Imagine it: a lively, thriving island neighborhood. Neighbors wake up at the start of a new day, greeting each other with a “good morning” as they go to work in a bustling commercial district that offers the latest and greatest in food, entertainment, and culture. Romance in the late afternoon and the promise of a continually growing community. And as night falls on the island, you can sit back in your chair and pat yourself on the back for a job well done. This used to be the kind of stuff you could only do with PC games – but now that Kairosoft’s Dream Town Island has come out, you can do all this via your phone or tablet!
In Dream Town Island, you’ll be taking over the development and management of a town. As mayor, it’s your job to entice new residents to move in, court new businesses and convince them to move in, and aim for the rank of megacity. The game is sort of like a micro version of other city builders like Simcity or Cities: Skylines, with the extra advantage of portability as Dream Town Island is available on mobile devices via the Google Play Store or the App Store.
Before you dive in, you should know that Dream Town Island is a paid game. That means that after a one-time payment, the game is yours forever – and with no annoying ads, premium currencies, or battle passes to boot. I’m also biased towards Kairosoft games as they’re very engaging and fun, so I’d say it’s well worth the low price point.
As with other Kairosoft games like Tropical Resort Story, Dungeon Village 2, or Convenience Stories, there will be a lot of familiar elements and faces here, such as the Pumpkin Shop, Wairosoft, Chim Pan Z, and Grizzly McBearington’s expansion business. But whether you’re an old hand or new to the world of Kairosoft games, this guide will help you get your city off to a running start.
In this beginner’s guide to Dream Town Island, we’ll discuss:
- The core concepts of land value, popularity, and comfort.
- Citizens: their stats, their needs, what they can do for you, and what they’ll need from you.
- How to get new businesses and grow them into commercial giants.
- The town hall research system.
- Further tips and tricks to future-proof your island town.
Do note that because of how intimately each of these systems is tied to each other, there can be some overlaps in each section!
Core Concepts
Before we jump into Dream Town Island, it’s important to note three stats that are important at every point of the game. These are land value, comfort, and popularity.
- Land value is how much a structure is worth. Higher land value is better as it encourages a house or a shop to expand and grow.
- Comfort is only found in residential buildings, including empty lots. The more comfortable a housing lot is, the higher the chance that a prospective resident will want to move in.
- Popularity is only found in commercial buildings. It affects how much money it earns (and how much money you get too) when someone uses it, as well as customer satisfaction levels.
Raising and maintaining all three of these is the key to creating a thriving city. The best way to raise these stats is by placing compatible structures and decorations near the facility where you’d like to raise stats. Pay attention to the compatibility icon that appears when placing a structure – a double circle means great compatibility (and thus a big boost to the stats of those buildings as well as the new one) while a regular circle means good compatibility and an x-mark means “do not place these buildings near each other ever”.
The no compatibility icon means that buildings will still get an average boost to their stats. Aim to place your buildings in such a way that they build off each other. Alternatively, you can use items to just flat-out increase stats!
Throughout this guide, I’ll sometimes refer to land value, comfort, and popularity collectively as the three vital stats.
Human 101
Citizens form the beating heart of your island town. It’s because of them that you can make money, and it’s for them that you spend money. An educated, happy, and wealthy citizenry will get you very far, so it’s best to learn how to care for each one of your people!
Quick Tips:
- All citizens need a house. Try to always have a few empty lots at the ready so that prospective citizens have somewhere to move in.
- Build houses near each other as they have great compatibility, which raises their land value and comfort.
- Upgrade the value and popularity of your shops to create job openings. Citizens can be directed to look for jobs via the Requests menu or can be left to look for work on their own.
- For new mayors, place your Produce Stand near your Fishmonger to greatly boost their values and create job openings for both these stores.
- Be sure to solve the “I Want to Work Outside Town” issue via the Requests menu as this will allow citizens to leave your island for the day to make money outside.
- Citizens have four stats – Stamina, Smarts, Charm, and Talent. These help them find work and win contests.
