Last updated on December 6th, 2025 at 08:00 pm
DESERTOPIA – Family Game Review
DESERTOPIA is a Family/Simulation game from Gamtropy Co., Ltd., first launched in 16th November 2017.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 281+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes DESERTOPIA Stand Out
///// Achievements /////
・2018 Tokyo Game Show | Official Selection
・2018 Kyoto BitSummit Vol.6 | Official Selection
・2018 Kyoto BitSummit Vol.6 | Indie Megabooth Selection
・2017 IMGA Global | Nominee
・2017 IMGA SEA | Nominee
・App Store Earth Day 2018, 2019, 2020 | Featured
“A simple game with a deep meaning.” — INSIDE
“Experience the role humans play in the ecosystem, and understand that we cannot take whatever we want from Mother Nature without repercussion. Learn how to cherish valuable resources.” — App Store Feature
///// Introduction /////
Desertopia is a relaxing and therapeutic idle simulator where you can spend just 5–10 minutes a day transforming a barren desert island into a vibrant, thriving habitat — all at your own pace.
Your goal is to care for the island and help restore its wildlife.
Occasionally, you’ll need to pick up floating trash to keep the environment clean.
You’ll also make decisions about events triggered by human activity.
Will you allow a tour group to visit the island? Should you build a resort?
Every choice you make will directly influence how the island develops.
///// Features /////
・Storybook-style art: Simply watching the animals roam the island can feel therapeutic on its own.
・100+ animals: Desertopia features over 100 unique creatures and 25+ terrain types. More than 15 legendary species may appear under special conditions — some only during festivals and holidays!
・Weather and water evaporation: Water evaporation is a unique gameplay mechanic. You’ll need to summon rain regularly to maintain livable conditions for your wildlife. If neglected, the island will gradually revert to a barren desert.
・Multi-layered music: Enjoy rich, evolving background music that shifts depending on the area and the animals inhabiting it.
・Events: Cruise ships bring visitors and special events to the island, each with both benefits and drawbacks. How your island evolves is entirely up to you.
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This game contains in-game offers to purchase digital goods or premium items with real-world currency (or with virtual coins and other in-game currencies purchasable using real-world money), where players do not know in advance which specific items they will receive (e.g., loot boxes, item packs, or mystery rewards).
Terms of Use: https://gamtropy.com/term-of-use-en/
Privacy Policy: https://gamtropy.com/privacy-policy-en/
© 2017 Gamtropy Co., Ltd. All rights reserved.
This Family game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, DESERTOPIA is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 20th October 2025
Recent improvements include:
- Bug fixes
Download & Availability
DESERTOPIA is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Just getting started, so maybe this changes as you get into it. At the beginning it seems like a pretty clear message that there are no animals in the desert, which seems really odd coming from an environmentally themed game. The game should definitely start with lizards already available, and if people keep some of those desert regions around they can see rattlesnakes, tarantulas, jackrabbits, and coyotes (judging from the American movie-western plant life). Also, the game almost immediately arrived at wetland creatures like frogs and slugs while the landscape was still at grasslands. (It should be toads and snails.) It makes us wonder what age group this is aimed at, and whether the writers have ever spent much time around nature themselves – even making allowances for simplifying the content for children, they are presenting a rather garbled, textbook-based understanding of how natural diversity and ecological zones work.
Its taking us a while to figure this out. Is this going to be interrupted with adds every second.
We were looking for a new game to try. This one seemed interesting so we downloaded it. When we tried to open it, it shut down. We tried a few more times in the same thing happened, we thought maybe something it happened when we downloaded it. So we deleted and then reinstalled. Same thing happened again when we tried multiple times. So we decided not to deal with it and we deleted the app.
We really like the style/aesthetics of this game, and we did enjoy the game for awhile, but at a certain point it gets really frustrating for several reasons. First, very little is explained, and gameplay is really not intuitive, so we found that we did a lot of fumbling before we (kind of) figured things out. Second, if you want to make noticeable progress on anything, you really have to play a lot of ads, which is annoying. Finally, and this is our main complaint, while the game is visually super cute and well designed, its really hard on the eyes. A lot of the find this thing on the island tasks we either skip or we find the item by randomly tapping. We cant tell what a lot of the things in our inventory are. It just so low contrast, and it makes it difficult to play or even know what things are supposed to be. If we just had to tap a windmill and look at a pretty landscape with animals, it would be perfectly good. Again A+ on the design and aesthetics.
We love this game, we love how it talk about global warming and also facts about more polluters.
We have been playing this game for about 40 days and we even bought the coral reef pack. We have searched the same tile 10 times for footprints and no new animals! The game is fun at first but it definitely gets old watching 6 ads just to be disappointed when you get the same creature over and over.
First up Im a month into the game and and theres almost nothing to do anymore so our suggestion is that you add desert creatures and we now that theres the oasis but it just doesnt feel like a desert other then that the game is the best and we are so excited for forestopia.
We dont understand not bussin bussin This is a joke it is define,6 buss8nnbussin.
We get now what people mean when they say something is scratching their brain Update: ehhh we liked it at first it because it felt like it wasnt just another money grab using ads as a heavy aspect of the games progression. But it in fact is. It would be nice if you could last longer in the game without having to watch ads. Also wood is like almost impossible to get.
What happened when we updated versions? Our windmill get few energy/minute and click. Also the windmill want more material required for upgrades so what?? We think last version is perfect more than.
We love this game and we hope you do, too.
Ive been playing for just a few days but we can already tell that this game is going to take some time, which we love. There isn't a lot of explanation anywhere, like what do repaired stuffed animals do? They are weird.
