CrowdStar Launches Social Tourism Game Happy Island, Using Only Facebook Credits
Here’s a game for any Facebook user stuck in a cold part of the world for the next several months: Happy Island, the latest social game from CrowdStar.
You start with a tropical, volcanic island — think: Hawaii — and your job is to grow your tourism business via attractions like hotels, luaus and fruit stands, bringing in more customers and earning more money so you can further expand your island tourism chain.
Also notable is that the game only uses Facebook’s in-house virtual currency, Credits. There’s no other payment system currently available. As we’ve previously reported that Facebook is planning a major rollout of Credits to third-party apps.
The game’s genre traces back to classic casual games like Roller Coaster Tycoon, and more recently, Zynga’s Roller Coaster Kingdom social game. In an interview yesterday, CrowdStar chairman Peter Relan explained that unlike some other park-style management simulations, Happy Island takes it easy on users. There’s minimal penalties for not coming back to the game — the tourists keep coming to your island and earning you money, even when you’re not providing them with constant new amusements. This dynamic is similar to its other games, Happy Aquarium and Happy Pets, where the fish and pets, respectively, might go hungry or dirty, but they don’t die or run off like what happens in some of the competing titles in those genres.
The idea is to make the game universally appealing, or “happy,” as the name suggest. As you progress, your island gets bigger and bigger, and you can expand to more islands. Relan says the company learned to enable this sort of expansion, after watching Happy Aquarium users create scores of fish tanks to take care of their fish farms.
CrowdStar recently promised to pump out original titles every month, pacing competitors — especially market leader Zynga. That developer followed up on Happy Aquarium and other aquarium games with FishVille in November, then followed up on Happy Pets (and preceding pet games, like Pet Society and SuperPoke Pets) with PetVille earlier this month.
Other innovations in Happy Island include a 2.5-dimensional interface, where you can see cartoon tourists walking to different parts of the island; this is a more complex view than what CrowdStar’s other games have offered. You can also do things like zoom out to see your whole island empire or zoom in to closely examine specific features.
The game comes with a lot of easy ways to earn coins, like harvesting simple objects off the landscape. However, any improvements to game features, like an airstrip, dock or hotel, cost either a considerable amount of coins, or a few Credits. There’s also no mention of island locals and how they might feel about the tourists.
Happy Island has been in beta testing for the last 10 days. It currently has nearly 100,000 daily active users and around 243,000 monthly active users; we expect to grow as CrowdStar begins promoting it on its game toolbar on Happy Aquarium and its other apps.
December 15th, 2009 at 11:31 am
[...] More about Happy Island, from our review over on Inside Social Games: [...]
December 16th, 2009 at 11:03 am
[...] is Crowdstar’s implementation of credits to buy upgrade items directly in recently launched Happy Island, as we covered yesterday. For a user who already has Facebook Credits, this is an extremely simple purchase process as [...]
December 17th, 2009 at 9:50 am
[...] is Crowdstar’s implementation of credits to buy upgrade items directly in recently launched Happy Island, as we covered yesterday. For a user who already has Facebook Credits, this is an extremely simple purchase process as [...]
December 20th, 2009 at 9:12 pm
[...] CrowdStar Launches Social Tourism Game Happy Island, Using Only Facebook Credits [...]
December 30th, 2009 at 8:01 am
[...] it can add significant value to the Platform virtual goods market through its currency, and has started experimenting with efforts in this direction with developers. If Facebook Credits can provide a better experience for users, who might trust Facebook with their [...]
January 7th, 2010 at 9:44 am
[...] talking to big developers about implementing Credits as a payment option in their games. Already, CrowdStar’s new Happy Island game launched last month with Credits as its exclusive method of payment for virtual [...]
January 9th, 2010 at 12:04 am
[...] talking to big developers about implementing Credits as a payment option in their games. Already, CrowdStar’s new Happy Island game launched last month with Credits as its exclusive method of payment for virtual [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 10:57 am
[...] SOCIAL GAMES: As we reported back in mid-December, Happy Island, developed by CrowdStar, was the first game that exclusively used Facebook Credits for all in-game purchases. Recently, we’ve noticed that a “Payments Issues” link has been added to the [...]
January 13th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
[...] integration. As we reported back in mid-December, Happy Island, developed by CrowdStar, was the first game that exclusively used Facebook Credits for all in-game purchases. Recently, we’ve noticed that a “Payments Issues” link has been added to the footer of Happy [...]
