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.
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Totally enjoying the game – just want to know what it is when pirates land in your game – do you loose points?
Thanks for help!
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how come i can’t find my happy island, even the bookmark in my facebook….
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.
i want to play again my happy island
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?
For the pirate question- if you click on the pirate captain and buy him drink he stakes a pirate flag on your island.
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….
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
Tnx a lot for info
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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.
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.
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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
I have a lot of tips for this game too. They make it a lot easier to beat.
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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.
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.