If social games killed the soap opera, then maybe soaps can live again ... as social games. It's a stretch, but that seems to be what Madrid-based social game maker iZ has set out to create with Paradise Club, a supposedly new kind of Facebook game. In Paradise Club, players will experience what the developer claims is the first interactive series ever on the social network.By "series", we assume that iZ has created an interactive drama in the vein of TV shows like The OC. (It's the first thing that came to mind, OK?) Paradise Club features non-player 20 characters whose paths all somehow intertwine at Paradise Club, a popular vacation destination for the characters. It's up to players to make sense of these connections and figure out what each character is hiding throughout 27 episodes, making important decisions as the series evolves.
Players aren't just some random character in this world--they're the owner of Paradise Island that must run the business, help make it grow, satisfy the needs of patrons, decorate their club and all the while get to the bottom of the drama. While much of the play sounds like yet another property management game, iZ assures that it will be different.
"With Paradise Club, iZ has taken the classic social game genre to the next level," developer Pyro Studios managing director Juan Carlos Gonzalvez said in a release. "The player does not only complete a series of different missions, the game also follows a script, narrated and played chapter by chapter, with the lives of 20 characters crossing at different moments."
It sounds like iZ looks to bring a higher level of narrative quality and depth to Facebook games, which is quite the tall order. If anything, you have to give it to the developer for doing something different. Who knows, maybe this is the future home of the soap opera.
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