Ren'Py - Tropicali [v0.9c] [Story Anon]

Let me preface this review by saying: I did not play "Out of touch" before this.

You might look at this game and think "Yep, that's a shitpost game alright", and you won't be entirely wrong. Hell, the description is not doing it any favors, but trust me when I say that it's anything but.

I'll start with what impressed me the most - the quality of writing. I don't know the guy behind it, but that person can Write. Like, holy shit, at first it attempts to be masked by the B-class humor, but the way he weaves words and sentences is genuinely mindblowing when it matters. The characters, being obvious parodies, have depths I rarely see in a media as a whole, not just games. You think you know what to expect, and it twists into something completely unexpected and engaging, never having a dull moment. Hand on heart, the talent of this caliber should be writing books, not smut. Speaking of smut.

As if the wordsmithing is not enough, this damn wizard is also a master of Koikatsu. I'm a big fan of KK-based game, and tweaking it to such a degree is like playing sonnets on a xylophone, and he fucking makes it work. Beautiful custom animations and models, like, top of the class. Myriad of renders, poses, angles, little animated loops, author puts in the works. The only thing that saddens me just a bit - most of the scenes are incredibly short. Like, a few lines of dialogue, some renders, short animation and that's it. But every long scene, where everything goes all out, I just melt and turn into Randy Marsh from that South Park episode with ectoplasm, it's unreal.

The plot is a complete nonsense, but a shitpost of such a degree turns itself around right back to being art. Not sarcasm or irony, it's a genuine joy to be along for the ride.

The characters are an absolute highlight, every single one of them are superb. Like, heart-meltingly awesome. The estranged single mother that lost her way and place in life, the lovable and energetic tomboy with an intense adoration for her home bordering on mystique and the batshit man-eating business shark with a lot of depth under her tough demeanor are my favorite. I do not want to hurt any of them, and sometimes I don't even wish to press the "fuck" button, because they truly make you care.

For the negatives: I did not care about the game game at all. The resort management is a means to an end and nothing more, it's not engaging or deep, but way too much time is wasted on shuffling through a metric fuckton of joke characters like a literal tank, a chicken and a casting couch gets exhausting. Just let me get back to the plot and girls, that's where the gold is.

If this is what the author considers a shitpost, I honestly shudder thinking about what his main and serious game is like. Interested in giving it a try.

TL;DR: This is, for all intents and purposes, not a shitpost game, and I strongly advice anyone to give it a try. The writing is masterful, graphics are superb, smut is top of the class. I loved it no less than things like MiST or Project passion, and those are the giants of their own class.

P.S. A certain "big" porn company that released their full game out of early access not long ago should take notes, this fucking guy runs circles around every aspect of their work and bloated budget.

Topicali boasts a great cast of girls, good writing, and an overall polished experience. Strong recommend!

Characters and Story:
Coming back to write this review maybe a month after playing, I still remember the blonde lady, Jessica. Jessica is sweet, troubled, and sexy. She's adrift in life and has washed up on your island looking for something to ease the discontent in her heart. She doesn't know what it might be. Perhaps she just needs a breather. But a breather from what? Being a succesful mother? An American living comfortably?
Jessica thinks that she's being ridiculous. She doesn't have a particularly high opinion of herself. So when a charming, wealthy young man swoops in to tell her he thinks quite highly of her, that he (truthfully or not) genuinely wants her to be happy, well... it's not too surprising that she's smitten, is it?
I won't go into too much detail, but suffice to say that the final product is more than the sum of its parts. There's drama, there's mystery, there's plenty of sex, and it can even tug on your heartstrings. Not all characters have as much emotional baggage; some of them are more fantastical or silly and I think the story benefits from that - though I do hope the maid is explored more.
The MC is more of his own character than most in this genre, though you still have some control as to how he develops or responds to different situations. I've liked him so far and I'm interested to see how he turns out in the end.
Also, the tension with Gloria is wonderful and the scary horny woman has completely flown off the hot/crazy scale.

Gameplay:
This game is unfortunately one of many that works better as a pure VN. The management gameplay is straight busywork. If I'm being extremely generous, it contributes to the plausability of the MC learning how to run an island. But it's never fun, or challenging.
With that said, it does work fine and it's not egregiously slow-paced. You can speed through the "game" sections and get right back to story content. No bugs or endless clicking, and there are some upgrades you can pick up later on to reduce the turn-by-turn micromanagement even further.

