from a couple podcasts and blogs was Tropico 3. I’d never played either of the previous iterations but something about hearing the details of this game got me interested. It sounded as if it played like a small scale Sim City but with more of a focus on governing than building. Aberrant told me the other night that a demo was released so I did not hesitate to jump at the opportunity.

The demo only has two gameplay options available; tutorial, and campaign. When you go into either, you start by creating a custom dictator or choosing from a list. The list consists of all the big names from history’s past like Castro and Guevara, and some that I’ve never heard of like El Pollo Diablo. I wasn’t sure if this was a real dictator, or if it was merely a reference to Curse of Monkey Island 3. Regardless, the avatar for him looked quite a bit like me in real life, so I went with it. Plus, El Pollo Diablo? That’s damn near as badass as MUCHO HOMBRE!

Unlike most city sims, your dictator in Tropico has stats. These stats affect different governing aspect of the game. Anything from building costs if you are a cheapskate, to influence on the factions. You also have stats that affect your relationship with the two big foreign entities; The United States, and the USSR. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s more beneficial to appease both of them, or just go with one.

The tutorial starts off light with basic camera movements, and then works its way into explaining how to build structures, alter your islands economic structure, and fire worthless, gambling farmers. Eventually it digs more into the governing of your people. Like any good sim-style game, you have to make money to expand, and in order to keep that money flowing, you have to keep your people happy. I found this to be a tad trickier than in most city simulations. There seems to be a lot more various factions who you must appease. So, I began to wonder if there was truly any way to keep them all happy, or if it’s inevitable that you’ll have turmoil.

After completing the tutorial, I hopped over to the campaign side of the game which gave me one location to work on. It was called Bananas. Awesome. You start off with a palace, one farm, a teamster’s building, a construction company, but no schools, police stations or clinics. All of the residents start off living in shacks which they create themselves. I learned early on that your public appearance weighs heavily on the types of living conditions your people maintain. You can build tenements, apartment buildings, houses and more, but the people will continue to make shacks wherever they see a nice place to. I think there may be an edict you can put in place to forbid their construction, but I didn’t see it during my time in the demo. In fact, if I had to make one complaint, it’s that there so much that you can do in the game, but 75% of it was shut off in the demo. For example; I couldn’t find the option to “off” people who oppose me in the game, but I know it’s there. It sucked that there was so much held back, but made me want to buy this game, and when you think about it, that’s the entire point of a free demo.

I will say I’ve never been too great at city building games, but regardless, I’ve always loved them. I’m considering purchasing Tropico 3 when it comes out in October. I can see it not being a game for every city sim fan, but playing it made me realize how much I long for a proper Sim City sequel to come out. This may do for the time being.