- Citizens have one of four personalities – Idealistic, Earnest, Easygoing, and Lively. A person’s personality affects their stat gain rates and can help in negotiation.
- Take a citizen’s personality into account before dumping stat items on them.
- Citizens can gain hobbies as they use facilities. Once a citizen has a hobby, they can join contests to win money, new items, as well as rank up.
- The higher the rank of a citizen, the higher its stats and income. They’ll also be more demanding in terms of housing, so ensure that you’re constantly improving your residential zones.
Housing
All citizens must have a house!
The first citizen you get will have an empty lot by default, but you’ll otherwise need to place down empty lots yourself. It’s a good idea to always have a few empty lots open so that tourists that decide to settle down can move in. For now, put down at least one more empty lot near the first house. Try to put new houses together as they have great compatibility with other houses!
Be sure to check your empty lots from time to time to see if any applicants waiting to move in. You’ll need to approve their transfer before the house can be built – and there’s a nice lump sum of cash as a signing bonus for you.
Work
All of us (sans a lucky few) need to work to eat, and the people of your Dream Town Island are no exception.
While new citizens move in with some savings of their own, they’ll burn through their nest eggs quickly unless you provide employment. This is done by building shops.
Each shop has different goals that need to be fulfilled before they expand their services, and one of these goals allows them to hire residents. For most shops, this requires you to raise their land value or popularity.
Just like housing, try to stack businesses with good compatibility near each other to make hitting those goals easier. You can also use decorations to boost their values. As a new player, you can make this happen via a combo (more on that later) by placing your produce stand near your fishmonger – this should boost their land value and popularity enough that they’ll start hiring.
Once a shop is hiring, you can order a citizen to seek employment there. Head to Menu -> Action -> Requests -> Job to see which of your people want a job. You can tap on them to see the available workplaces as well as that citizen’s success rate for passing the interview, which is based on their stats. Note that doing this costs points.
You can also wait for citizens to look for work at their own discretion – this does not cost points, but may lead to citizens not getting the job you want!
One of the most important things you need to do as a new player is to solve the “I Want to Work Outside Town” issue as soon as it crops up. This issue ensures that citizens that have no money can leave town during the day to earn money. Of course, it’s much better to let them work in your town, but this issue saves you from running into a cash deficit later. You can’t tax people with no money, after all!
To solve this issue, go to Menu -> Action -> Requests -> Town Council. You’ll need a total of 5 Smarts from your citizens to solve the issue, which shouldn’t be a problem.
Stats
We brushed on stats while talking about jobs; after all, some jobs require quite a bit of technical know-how. But stats don’t just affect the chance of a citizen getting a certain job. Every stat has a bit of bearing on a citizen’s daily life.
The four stats each citizen has are:
- Smarts – the higher a person’s Smarts stat is, the higher the chance they’ll produce points after using a facility.
- Stamina – people with high Stamina can stay out longer and travel further.
- Charm – influences relationships with citizens of the opposite sex. Citizens with higher charm will find it easier to find that special someone and settle down.
- Talent – affects the chance that a citizen will trigger an aura effect.
As citizens live their lives, they’ll raise their stats on their own, which will help them in both work and play. However, there are some things you can do to encourage their growth:
- Building a new facility for the first time confers a one-time boost to citizen stats.
- Citizens sometimes gain stats after using a facility.
- Citizens can occasionally buy gifts when they visit stores. Some of these gifts increase certain stats while others improve quality of life, such as transportation (cars, bikes, etc.) or pets. To unlock gifts, you’ll need to help a store meet its objectives, much like how you’d help them open recruitment.
- There are some items you can directly use on citizens to raise stats.
Personalities
Citizens also have one of four personalities, which helps both in their daily lives as well as in negotiation.
The four personality types and their advantages are:
- Idealistic people have a higher chance of getting stat boosts after using a facility. Half full all the time!
- Earnest people have a more rounded approach to leveling their stat and gain average stats all around.