Sound & Visuals:
Great. I actually saved a few of the songs, haha. The animations are high quality and the girls are very cute. I appreciated the variety in body type.

great game the story is very well done i love the animations and the character models are great i also think the resource management is well done and isn't too grindy or slow over all I'm very interested to see where this game is upon final update if i had any complaint it would be the lack of regular updates but that isn't a fault of the game it is a fault of a impatient fan all this being said this game is for sure on my top ten

This visual novel is....okay, I guess. It's animated alright for models that use koikatsu?
Chock-full of some memes and references where the author tries to be cheeky.
Some characters are brain-dead, retarded or obnoxious. Some are alright.

I stopped taking the story seriously after the first 15 minutes. I mean, it's a sandbox game, why even try to give the illusion of choice, eh? Furthermore, I completed it in one session, so it fits the description quite well that the idea was a "shitpost".

I had more fun with this little minigame where you take over the island and do a little bit of micromanaging. Some upgrades are not worth the money they cost. An upgrade could be that your workers can take some time off every time they're fatigued.

Good game for someone else, lame for me.
Still, good luck to the developer.

I like the management, the characters are good and varied,

Very few bugs sich as when you are going through the tutorial if you scroll back by mistake, you cannot choose to set Mio as the manager cause you are locked into clicking accept.

Other than that, had a good time!
Really looking forward to more development of the game.

Very good game, I am a much bigger fan of this game than the author's other game. The MC is pretty solid, though it is EXTREMELY weird to see him unironically call himself a Spanish Bull, for the most part, his humor lands and this game obviously takes inspiration from Tropico, and I love it. The city management is actually enjoyable, and while I prefer straight-up visual novels for the most part, it's still a very good game.

The girls are top-tier, some of the best I've seen with this engine, and their varying appearances, sizes, and personalities all fit well.

Gotta love the pregnancy option, I can't wait to see that come to fruition.

This game has a good structure overall.
The dev definitely is not a huge fan of writing dumps so the scenarios are to the point. Its even funny sometimes, mostly making fun of the goon brain protag.
The background music is all corny spanish songs but it fits quite well. (until you get a damn ear worm since the songs are quite catchy)
Animations are good but not uniquely custom made.

You can clearly see an S-tier game here but it lacks that presentation and dev edge that the actual S-tier games have.
It needs that extra mile with the animations/transitions and scene sounds.
Easy recommend still.

Good stuff. Looks plain at first but become more freaky and fun as it goes on.
The dialogue isn't masterclass in writing but the characters are interesting.
The management part is kind of easy but it does require some minimal effort (there is a mode where you can't lose the management mode if you're too goonbrained)
Hope it gets lots of new content

First of all, the visuals are lovely. Koikatsu can fall on it's face hard if the dev isn't careful. But the styling and lightning of this game is very identifiable compared to other KK games, which is impressive. The animation are clearly custom and have had a lot of time put into, which I appreciate it.

The dialogue and characters are good! The girls are cute and have unique personalities.
The main protag made me chuckle on numerous occasions and
The two choices you get for things can often be a bit strange but overall the narrative is a funny adventure that doesn't take itself too seriously while still hooking you along.


The management side of the game is...uh...there? The game isn't fully finished so I'm still not letting it turn my rating down too much, but it is by far the weakest part of the game. Partly due to the fact it is just...kinda in the way of everything. It's not engaging, and you can get thought it all by just spamming the days forward. I think if the Dev could put more time into the system that it could get to a better quality compared to the rest of the excellent game.

Great game, hope they put more time in the management part to make it better.

Reviewing v0.9c

TLDR
+ Unique art style
+ VN scenes are well choreographed
- Management game is not engaging
- The correct dialogue choices can be extremely weird
- One of the girls looks and acts like a child

In this game you spend a bit of time in a management phase before choosing which VN scene you want to play out before moving to the next management phase.

The management game is extremely thin. I was consistently completing goals in half of the allotted time. Every management phase you can assign employees to work in different buildings you own. When employees work for too long they get unhappy, so you are encouraged to rotate employees around different buildings instead of using one configuration permanently. You don't actually need to do this though, because the penalty for unhappiness is very small. The mechanics never get more complex or engaging than this, so you can breeze through the management part doing nothing other than spending the money you have when the game gives you more things to spend money on.

The worst part of the management game is that it doesn't support the VN scenes at all. You don't learn anything about the characters or the world through the game. You don't form any attachments to the characters by using them in the management game. I know the developer's other game is entirely a VN. It's very easy to tell that they have experience with VNs but not with gameplay.