January 20th, 2010 at 2:07 am
Totally enjoying the game – just want to know what it is when pirates land in your game – do you loose points?
Thanks for help!
January 25th, 2010 at 12:07 pm
[...] good sales. Happy Islands, a social game by CrowdStar, launched last month using Credits as the sole means for virtual goods purchases. This month, the company has already made a push to hire for a new payments operation team, tested [...]
February 4th, 2010 at 4:06 am
how come i can’t find my happy island, even the bookmark in my facebook….
February 18th, 2010 at 10:55 am
porque el juego de happy island no me abre, me llegan gifs, invitaciones, las acepto y cuando quiero entrar al juego no puedo, que pasa.
February 28th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
i want to play again my happy island
March 4th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
I have blocked myself out of happy island or something happened but i can’t get back into myf game. Can you help me please?
March 10th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
For the pirate question- if you click on the pirate captain and buy him drink he stakes a pirate flag on your island.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:23 am
very strange !!! how come i can’t find happy island….though it was workin’ till day before….
suddenly not openin’….what happen to it…..wanna play my happy island again…..!!!!!!!!!!!
i’m restless…wanna get back to my game…..dying to play it again….can you plz help me out…..???
thanX….
March 22nd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I enjoy playing happy island the whole family plays on seperate computers. I think you have come up with some cool looking attractions,but the only problem I have is you don’t have enough cool looking attraction that you can by with coins most of the cool ones cost money you need more that you can buy with coins
March 28th, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Tnx a lot for info
April 15th, 2010 at 12:28 pm
[...] been widely testing Credits with developers since last year, and some, like CrowdStar, have made games like Happy Island (see screenshot) that exclusively use Credits instead of other virtual currencies. Facebook has [...]
May 30th, 2010 at 6:31 pm
The only problem that I have found is that sometimes Happy Island will not fully load. The bar will go all the way to end and then just sit there. No one seems to do anything about it. It is upsetting to people that have paid good money to buy attractions.
June 1st, 2010 at 9:32 am
Myself & thousands of other’s are very unhappy with Happy Island as we have not been able to get into the game for 4 days now. I have bought many attractions & extra islands, hundreds, thousands of dollars. This long of a time to not be able to get the game to fully load is unacceptable. It freezes up before it continues to load. The moderators just keep telling us that they are working on it & to be patient. I think being patient for 4 day’s is quite long enough. If they cannot fix it, then refund all of the money that we have spent. I love playing the game & will spend more IF they can get it working properly.
June 1st, 2010 at 3:12 pm
[...] through Facebook Credits; CrowdStar has been one of Facebook’s most willing partners, first launching Happy Island with Credits as the only option last [...]
July 1st, 2010 at 6:17 am
I played Happy Island for many months and all of a sudden it became impossible to even pull up the site. I can’t even get the app. site on. My computer says it’s not listed. It has totally been blocked and I can’t do anything on it. It started about a month or so ago. I’ve tried everything! Can someone please help me get it back? I love to play. It’s my favorite game. Thanks, Kate
August 22nd, 2010 at 10:55 pm
I have a lot of tips for this game too. They make it a lot easier to beat.
September 8th, 2010 at 9:24 am
[...] for virtual currency and virtual goods. CrowdStar introduced the first Credits-only game last fall, testing out Credits late last year in Happy Island; it eventually signed a five-year contract in June. RockYou signed on the next month, and Playdom, [...]
October 20th, 2010 at 7:02 am
On Oct. 19, as I was playing games, the computer updated Java, and now this game will not load on my computer at all in facebook.
February 6th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
I have a great life and a great family too,and this sounds like a great game to play but i already have a lot of fun on other games and i am going too try this one and if i like it i will play it every day and i’ll put it on my facebook page.And it looks like a really happy and fun game too play,and i will love playing it i will have a lot of fun playing happy island. i am going too have a lot of fun playing happy island and i will invite friends. This is problably going too be one of my favorite games i will ever play.
April 27th, 2012 at 3:00 pm
[...] down to 40,000 DAU from its September 2011 high of 83,000 DAU. CrowdStar was also one of the earliest adopters of Facebook Credits and Relan was a vocal proponent for the virtual currency. The developer [...]