- Easygoing people are more likely to get a Smarts boost if whatever they’re doing gives one.
- Lively people are more likely to get a Charm boost, making it easier for them to hook up.
Because of how personalities work, it’s wise to adjust stat items to better suit your people. For example, giving Smarts-increasing items to easygoing people isn’t optimal as they’re likely to have higher smarts than everyone else anyway.
Hobbies and Contests
Your people aren’t dull, lifeless automatons. Each of them has their own interests, and given time, these can turn into a life-changing hobby.
By using facilities that cater to a particular hobby, residents gain interest in that hobby. Once their interest has peaked, they’ll permanently gain that hobby. To view what hobby a citizen can get from using a shop, as well as what points that shop yields and what stats it gives, visit the 3 tab of a business.
Hobbies aren’t just for enriching lives. Citizens who have honed their hobbies beyond just a passing interest can begin to take part in contests that help both them and your town. Contests, as well as requests to join them, can be found in the Requests tab. Note that you’ll need to pay points to enter a contest – the type of points depends on the hobby in question.
A citizen’s success rate in a contest is largely dependent on their stats. Each hobby has a stat preference, and to emerge victorious, you’ll need to give your people places to hone their abilities as well as encourage them via items. In the image above, the important stats are Stamina and Talent. Don’t worry about losing as you get something just for showing up at a contest.
Apart from these stats, it’s also important to be well-rested, so it’s best to enter a contest at the start of a new day!
Winning a contest nets you cash, points, and items. But most importantly, whoever participated in that contest gains a rank.
Ranks
To cap off our discussion about your citizens, let’s talk about their rank.
The higher a citizen’s rank, the better they are in general – more stats, more savings, more pay – and thus can give more back to the community. Thus, it’s in your best interest to encourage hobbies and compete in contests to raise the ranks of your citizens!
You can also encourage higher-rank citizens to move in. The higher a citizen’s rank, the more thoroughly they’ll inspect potential housing lots. Thus, to lure better citizens, you’ll need to ensure that your housing lots have high value and comfort to match their expectations!
Luring Big Business
Dream Town Island’s gameplay loop revolves heavily around bettering the lives of your citizens, thus empowering your businesses, thus allowing you to improve your people’s lives, and so on. It’s the circle of ideal capitalism. And now that we’ve solved the citizen part of the equation (you have been giving them better houses, right?), it’s time to turn our eye to the commercial part of town.
Quick Tips:
- Just like residential lots, improving the three vital stats is paramount for commercial zones – though skip on comfort as businesses don’t need that.
- You can trigger a combo by placing two highly compatible businesses near each other. A potential combo is indicated by a handshake icon when placing a new business.
- Combo bonuses are retained even if you move the partners away from each other.
- Each business has goals to meet; helping them achieve these milestones unlocks new items, allows them to hire residents, and increases how many of that facility you can place. Tap on the 2 tab when selecting a business to view its goals.
- Some business owners need to be negotiated with before they’ll come to your island. Negotiation requires you to send a citizen to the job; try to ensure that their hobby and personality match those of the business owner.
- You have 3 actions during negotiation, and the success boost of each is on the left side. You can negotiate as many times as you want to raise the success rate, but each attempt becomes more expensive and less effective. Tap the “next” button on the lower right if you’re happy with your odds.
- You can buy shares in businesses. These can be bought and sold for a profit or can be held onto to claim monthly dividends. Dividends are dependent on how many people bought stuff from that shop.
- Having enough shares (around 20%) of a company also adds a chance to trigger a special effect, based on what business you invested in.
Land Value and Popularity
Yes, back to these concepts. Just as high land value and comfort encourage people to move in and make better homes – more on that in a bit – so too do businesses need these stats to make money.
Improving these parameters is as simple as it is for raising residential lot value: put compatible businesses close to each other, build roads and decorations, and use items. But some businesses have an ace up their sleeve…
Combos
…and that’s because of their combos.
