One day, all the Minions took a relaxing tropical vacation on a cruise ship. Even accident-prone Phil.  Poor Phil.  When he mistakenly turns the ship’s helm and steers them right into a rock, all seems lost as the ship sinks.  Luckily, Phil finds a deserted tropical island nearby, and all the other Minions survived.  But for ruining their fun, they’re not very happy with Phil as they swim to the island.  Help Phil get the island ready with lots of fun things to do and make, so the other Minions can still have their tropical vacation!  Minions Paradise is available free-to-play to download on iOS and Android devices, but reviewed on iPad here.

So when you first get to the island, Phil sets up a Tiki bar of sorts, which acts as your home base, where you’ll receive missions and requests, which you’ll also get on the nearby bulletin board. When you complete missions and fulfillments, you earn party points, which help you gain levels.  Gaining levels lets you bring more Minions to the island as well as build more things for them.  Sometimes you’ll also earn doubloons and smaller coins, which you can use to buy items and complete missions without waiting or before you get all the materials you need.

Some of the things you can build are “Distractivities” for the other Minions. These include a piñata, a skateboard half pipe, hammock, and more.  Assign a Minion to one of these places and after a while, they’ll help you earn Party Points.  You can also build places where Minions can gather materials, like coconuts, bamboo, ice, etc.  Like with Distractivities, you’ll need to assign Minions who will gather those materials after a given time.  You can also build structures where you can use materials to build things for the minions, like skateboards and mischievous weapons to fulfill party requests.  Or you can use the materials to expand the island so you can have room for more stuff.  You can also play mini-games every now and then, like a water-ski game where you must tap the screen to jump over rocks and collect goodies.

So yeah, the game pretty much plays like a casual Farmville clone, and as a free-to-play game, there will come a point where you won’t be able to progress without paying real money for coins to buy what you need. So while it is cute to see the Minions lumbering around on the island doing goofy things, the game ultimately gets rather repetitive very quickly.

Kid Factor:

Nothing too terribly violent here. You can crash into rocks on the ski game, but the Minion won’t get hurt.  You also make things like bazookas and ninja stars out of things like bamboo and clam shells, but you don’t use them for anything violent, the game just calls them ‘party favors.’  Remember, those Minions do usually work for bad guys, so they can be little troublemakers.   Cute, but still trouble.  If you’re OK with your kids watching the Despicable Me and Minions movies, they’ll be OK with the game.  Reading skill is a must for the text, and parental supervision is highly recommended for the in-game purchases.

Tags: Game Reviews, Movies with Children