Sometimes even monkeys need a vacation!

Tropix is a game that we downloaded from www.reflexive.com. They have games that you can download to try. The trials are only good for an hour. If you like it, you can buy it for usually $19.99. All of their games are normally the same price. After playing Tropix we decided to buy it because it’s also a game that our 7 year old daughter enjoys playing.

Tropix

When you start this game, you will see a monkey on an island. The monkey starts on Outset Island. There are button options on the screen as well. There is Help, Options, and Quit. There is also a Shop, Travel, and a Play button. On the island you buy items for your monkey. At the top of the screen are 3 bars that are for Food, Fun, and Comfort. You have to raise each bar all the way up by buying things that raise them. After you have raised all of them, the island is complete. The Travel button allows you to buy other islands. The monkey will go to another island after you buy it. You can also change islands at any time. The islands price ranges from 5,000 to 100,000 Sand Dollars. There are 5 islands including the one your monkey starts on. The other islands are called Big Beach Island, Waterfall Island, Mystic Island, and Sunset Lagoon. Each island’s appearance and background is different. I like the Waterfall Island the best because there is a waterfall that actually runs down into a pool of water below. Mystic Island is neat too because it has a Japanese background. After you buy an island, you also get the option to rename it if you like.

The Shop button is to buy your items for your monkey. The items differ depending on which island that your monkey is on. The items are specific to the island that you are on and they don’t get transferred to another island. After you get to another island, you start without any items. Your previous island stays the same as you left it. There are different kinds of food that you can buy on each island. The food items range from pineapples, drinks, minibar, bananas, banana tree, star fruit, martini, etc. There is an island where you can actually buy your monkey a grill! There are a lot of items that raises fun. You can buy a snorkel, all different kinds of hats that your monkey will wear, statues, beach balls, kites, sand castles and even fireworks! The comfort items include things like lamps, flowers, trees, mats to sit on, chairs, umbrellas, etc. There are some islands that you can buy your monkey a hut and each one looks different on each island.

What I like is that your monkey actually uses this stuff. Sometimes I sit there and watch him. Playing with kites and he changes his hat if you buy more than one. He cooks on a grill that you can buy in one of the islands. At the first island, you can buy him a fishing pole and he was fishing and pulled out a blow fish and then let him go. He really sets the fireworks off and puts on his own show. After he uses them, you have to buy more of them. You can enable a screen saver in the options if you like and the island that your monkey is on will be your screen saver and he will play on his island. Of course you may wonder how you earn Sand Dollars to buy all this stuff. There are 11 games that you can play when you press the Play button. Playing the games earns you Sand Dollars.

The Games

When you hit the play button, you will get a map with 11 game choices. There are a few of them that are locked and you will have to complete some parts of the other games and by unlocking the other islands to unlock those games. Each game has about 80-100 levels except for Coco Bowl which I will get to.

Solitaire--There is nothing special about this game. It’s just good old solitaire with cards that have island designs or pictures of island creatures.

Puffer Popper--You have a crab that you control. He sits in one place on a beach and you move him from side to side releasing colored orbs by clicking. A blowfish moves colored orbs through the water in a line making curves with colored orbs. You must shoot the orbs at the matching orbs to clear them. You have to clear them all before the blowfish reaches the end at a sandcastle.

Coco Bowl--This is bowling with a coconut on a pier. The pins are glass bottles. There aren’t levels in this game but you have 5 docks that you can bowl at with different lanes with different difficulties. One of them the wind is a problem and you have to bowl against the wind. Another one has a pier that actually moves and in another one you have a crab at the end that will try to block your coconut. You click your coconut and roll it down the lane. By moving the mouse back and forth, you can control it as it is moving down the lane. The pins are also set in multiple ways too!

Water Words--In this game, you have a group of bubbles with letters on them. Over to the side you have a blank list and you have to make up so many words for that level. It will list the words that you make. You make a word by clicking the letters and they have to be touching. This can be hard because new letters do not appear but you do have a swap option that you can use a certain number of times to swap places with some of the letters.

Cascade--Here you have all different kinds of fruit and you have to move them to match up at least 3 of them. Some will get covered in ice and the only way to break it is to make a match next to them. The ice will spread and you won’t be able to make matches until it is broken. There is a bar at the bottom of the screen and after you have filled it by making matches, you will complete the level. There are a lot of cute sounds in this game. If you break the ice you hear it break and it makes a funny sound after you match up the fruit.

Sandoku--This is a mind game and requires a lot of thinking. You have a grid with smaller grids. You start with some numbers in the smaller grids and you have to use numbers 1-9 in each grid. You have to figure out how to place them because looking at the big picture; you cannot have a repeat number in the same column or row.

Jungle Jump--This one is really cute. Controlling your monkey, you have to jump from vine to vine as they are swinging. Sometimes you have to climb them too. As you go along you collect as many bananas as you can. There are also platforms at places that you can land on. There are obstacles as well that you will have to avoid. There are spiders that will drop down and if they hit you, you will have to start over. You can jump through their line that they are hanging from to cut their line. There are also falling coconuts. There is even a point where the monkey will jump into giant flowers and you have to aim the flower in the right direction and by clicking, he flies out of the flower, hopefully landing where he is supposed to land. All you have to do is make it to the end collecting as many bananas as you can.

I won’t tell you too much about the locked games. That’s the fun of it! I will tell you that there is a game where you control your monkey again but he isn’t swinging from vines this time. There’s a game kind of like Magic Ball, a game that is similar to Majong, and there is a Shell game.

My Opinion

This game is a lot of fun to play. My daughter likes playing this game all the time. The only ones that she doesn’t play is Water Words and Sandoku. I had to complete those to open up the other games. The graphics all seem to be 2 dimensional but they are still cute and kid friendly. All the graphics in all the games are tropical. Like when the monkey is swinging from the vines in Jungle Jump. It’s cute because if he gets hit by something he yelps before he falls. The backgrounds as you are going along move with the monkey as he keeps moving. It’s cool when you get to the part with the giant flowers. With Water Words, when you have all your letters on the screen in your bubbles, there is water under them like they are floating on the water. You can see the bottom of the water and see little fishes swimming under them. With the Coco Bowl game, the water under the pier seems to move. There are also lamps on one of the docks and they kind of move. They also have little fireflies flying around but they just look like glowing dots that light up.

I think it’s really cute and for a 7 year old is great too. It keeps her busy for a long time with so much to do. Of course she likes to buy the monkey things all the time and she clutters up his island pretty bad. I keep telling her she should save up for a new island so that she can buy new things for him. She's actually learning about money value somewhat. She says she has to save her money instead of buying her monkey more junk. There isn’t a way to have more than one user on this game though. When my daughter plays and then I want to, it’s the same island(s) and things like that. The only way that I have found to restart everything after all the games are finished is to reinstall the game since you can’t just make up a new user or anything. I don’t play much of it anymore but my daughter sure does! It’s worth buying if you have kids. I got bored with it easy but kids won’t get bored. There are a lot of things to do!

System Requirements

Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows ME
128MB memory
DirectX 7.0
CPU: P500
3D Video card

*****Note*****
We have Windows Vista and this game works just fine with it.