When placing businesses, look for the handshake icon as this denotes a possible combo. A combo is basically a double circle compatibility with an extra popularity and value bonus for all partners on top of it. As mentioned in the jobs section earlier, early game combos can help you fulfill goals faster and help your businesses be ready to go as soon as they land!
You don’t have to struggle around blindly, either. Every combo you’ve successfully performed will be added to a list that you can access via Menu -> Info -> All Combos.
One more sneaky note: combos persist even if you move one partner out of range. So long as a structure has triggered a combo, it’ll retain that combo bonus even if you move both partners to opposite ends of the map; in this regard, it’s better to think of combos as joint ventures or collaborations between two stores.
This also means that you can set up a combo, then move one of the higher-value stores to a densely populated zone or somewhere that could use its compatibility bonuses more than its intended partner!
Business Goals
While raising land value and popularity should come as second nature for you at this point, each business also has goals that further encourage you to develop them.
As we covered in the jobs section, you’ll need to do this to open recruitment for a store. However, going beyond that gives a building a bigger selection of gifts (encouraging people to spend more and potentially get quality-of-life upgrades) and increases how many of that facility you can place.
To view a shop’s goals, tap on the shop, then tap the 2 tab on the right side of the info panel. To claim a goal reward, tap on a shop when it has a gift icon.
Negotiation
While some businesses only need some capital to start, others need a little more persuasion. To do this, you’ll need to arrange a meeting with one of their executives and woo them enough to make them want to open a shop on your island. These types of investors are denoted by costing points in the town hall’s project list.
After you’ve paid the points necessary, negotiation can begin. You’ll need to select a citizen to speak to the business owner even though it’s technically our job. Citizens with a hobby related to that store will get better results, as will citizens with the same personality as the store owner. For example, a citizen with a Food and Drink interest will score more points with fast food, restaurant, or café owners.
Once you’re ready, you can select one of three actions – wine and dine the owner (which costs food points), show off your negotiator’s talents (which costs basket points), or show your business plans (which just costs money). Each of these will raise the success bar at the top of the screen. You can see how many points each action will give on the left side of its selection. Note that as you take more actions, further actions both increase in price and lose efficiency. You can also stop wooing the investor at any point if you like your chances by hitting the Next button at the lower right.
Based on your actions, you’ll either succeed or fail at convincing the investor. If you succeed, congratulations – you’ve got a new business for your island! If you fail, don’t worry – you can try again via the town hall research menu!
Shares
Enticing big business to your island doesn’t just give you more ways to tax the heck out of your people encourage people to spend to better their lives. You’ll also be able to buy shares in that company, which is a great way of both building up a nest egg and for passive income.
Just like in real life, the general rule to buying and selling your company shares is “buy low, sell high”. A company’s stock prices will fluctuate at the end of each season. Do note that trading can only happen in the daytime!
Shares aren’t just for making a quick buck. After you own enough shares (around 20% by my reckoning) the company will occasionally hold a special event which will greatly help your town and encourage further growth. You can see what effects can be triggered by owning enough shares when you choose to buy shares.
If the company is floundering or is struggling to get going, don’t fret as they’ll still generate money in the form of dividends. Dividends are your share of a store’s earnings that you get, and this is on top of the use fees generated by patrons. The more people buy from a store you have shares in, the bigger your dividend at the start of a new month.
Note that there are only a limited number of shares you can buy per season and that buying shares incurs a 10% premium as a trading fee. There is, however, no fee for selling your shares, and you can sell as many as you want at once.
The Town Hall
The town hall is the administrative center of your town. Here, you’ll make decisions, perform “research”, pass resolutions, and convene meetings to come up with new solutions to your town’s problems.
Quick Tips:
- There are four divisions of research: enlarging the town, finding new facilities, getting new residents, and special plans.
- More town halls = more simultaneous research plans.
- Some research needs to be done via council meeting. Go to Menu -> Action -> Requests to see pending points of discussion.
- You earn points
- when citizens use shops and facilities. Culture points are earned differently, however.
