Beach Life PC CD-ROM
Published by Sold Out Software
Developed by Deep Red Games
Release Date: Out Now
Price: £4.99
Fancy creating your very own holiday resort for the loud and raunchy? If so then Beach Life is the game for you. Developed by Deep Red (who bought us Risk II and Monopoly Tycoon), Beach Life has been described as a Club 18-30 simulator and in many ways that's not too far from the truth. Guests want to shower on the beach, get drunk, get physical with other guests (you know what I mean) and at the same time expect your resort to be up to scratch with all other amenities running as best as they can.
There are over 50 different buildings for you to construct such as discos, beach bars, speedboat hire, pedaloes and party boats. Building facilities is a key part of the game and you have to remember that you staff don't work around the clock so you'll to deal with organising different working shifts and keeping your workers happy too. The measure of your resort's success is ultimately summed up by its resort rating. The resort rating is measured in stars with the maximum being five stars. In some scenarios you'll have to improve your resort to a certain number of stars but it can also be used to quickly see whether, or not, your resort is improving.
Beach Life won't cause deaf gamers any problems. Deep Red deserves credit for making the interface easy to understand and use. All information is given in text and a variety of easy to understand icons relay information to you on the guests' moods and thoughts. You can generally judge whether a guest likes something because a thumbs icon appears over their head and if they don't like something a thumbs down icon appears over their head. It is great to see such quick visual feedback used in this way and it avoids have to click on multiple things. Of course you can click on a guest and access their last three thoughts etc. but it is not always necessary.
When we originally reviewed Beach Life the only complaint we had about the game was that the campaign was far too short (there is a sandbox mode too but it's not going to hold your interest for long). At the then asking price of £30 this was an issue but with the game now costing only £4.99 it's no problem at all and it's well worth a purchase.
Overall Game Rating: 4.0/5
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A strategy game with a difference that's well worth picking up at this price.