The VN scenes have a unique art style and are technically well done, but some writing choices and one character in particular are very off-putting. I like that the scenes use dynamic camera angles, and dialogue is well-paced in a way that lets jokes land and deeper conversations stand out. Sometimes during scenes, you'll get two dialogue choices. One choice will end the scene, and one choice will continue. Sometimes one of the dialogue options will just be extremely weird and controlling, almost psychopathic. This is always the option that continues the scene, and characters always react positively to this. The choice that makes you sound like a sane person will end the scene. I don't know if the developer thinks they are encouraging choice or role-playing. They are not. When the choice is to stop a scene or continue the scene, there is only one correct answer, and the developer has consistently chosen to make that answer very stupid.

I also need to mention that one of the girls in this game looks and acts like a child. She's actually a 5000 year old dragon or whatever. You can choose not to view her scenes, but her presence in the game alone made me very uncomfortable when playing.

Even if you take away the lews stuff, it's a thoroughly amazing management game with a well written story. Works great, looks great. Plus the music choices are superb, even if you let it play in the background it's enjoyable!

[v0.6d] I went through it (very) fast, but will definitely come back a future update, taking proper time for it. Part of the story/scenes I really took my time for was that involving the redhead spy (forgot her name already), which I enjoyed quite a bit (interaction w/ Yoko etc.)

Great, colorful renders/cg & animations (I call it Koikatsu+(+) ). Lots of attention to details in the latter, making the scenes really come to life: head movements, facial expressions, eye and mouth movements. Very well executed & enjoyable, kudos!
Good (animation) performance on my potato PC.

The game/management didn't give me much challenge (my bad - playing in coomer mode that nerfes stuff), and in the end that left me unsatisfied (a feeling of it doesn't really matter). It's set & forget and then keeping ur employees happy by spending some time with them or giving a day off. So I'd recommend playing in normal mode (which has a g/o fallback to coomer anyway), unless ur really just in for the (H-)scenes.

The UI is pretty good & pleasant. Game is polished; there's e.g. the rollback protection (great, helpful feature!)


Great (licensed I suppose) music score (Masayoshi Takanaka, Tatsuro Yamashita), something original & refreshing.
(Sex) sfx (moaning, other stuff) aren't there, not sure if it's planned, but (when properly executed) would definitely be a plus to the experience!

Good to excellent, keeping my eye on this!

[v0.6d]

The story, comedy, and animations are all great, but the music is better. Any game with some Masayoshi Takanaka and Tatsuro Yamashita gets a 5 from me. Definitely give it a shot if you're a fan of Out of Touch.

Beautiful renders and character design, an incredibly captivating atmosphere and fun writing.
There is a good amount of content as of this version, but the minigame feels kind of dull or purposeless, hoping it will get better in coming updates. And more latina sister content please and thanks!

One of the best writings ever, the language and diction is fresh and immersive. Massive props to the writers. Character design is also amazing. All in all, one of the best games I have played in recent years. I look forward to all the future updates to the game.

Well done writing, good humor. The characters are actually unique, both how they talk during the dialogue and their looks, and they each have a reasonable arc. The story is fine, it doesn't take itself that seriously in terms of realism.

Visuals and audio are both a strong point. The BGM in particular uses a wide variety of tracks in different languages according to the different backgrounds of the characters, which is a nice touch. There are some SFX but they're pretty sparse. No voice acting, of course.

The gameplay loop is reasonably entertaining but not too difficult, and I guess if you want to skip even that that's why they have the coomer mode.

Overall I'd say it's 100% a 5 star.

Few nitpicks:
- The hire management has a bug- if you scroll up beyond page 1 it continues to go through 0 and then negative integers.
- The hire management / list is a bit cumbersome in general considering it's the main thing you need to look at to evaluate how you need to switch people around. It'd be nice if the page view (1) showed all the major stats without having to mouse over and (2) let you sort by each stat.
- The OP sequence should be in the gallery!

Tropicali is a management sim based on tropical island filled with beaches, babes, and bikinis.

The story is direct and silly. You inherit your father's resort after his death and due to some financial mismanagement (dammit [redacted]), you end up deeply embroiled with a devil angel investor trying to buy out the whole island. The story, and even the game itself, is mostly played for laughs, so don't expect devastating, genre defining drama. It's humor all the way down and pretty well done. The character banter is spot on.

After the intro, it's mostly character driven stories. You play a management sim in the background and advance character stories and/or your island buying ambitions each day. It's not wildly complicated or even very interesting, but it beats the everloving hell out of an RPGM battle grind or scene finder. In addition, the characters and their stories are quite good and very sexy, easily capable of carrying the game by themselves. Bonus points for well written sex scenes. That shit's hard to do.