- The most consistent way to earn culture points is to join contests and win titles. Go to Menu -> Admin -> Name to claim new title rewards and see what the requirements are for a new title.
- Rank up your town to get more land, unlock new facilities, and make life better for your people. Go to Menu -> Action -> Rank Up to check a new rank’s requirements and apply for a rank increase.
Council Meetings
Not all research is easily laid out in the town hall. You’ll need to receive input from your citizens to unlock some features for your town. This is done by convening council meetings.
To see what issues are up for discussion, go to Menu -> Action -> Requests. You’ll need to pay a fee to assemble the meeting, and you’ll also see the requirements to get a successful contribution from each attendee.
Once the meeting is held, any attendee that fulfills the stat requirement contributes an idea to the discussion. Get enough ideas, and you’ve got yourself a new facility or feature; fail and you’ll have to try again later!
Research
The town hall is where you unlock a lot of things via four programs: town enlargement, finding new facilities, welcoming new visitors, and special plans. Each of them is vital to your success:
- Town enlargement unlocks more areas of the map for you to build on. These projects usually require you to rank up before becoming available.
- Finding new facilities unlocks new and better shops, roads, and other structures.
- Welcoming new visitors is used to nab new residents.
- Special plans vary wildly – use them if you need to!
The more town halls you have, the more research you can carry out simultaneously.
Points
Of course, researching these programs isn’t free. You’ll either need to spend cash or points to start a project.
There are four kinds of points in Dream Town Island; from left to right, they are:
- Food points are acquired randomly when a person uses a shop that sells food or drink items.
- Hospitality points have a chance to be earned from hospitality facilities, such as spas, vehicle stores, and so on.
- Entertainment points can be earned from entertainment facilities.
- Culture points – the gold Kairobot icon – are the hardest to earn, as they only come from random events, contests, or titles.
Note that these points aren’t just used for research; if you recall the section about contests and ranking up, as well as employment, points are used to force citizens to take certain actions, like applying for a contest or a particular job.
Don’t be afraid to burn through your starter pool of points or money – you’ll get some as a charity event if your stores hit low. I don’t know how many times this event can trigger, though!
As a new player, I highly suggest researching the special plan that lets you move around items. This costs 10 Culture points, but it will let you maximize the plants and trees your starting area has.
Titles
While the Food, Hospitality, and Entertainment points are earned passively, you’ll need to go out of your way to earn Culture points. You can get them by winning contests and random events, but the most reliable way to get them is by earning titles.
Titles are earned by reaching certain milestones in your town’s development. If you’ve been playing well, you likely won’t have to actively strive for most of the available titles. If, however, you need that last burst of Culture points, you can go to Menu -> Admin -> Name to both claim your title rewards and go over the requirements for new titles.
If a new title can be claimed, you’ll get a notification in the upper left of the screen.
Ranking Up
Keeping your people happy and healthy and ensuring that business is running smoothly is its own reward – but a little recognition never hurt. Enter the ranking system, which is probably the game’s closest thing to an actual objective.
You’ll start the game as a rank one settlement. By fulfilling certain objectives, you’ll be able to increase your rank, thus making your town more prominent and unlocking new technologies to be researched at the Town Hall. Oh, and you get a bunch of prizes for upgrading your rank, too.
To upgrade your rank, go to Menu -> Action -> Rank Up. This screen also shows you what you need to do to achieve the next rank. Note that your rank will not upgrade by itself; you have to go to this screen and apply for the rank increase yourself!
New players take note: you need to reach rank 2 (one rank up) to increase your island’s size. Fortunately, it’s very easy to achieve this goal, especially if you’ve been following my guide.
Further Development
That was a lot of basic stuff to cover, but we’re not through yet! To future-proof your town, start getting into the habit of developing these as well:
Quick Tips:
- Continuously upgrading your buildings’ three vital stats will allow them to be rebuilt, essentially evolving that building and giving it (and its neighbors) even higher stats.
