Love Island vs Tabou Stories®
Tabou Stories® has a slight edge over Love Island due to its more engaging storylines and less aggressive monetization, despite both apps facing significant criticism for their in-app purchase models.
Both Love Island and Tabou Stories® are interactive story games heavily reliant on in-app purchases for premium choices and content. While Love Island is criticized for repetitive storylines and a stingy gem economy, Tabou Stories® offers more engaging narratives but is hampered by a lack of new content and similar monetization issues.
Head to head
You are a fan of the Love Island TV show and enjoy its specific dating simulation format, and you are willing to spend money on in-game currency to access premium choices and outfits R8R14.
You are looking for interactive story games with engaging and 'addictive' narratives, and you are prepared for significant in-app purchases or long waits to progress R93.
Evidence note: Both apps are free-to-play with in-app purchases (IAP). The vast majority of negative reviews for both apps revolve around the aggressive monetization strategies, particularly the high cost of diamonds/gems and the limited ways to earn them for free. This free-vs-paid asymmetry means many negative reviews come from users unwilling or unable to pay, highlighting friction in the free-tier experience.
Frequently asked
How do Love Island and Tabou Stories® compare on diamond/gem costs?
Can you earn free diamonds/gems in these games?
Do purchased items transfer between stories or seasons?
What reviewers actually said
Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.
- [R1] Love Island Cash grab game: This game is so money hungry and repetitive. It will have you spending diamonds on top of diamonds even if you JUST spent diamonds on a exclusive choice. It's the same format every. single. season. The same thing happens every single time in the same exact order. No matter what season you play. You barely get any diamonds. You don't even get a reward for playing a full season. Just
- [R8] Love Island LOVEE: Genuinely obsessed. Perfect amount of flirty and bold choices. Although can say I’m partial to spending gems and therefore money.
- [R14] Love Island I love this game: when i tell you this game got me addicted. i’ve spent wayyyyy too much money on this game..
- [R19] Love Island Seems cool stuck playing as a woman though: I’d play it through if I wasn’t forced to play as a woman. The art is pretty cool, the hairstyles are great but that’s my only hang up aside from the diamonds system.
- [R4] Love Island fix your app: its fun but sometimes they wont let you close the forced ads. making you close out the game over and over again, resetting your process and having to do it again. fix it
- [R10] Love Island cant download: ive been waiting for 5 hours for the storyline to download. it hasnt moved since 36% and the game will freeze of you exit the app. waste of my time
- [R16] Love Island Poor game support team and greediness: i recently started playing this 3 days ago, and within this time frame the option to see ads for gems disappeared 3x. contacted game support, they gave me the same copy pasted answer twice and haven’t fixed this ongoing problem. the game also asks for lots of gems just to do simple things like talk privately w your li or just for clothes. It’s a fun game that
- [R45] Love Island no money no play: Love the art style and the story line as I feel it has alot of potential ONLY if you have diamonds. I was cool with watching the ads for 3 diamonds until it randomly stopped appearing on the app so the only way I can get diamonds is by spending money which I think is incredibly bogus as the free option disappeared. I do enjoy playing though but I have to stop because without the
- [R2] Love Island Development in diamonds: You should give 3 diamonds per day so it would be a little more fun to play
- [R3] Love Island I like the game: I enjoy the game I just don’t like that you have to spend diamonds on any of the good choices. Like give more options cause not wasting my money on a game like this.
- [R5] Love Island My current thoughts on the gems and ticket systems: Love Island: The Game is amazing! However, I wish we could earn more gems like 5 or 10 instead of just 3 because outfits and certain choices are expensive. For example, an outfit costs 20 gems. While that is reasonable, it is hard to afford when you do not have enough. There should be a daily log-in reward to earn extra gems. Additionally, waitin
- [R7] Love Island Ridiculous do not get: Do not get this app, if you have kids in house or little siblings make sure they don’t download this. my sister downloaded this game one night. She had a sleepover at my house. she used the app and bought some things off of it. now the app won’t stop charging my card. I reached out to the developers and they said they can’t help.
- [R55] Love Island Review: Terrible. They take your money and ignore your choices and once you report it to feedback, they’ll ignore your concern for days.
- [R86] Tabou Stories® Yes and No: This game is really awesome and all but I bought 60 gems for $10 and it took the money but hasn’t given me my gems or anything.
- [R11] