Tropico is a real-time strategy game that mixes elements of Sim City, the various Tycoon games, and even a little of the Sims into a city-building, managerial type game in a unique location.

You are the recently elected/installed/victorious (depending on how you achieved office) president of a small Caribbean island named Tropico. Before you lies a small community of people and a lush, rich island to improve or exploit at your will. You can become a benevolent ruler who brings this third world country into the realm of economic superpowers or you can be a ruthless dictator whose sole goal is to leech as much personal wealth as he can from the populace before they get the courage to rebel.

Using a modified engine from their previous game, Railroad Tycoon II, PopTop Software utilizes isometric graphics on a 3-D terrain to represent the island. Clouds float overhead, sometimes throwing lightning down, people walk from their homes to their chores, and hills and forests get leveled in the name of progress. All this happens at the user-specified speed and its the main user interface as players specify new construction, lay down edicts, and keep tabs on their citizens.

Each citizen is his or her own entity, with their own names, relationships to other citizens, wants and desires. Some feel the need to excel in studies, others seek religious enlightenment, some just want a good time. They even take political affiliations and work towards those ends. The citizens of Tropico do not blindly follow orders, they must be persuaded through meeting their desires, or just pure greed or terror. If you wished, you could follow the life of a citizen from childhood through his/her teenage years, through the course of several jobs, all the way to retirement and death.

A single-player only game, there are both set scenarios and random islands to play through, with various difficulty levels including a sandbox mode that allows you to play around without worrying about money or political ramifications.

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Alternate Titles

"热带岛国" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
"Тропико" -- Russian spelling
"Banana Republic" -- Working title

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Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform	Price
	Tropico	Windows	$0.30
	Tropico Reloaded		$5.99
	Tropico
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User Reviews

Fun, but nearly impossible!	Scott Monster (914)
It would have been better if there had been more scenarios to play on	James Walter (242)	unrated
Game Rating 71%	William Shawn McDonie (1153)
If there is a latin expression to translate "Doh" for a game. This would be it.	Indra was here (15038)

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The Press Says

PC Gameplay (Benelux)	Jun, 2001	89 out of 100	89
IGN	May 04, 2001	8.8 out of 10	88
PC Games (Germany)	May 14, 2001	84 out of 100	84
PC Player (Germany)	May, 2001	81 out of 100	81
Gamekult	May 02, 2001	8 out of 10	80
Peliplaneetta.net	May 28, 2001	80 out of 100	80
All Game Guide	2001		80
ActionTrip	May 08, 2001	78 out of 100	78
Super Play	Jun, 2001	7 out of 10	70
UOL Jogos	Jul 17, 2002		60

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Trivia

Cover

The European version of the cover has a Castro-ish dictator standing on the island.

Designer diary

Tropico designer Phil Steinmeyer contributed a running series of articles to Computer Games magazine throughout the game's development. His topics ranged from play balance to determining and managing system requirements. He even mentioned designing the box and the reasons for the general/no general versions.