Disney has announced the release of a mobile farm game “Moana Island Life” to follow its 3D cartoon “Moana”. Game Insight was in charge of the game development.
The setting and mechanics of the game might remind you of “Paradise Bay” (by King) and “FarmVille: Tropic Escape” (by Zynga). The player here takes care of a small village in the South Pacific. He is busy growing palms and bamboo trees on batches, constructing buildings, fulfilling tasks from the mission board. With time the tasks get more complicated. For instance, at the very beginning you get a task to supply palm leaves, then produce a net out of them, and later – catch fish using the net.
The key component that differentiates the project from its rivals is the use of the brand as well as some additional islands which is similar to another game called “The Tribes” by Game Insight – Divo Games.
Anatoliy Ropotov, CEO at Game Insight
“The main ingredient of Moana’s success is its authenticity, that’s why we have spent a huge amount of time to gather information about the regional and historical traditions of Polynesia, taking into account every detail about life on the islands” – Anatoliy Ropotov, CEO at Game Insight, told App2Top – “we had to study the household traditions of those locations and times: what fruit they grew, what could be produced out of what and even what kind of tackle was used for fishing shrimp (at least theoretically feasible).”
“The second super task that our team faced was to create a game that would match the original cartoon’s atmosphere and visual style”, Mr. Ropotov also pointed out.
Right now the company is looking for “experienced Unity developers to work from Riga” to continue working on the project.
Disney does not release a game globally at once; the publisher opens access to the game one country at a time. On November 24 the project was released in Russia – one day before the cartoon premiers in the USA.
So far “Moana Island Life” is available for download only in Russia, Canada and The Netherlands.