The game also looks phenomenal in all respects. Beautiful girls, backgrounds, outfits, animations, hell even the UI is clean and efficient. It's what got me to download the game, and it didn't disappoint.

Overall, if you're looking for a harem story with inoffensive gameplay, great characters, a good sense of humor, and fantastic visuals, you can't go wrong with this game.

Story 2/5
MC becomes the owner of a hotel hes dad left him, thats pretty much the start of the story and it already fucked it up, the sister tells MC that the hotel is already sold????? thats idiotic since MC whos owns half if not more never signed off on any sale???? and the dad said its up to MC to deside everything not the sister, so how can it be sold.... dont fuck up a story after 2 mins of play, might be small details but its annoying, even if you pick academic MC still dosent have the IQ that both as to sign a sale????? its just idiotic, he even acts like hes no IQ so the paths or choice in the start means nothing.

And after that game just goes to shit, starting with femdom having a bimbo with extreemly big and saggy tits walk all over you and fuck you....and thats the reason for MC being brainless and why the details in the start was ignored.....just for that sit to happen, so yeah its just a pure mindless porngame where story is kinetic and boring.

Having this brainless MC isent fun either, he trust the bimbo that she will give him the hotel back after she has taken over the hole island....so yeah sure makes sense she would just hand it back if that happened right.....
Game did have potential but that shit shouldent have been there, if MC was the one taking over the island for him self that could have been pretty fun but doing it for a femdom bimbo from hell, no thanks.....insted you now have to be a dog for a bimbo, work for her and and do everything she ask and fuck her when she wants to, that shit is just not for me.

Whats even worse is you cant even just skip her storyline since it will unlock pregnancy doing the questline....so yeah game that also killed the game.

The idiotic bimbo will the be your boss even though you would have the law behind you to take back the hotel.....but instend your forced to fuck this extreemly ugly LI whenever she wish, so to me it game is just a huge turn-off since i hate bimbos, femdom and huge saggy tits and fucking people i dont want to touch with a 10ft pole is not my thing, so game became pretty much unplayable after that bimbo shit.

And its annoying since game constantly tells you how you will deside but in truth you really dont deside anything.

Sandbox part is well made, its a bit of a grind but its easy to figure out, questlines for each girl isent linked together

Girls 4/5
I liked most of the girls, good diversity in builds, cute faces.

Animations 4/5
They are above average.

Sandbox 4/5
Its good, easy and not that big a grind, girls questlines arent tied together well a few is, but that dosent really mean you have the freedom you might want, the most ugly woman is still forced on you and to unlock stuff your force to play her questline, meaning being her dog and sex slave, which i dident want.

Choices 2/5
It has forced LI, forced fetishes, yes you can turn some LIs down which makes it even more stupid forceing anyone on you.

Got to say i am supprise its rated so high, but guess alot of people like having LIs forced on you and femdom forced on you, and stories that makes 0 sense.
If the game dident force femdom and big tits and LIs on you it would be close to a 4-5 star game, i always found it stupid to lose players by forceing shit on them, its so easy to make it a choice instend.

[Reviewed v0.5]

A well-done VN with management sim mechanics set in a tropical hotel/island backdrop. It shows promise and an interesting story. The progression is quite linear and I didn't care about the twists and turns of every love interest, but there's lots of potential here.

The Good ()

• Charming love interests (LIs) that each have different personalities and well-developed backgrounds
• Lots of story content
• Fun management sim premise with relatively simple mechanics
• Well-rendered graphics and animations
• Nice H-scenes that pay off the story beats
• The dev claims the game is about "40% done" and there is a clear end in sight

The Not-So-Good ()

• The progression with the LIs is pretty linear -- achieving certain management sim and/or personal milestones with the LIs unlocks the next H-scene in predictable fashion.
• The management sim aspects can get a little "grindy" late in the game
• The dev introduces a number of comically-drawn "stand-in" side characters like a chicken, snowman, Sonic the Hedgehog, etc. to represent future characters but these are distracting and take away from the game immersion

There's a lot to like despite it's current "demo" status with a distinct lack of polish and open threads.

If this game gets a few more substantial updates, this could be one of the greats. The animations are on point, the character models are hot and come in all shapes and sizes. There's a good amount of content so far and takes 5-ish hours to complete (v0.5) if you take your time and don't cheat. Highly, highly recommend and after you finish, keep your eyes out for future updates.