We really wish you wouldnt lose animals over night; its not fair. A better warning or indication that you lost one would be nice. It seems to try and keep you from getting 60 animals to unlock to coral reef. We have many multiples of many animals and keep losing one or two or get more duplicates just in time to not unlock the reef. Became our favorite game but has become too frustrating ive been stuck on 59 animals forever and im losing species while im sleeping. Whatever im done.
Tiny white text on a light blue background. We couldnt read the tutorial. Has a lovely aesthetic, though.
This game is adorable. This game has a fairly simple premise, but we got a lot of enjoyment out of it. We really love just watering our different sections of land and seeing new environments spring up and watching the animals wander around. Its super cute and very relaxing.
A cute, slow game. Unfortunately our wetlands disappeared all of a sudden and now we dont know how to get it back.
We really love this game, we do, and after spending a slow first week, we managed to breeze by getting most of the animals. The only thing that really bothers us is how we no longer can pick up 10 pieces of trash after the work ship update, and how they really dont tell you how to get the oasis landform. Does it require a dessert to be changed to a wetland? Please tell.
Enjoyed game until they added Rainbows (propositioning you to celebrate gay-pride and flooding your screen with ads about gay rights). We kept playing this game because it didnt have any violence or politics in it, we thought it would be gone after a day or so but now we do not enjoy the game much. It advertises everyday.
Had to delete it for shoving political views in our face. Sad, even had to take over what could be a good game. What a horrible thing to do.
Once you get the area how you want it its really easy to keep up, took us around 20ish days to get 60 animals to unlock the only other place thats locked. We just wish there was more added? Maybe have an a option to where we can sail to another little island and have another area of some creatures? A little something to make the game more worth it since after you get most the animals and such theres really nothing else to work toward.
We have been enjoying it so far, but the weather not effecting tiles is odd, and the overall function if you know a little about geography is odd. When trees come water comes. So when the trees suddenly disappear if water goes down it feels really sudden and odd. Please give more information earlier on in the game about the terrain that can be made, recycling, how long tourists stay, how to make the talking cloud either talk less or turn off, and the ability to not have a constant rainbow. As an early player we cant fine a good idea of what we should be doing to progress or any way to upgrade our windmill to make gaining energy any faster.
So the game was a good time killer , you had stuff to do an keep you busy every day but then they introduced the Rainbow, along with gay pride and collecting the Rainbow Flag. We just wanted to play a game. We dont understand what gay pride has to do with this . Very unnecessary. Done with the game.
The game is adorable, and really fun. You dont have to spend money to go far in the game and have fun, but it does unlock cool things and is worth it to us. We just dont understand a lot of the game. We wish the instructions were more clear. Like it says that the picture of the mountains in the thought bubble means its not the right terrain, but the terrain is preset and you cant change that? It doesnt explain what the exclamation point in the thought bubble means, what it means whenever there is a sad/happy/surprised face, etc. We dont understand the rain gauge? When we click a tile to either water it or make it sunny, the gauge doesnt tell us at all if it needs more water or sun??? It seems like it needs more and more water, but then it says this tile is too wet, which we are under the impression thats a bad thing? We wish their was a better legend/key and better instructions.
It was fun and interesting by now and we are at the point where everything is watered 100% and theres not much to do at this point. We keep getting energy but we have no use unless we want to dry up the land just to water it agin which is counterproductive. It doesnt really tell you what to do at this point and it gets redundant. We wish there was more to do at this point or at least more guidelines to go off of.
We absolutely love the game, but once a tourist ship came and it said Id we let them on the island we would get a new species! So we let them on and we got a gorilla! At first we were thrilled but it is eating all the food and our animals are starving!!! How do we get rid of him or grow more food, we tried watering. Please reply.
We like the game with its fun relaxing music. But we still dont know how to play parts of the game. Like how does one recycle. We have all this trash and we are told we can do things with it with the recipes we get but we cant get any of the things out of the garbage.
We love the look and feel of the game. Its like a Reus meets Viva Piata for Mobile, but we cant play it because the microtransaction features are so incredibly annoying. We just want to play the game, and we wouldnt mind paying five bucks for it.
Im loving it already and we really like the concept of it, but it think the cloud should have more things to talk about, since it says the same three things, and we think adding more to the store would be nice, but overall its a reallllly good game and id recommend it.
This is a very cute and beautiful game. If you can push through the first week of gameplay, it gets to be more fun. It feels quite redundant at first and there arent enough explanations for consequences of certain actions or lack of actions (hint: dont let the gorilla on your island), so it can be frustrating. You also have to watch ads to make it worth playing until you earn enough gems to power up your windmill. Much of the gameplay revolves around watering the tiles that make up the island so that plants will grow and animals will move back to the island. As time goes on, your work dries up and you have to re-water at least twice a day, but ideally more. It is frustrating to come back after a night of sleeping to find you have to use all of your windmill power to get back to the point you left off at when you went to bed, which then means either watching an ad or tapping the windmill a million times (which has an awful sound upon multiple tapping). However, its a pretty peaceful game and we like seeing the new animals. We hope they update it to fix some of these issues.
Such a fun game!! It was a lot more than we expected. We thought it was just going to be one of the ordinary games where you take care of animals and stuff blah blah blah but we started it and now Im hooked! We love how theres mythical creatures you can discover, too.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 4.21.0
- Size: 208.80 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Loot Boxes
- Developer: [Gamtropy Co., Ltd.]()
Last updated: 20th October 2025 | Genre: Family, Simulation | Developer: Gamtropy Co., Ltd.