- Roads are a fantastic way of raising the three vital stats. New roads give different stats along with a rise in land value. Remember – shops don’t need comfort and homes don’t need popularity!
- If two people fall in love, they can get married. If their home can house 3+ residents, they can have children. When children grow up, they’ll automatically move into any available houses. If there are no slots available, they will return when you’ve put up new residential lots.
- Ensure that you have many meeting spots, like parks, within residential areas so that your citizens can form friendships and romances faster.
- You can buy stat up items and special stuff from the Pumpkin Shop.
- The plant nursery lets you grow new plants (aka decorations) by giving it seeds. This costs nothing but time.
- Place decoration for a quick and easy boost to the three vital stats. Look for walkable decorations and place them in key intersections for a massive boost.
- You’ll sometimes get tourists – these people have a hat and a backpack. They will not move in but will spend money to buy stuff. Add transportation facilities like subways and ports near your commercial areas to get them to spend more.
- Tourists have special buildings that passively affect them, making them get around faster, stay longer, or just spend more money.
- You will sometimes encounter a fever event which brings even more tourists to your town.
- You can make a model house at the entrance of your town and bomb it with value and comfort-increasing decorations, items, and neighbors. Once someone wants to move in, approve it and move the lot to your real residential area. Rinse and repeat to get a steady stream of new residents – at least until you need to invite more. Make sure you only have one empty lot!
Rebuilds
You may have noticed that some of your residents have gone from living in classy but outdated Old Houses to nicer residences, such as Orange-Roofed Houses. This is where the rebuild system comes into play.
Many buildings in Dream Town Island can be rebuilt, which is basically evolution. By fulfilling certain requirements, you can renovate that building into a newer, better one with higher points in its three vital stats. And because of how buildings take some of their vital stat scores from their neighbors, this can quickly lead to a domino effect.
When selecting what to rebuild into, you can select from multiple options. You can also choose to buy hints for unknown structures, which will show you the requirements for rebuilding into that structure.
If a building can be rebuilt, it will have a refresh icon on top of it, at which point you can tap it to choose what to rebuild it into. Note that manually triggering a rebuild costs points, but citizens can rebuild their houses of their own volition for free.
Getting rebuilds on your existing structures is a sign that you’re doing well. Keep up the good work!
Roads
Don’t underestimate the importance of roads when it comes to building up a facility’s three vital stats.
The default gravel path is already valuable for your residential spaces as it exerts a +2% value and +2% aura in the cells around it. But roads don’t just stop there – do your research and you’ll gain access to roads that boost popularity, comfort, and land value even higher than default. Some roads even generate savings!
Because of how specialized roads can be, it’s always a good idea to designate specific streets. For example, you’ll want to build your businesses near walkways, which give +5% value and +1% popularity. While you can build them near gravel paths or “road” roads, these generate savings and comfort – which, if you remember, businesses don’t need.
Friends, Love, and Marriage
Your residents can form relationships with each other. Thankfully, these are all positive ones – friends or romance interests are the only possible choices. No more enmity!
When citizens go to meeting places, they can develop friendships, which can eventually grow into romance. Eventually, they’ll ask each other out – you can force this interaction via points or wait for them to do it themselves.
The initial success of asking somebody out depends on the affinity between the two potential partners, which is raised when they interact – again, it’s much easier to raise this if you have a convenient meeting place. If they fail, you can always try again later. If they successfully hook up, you’ll eventually have a wedding on your hands. Make sure to build a wedding venue!
Once two of your people get married, they’ll live together in a house of your choice. Try to put them in whoever has the better house, yeah?
More importantly, if the house they live in has room for 3 or more people, they can have children. I hope you’ve been rebuilding your houses!
Children represent the next generation of residents. They inherit both the stats and properties of their parents, so they’ll be able to reach greater heights more quickly. When a child grows up, they will move into an empty house by default. If there are none available, they’ll leave the island until you put up a residential lot.
