Beastie Bay is Kairosoft's first freemium game and just like all their other games, it is a simulation where you own your own island and develop it into a tourist area. Beastie Bay combines Pokemon-style gameplay where you will explore various areas and fight monsters with your own. Monsters can be convinced to join you after weakening them through battle. Once they join you, they will live on your island and help build the island through producing food, collecting materials and earning gold from tourists. Since the monster capture mechanics forms such a large part of the gameplay, the game offers a huge variety of monsters. There are a total of 91 unique monsters and most of them can be captured. That said, unfortunately there is a limit to how many monsters you can capture in total, which is nowhere near the amount of unique monsters there are, so you will definitely have to pick and choose your favorites.
Monsters level up through fighting others and gaining levels. Levelling up will boost their stats and gain special attacks. Furthermore, monsters have various numbers of equipment slots for other stat boosts. Not all monsters are equal though, you will need to regularly capture monsters and replace your party members with stronger ones. As you explore your island and various areas, those areas are unlocked for you to be able to build and expand upon. Eventually, you will be able to explore other faraway islands in the vicinity. In the simulation aspect, there are a variety of buildings to increase the appeal of your island, including a lighthouse, zoos and shops. Your own monsters' buildings can be upgraded to better tourist attractions which earn more gold. While other people that you save while exploring the islands can live on your island too, creating more unique shops.
There are a variety of factors sch as Civilisation points and Nature points that take into account what is surrounding each building, these points dictate whether it can be upgraded to something better or not. Certain combinations will also yield specific upgraded buildings so it's worthwhile to keep experimenting. As you unlock and explore other islands, you save the natives from the monsters and allow those residents to visit your islands as tourists. You earn money from them and can use the money to purchase more items, equipment or invest in other islands to build infrastructure such as a bridge, high speed train or helicopter pads to further increase the number of tourists that can visit. Beastie Bay survives on displaying ads on the bottom of the screen but it doesn't end there since there is a premium currency. The premium currency can be earned in-game or purchased with real money.
The premium currency is harder to come by during the early parts of the game but you can earn 1 Gold Coin for every seven minutes of in-game time (excluding time spent in menus). However, there is a way to farm the premium currency post-game so you do not need to spend real money to complete the game. The game's pacing is slow in the beginning as you need to explore areas to unlock unique buildings and this can take a while as you level up. You will also be short on in-game fictional currency but once you've unlocked a few islands and have a steady flow of tourists, it is much easier and you'll be able to reap in the money. The fact that you can purchase a fast mode early on makes it all the more easier. The game "ends" after 5 in-game years where you will get a high score. You can keep playing as long as you want afterwards though and complete everything the game has to offer.
Beastie Bay has your typical Kairosoft 16-bit type graphics with sprites. It looks good and suits the game very well. Menus are also easy to manage and you can pull up a virtual d-pad if the touch menus become too cumbersome. Overall, Beastie Bay is a fantastic and addictive game. Don't let the freemium model put you off since there are no annoying paywalls or time limits imposed, you can play the game at your own pace whether it be 10 mins at a time or in 3 hour chunks. Once you dive deep into it, you come to realize how complete the underlying game mechanics are and how much strategy you can use in order to reap in everything the game has to offer. Beastie Bay is highly recommended for those who want a fun simple to learn simulation game that mixes in a bit of the addicting Pokemon formula.
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