Summer Islands is a resort management tycoon/sim where you build a tourist island paradise while managing hotel capacity, retail, leisure services, utilities etc. The player will build hotels, roads, shops, restaurants, utilities to support their island resort in a Simcity 2000/3000 style interface.
The game is primarily inspired by Holiday Island (1996) developed by Sunflowers Interactive (best known for publishing the original two Anno games in the 90s) and to a lesser extent by the tourist component of the Tropico series.
This mini-review of Summer Islands 0.9.x is based on ~15 hours of gameplay, albeit with disasters disabled. I've never played Holiday Island, although I believe I would have really enjoyed the game if I tried it back in the 90s/early 2000s.
When playing Summer Islands, the first thing that you notice is the Simcity 2000/3000 style 2.5D view. The game world is based on a grid structure and all buildings have a local coverage area. The aesthetic fits well with the game and provides a nice nostalgia hit for veteran players. 3D looks nice, but if the base game de facto functions on a cell based structure, 3D can become a hindrance for gameplay if the UX doesn't communicate the true impact of your choices.
Summer Islands does have weird pixel graphic glitches (primarily in the management screens) that do become annoying after many hours of playing. The minimap is also janky and doesn't work as expected.
The early game requires a bit of min-maxing to drive expansion. You want to select a starting region with lots of flat land to minimize terraforming costs (which can get really annoying in the early game). In the early game you do want to have a very efficient money making setup.
Summer Islands is very much driven by coverage scope, incompatibilities and requirements of different buildings. These are not always intuitive. I found that to drive expansion you want to come up with modular micro-blocks that you deploy depending on the geography.
There is a large number of a different building types, albeit you do have to use your own imagination to align the different buildings in an aesthetically pleasing manner. The game would benefit from a clearer focus on different types of tourists and requirements.
The economy of the game needs a bit more balance. Early game is pretty rough and requires lots of min-maxing. The in-game achievement system is broken in the 0.9.x release series (confirmed by the dev in the steam forums); early game you won't be able to leverage the achievements as they will be too difficult, late game you will be overflowing with money and there will be no reason to bother with the achievement system.
One weakness of the game is that after a few playthroughs, by the mid-game you will be loaded with resources. In the mid to late game, there is a distinct lack of generic city building functionality. You have ~40 hotels, with associated restaurants, shops, parks, sunbathing zones, but no residential areas for the personnel that service these hotels and service buildings.
That being said, Summer Islands will appeal to players who enjoy tycoon games, this is a pretty unique experience, and those who are willing to be flexible when it comes to gameplay polish.