To encourage relationships, build meeting places in residential areas, such as parks. If you want people to socialize more, you can also force them to interact by researching the repeatable “get together” special plan.
The Pumpkin Shop
Yes, he’s back.
After giving the pumpkin man some capital, he’ll open the Pumpkin Shop (not the official term, but this guy always shows up) which is accessible via Menu -> Admin -> Store. This store sells a lot of good stuff, like stat items and decorations. By investing more money in the Pumpkin Shop via products, you can expand its selection of oddities and rarities. Shop stocks are refreshed at the beginning of a new month.
Of special note is the Renewal Notice. This is a special commercial lot that can only be rebuilt – what it can be rebuilt into depends on the conditions you meet. Place the Renewal Notice around town and see what kinds of shops you can build!
The Plant Nursery
The plant nursery is a special building that’s unlocked by researching the field (the greenhouse-looking structure) and placing it down. This is a special building that will remain relevant up to the endgame.
You can give a seed to the plant nursery, which will grow into (usually) a plant after some time. These plants can then be placed around town to give a boost to the three vital stats of their surrounding buildings. Planting is also completely free, though you’ll have to find seeds by chance via trees and other plants – this is done by tapping the “winnings” tab on the right side of the screen when it appears.
Decoration
Never underestimate the power of a good ornament!
By plugging decorations into tiles you weren’t going to use, you can provide a hefty boost to the three vital stats of nearby buildings. What’s even better are walkable decorations – these can be placed on roads themselves, allowing them to boost buildings in the center of your town. If a decoration is walkable, it’ll have an icon on its upper left like the one below.
Tourism
Your town will sometimes be visited by tourists. These NPCs can be distinguished by their hats and backpacks. Note that this kind of tourist is different from a prospective resident in that they cannot move in. They can, however, shop and sightsee around your town, and your end goal is to squeeze them dry!
Fortunately, if you’ve been paying attention to your three vital stats – especially land value and popularity – it shouldn’t be too hard to get tourists to part with their money.
To ensure a healthy flow of tourists, you will need to provide them with a means of transportation. While your initial port helps both residents and tourists move to and from your island, you can augment this further by building other transportation methods, such as the subway or traffic tunnel. Tourists only stay for a limited while, so it’s a good idea to place these transportation facilities near your commercial districts.
As a good tourism industry is a fantastic boon to your island, there are many ways to develop it. Chief among them are buildings specifically designed with tourists in mind, such as info centers and hotels. Each of these facilities not only produces money like a regular business would, but also has a passive positive effect on your tourists, such as helping them get around faster, encouraging them to stay longer, or increasing tourist numbers.
You’ll also sometimes run into a fever event. During a fever, your town will receive a lot more tourists than usual. I hope you’ve been investing in your business because fevers are a fantastic way to earn large sums of cash quickly!
Scamming New Residents
In essence, you show new residents a fantastic place to move into – then once they’re settled in, you throw the house into the actual residential lot that, while not a total trash heap, is likely nowhere as glamorous as the model house you wooed the new prisoner resident with. Is it scummy? Yes. Is it funny? You bet. Is it practical? Very much so.
By doing this, you essentially bypass the need to fine-tune your residential zone as you can stuff the model house full of businesses and decorations that are difficult to place in the middle of your city. Keep your model home’s comfort and value high, and you won’t have a problem even with high-rank individuals. This also ensures that you’ll be getting a constant flow of new residents – at least until you need to invite more.
Note that this only works if the model home is the only empty lot – you want potential residents to visit only that spot, after all.
The Next Megacity
With this knowledge in hand, you’re more than ready to grow your tiny island hamlet into a sprawling metropolis. Your sleepy residential areas will soon give way to high-rise apartments, elegant mansions, and the latest in housing chic, while your businesses boom and the skies glow bright with life.
That concludes my beginner’s guide to Dream Town Island, and I hope I was able to help you set the stage for your future megacity. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this guide or have some tips and tricks of your own you’d like to share, let us hear your voice in the comments box below!