Key Features

As you might expect from a game that demands you organize an entire society from family planning to timber output, Tropico has a multitude of features. Here are some that provide a good, quick overview of this enormously rich game.

Tropico - Your place in the Sun

Tropico is set in a spanish-speaking island in the Caribbean in the 1950's - not unlike pre-revolutionary Cuba.

Beyond that you can determine the physical geography of the island, it can be large or small, flat or mountainous - it's up to you. As you make changes, the Difficulty Rating for the game will change corrrespondingly - the choices you make here have a big impact on your economic options later on.

Scenarios - Lead Your People to the Promised Land

Well Campañero, if you fancy your leadership skills are up to it, choosing a pre-designed scenario is great way to take on a real challenge in Tropico. There are 10 of these ranging from moderate to ridiculously hard.

Each one contains a particular challenge, such as a flooding the world market with Tropican cigars within 50 years or building your barren, rain-starved island from penal colony to agricultural powerhouse. Hey, no-one said this was easy!

El Presidente - A Self-Made Man

Not only do you get to run your own island - you can also write your own history. You choose a type of leader and then you can edit a personal dossier to give yourself the desired charactersics according to the following items:

Background - Were you a miner or a college professor? A left-wing journalist of a rum smuggler?

Rise to Power - How did you make it to the top of the greasy pole? Were you elected or did you shoot your way into power with your pals in uniform or did you scheme your way there with a little help from a friendly, foreign intelligence service, perhaps?

Qualities - What's good about you? (apart from the fact that you're the most powerful person in the country). Are you hard working or are you charismatic? Maybe you're a financial genius, not a bad trait for anyone, but great if your country is relying on you to get it out of poverty. Don't be shy on this one.

Flaws - So sure you've got alot going for you - but what's on on the dark side, huh? Are you a short-tempered liar, a womanizer, a gambler? We need to know.

Your choices here do make a difference in what happens in the game. So pick characteristics that suit your playing style and give you some area of expertise. There are a great number of combinations and discovering them is part of the fun, but remember you are supposed to be a great leader so try to give yourself a semblance of competence and avoid creating yourself as a complete half-wit.

Game Interface - Total Control

Tropico's interface will be familiar to anyone whh has played a "builder" game, with the additional features for diplomacy, lawmaking, and watching your citizens layered on.

The interface panel which is situated at the bottom of the screen is fairly simple but very powerful, allowing you to drill down to see exactly what is going on.

Additionally you have immediate access to the Almanac - a real-time report on the state of the nation, with every conceivable piece of data. If you weren't as smart and wise as you are, we'd be sure you had management consultants crawling all over Tropico - (that would kill the Tourist trade dead and break the Treasury at a stroke) - no the Almanac is a gift to you, use it well to improve your rule.

The graphical detail is fantastic and for a game that runs on only 32 MB a real achievement from PopTop. There are multiple zoom levels and support for resolutions up to 1600x1200. Also the interface scales with the resolution.