The Castaway saga: An Android copy of the Animal Crossing games

Okay, so today we’re going to recommend a saga that’s not exactly new but is back on people’s radar again for various reasons. In 2014 the studio Stolen Couch Games released Castaway Paradise, an adorable strategy game for Android (and later PC) that was openly inspired by Animal Crossing: New Leaf for 3DS, which at that time everybody was talking about. Now, this very week, Stolen Couch Games is back with a spinoff called Castaway Home Designer – which is exactly the same maneuver that Nintendo did in 2015 with its own Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer. Way to be smart about taking inspiration from the masters, eh?

Castaway Paradise sets you the task of building a little island villa where you can cultivate plants, fish, decorate your home, buy new clothes, and basically start a relaxing cycle of building and improvements, peppered with leveling up of objects and the inevitable wait time for freemium games. Home Designer gets rid of the social factor of interacting with other inhabitants of the island and focuses exclusively on interior design and raising new buildings in your villa. While the previous game focused on your small patch of land, now they’ve let loose on the variety of functions while boosting the style and decoration component. Who ever said The Sims didn’t leave a mark on several generations?

The way you move forward in the game is by leveling up the small objects asked of you. You have to hit a certain number of style points by furnishing each room and avoiding doing counterproductive things. An example: you’ll lose out on points for adding items in a color that doesn’t match the look of the floors and the walls. I swear this stuff is enthralling for people who are into this kind of thing.

Castaway Home Designer still hasn’t officially come out on Google Play, but it can downloaded, installed, and played with no geographical restrictions using the APK file available for free here on Uptodown.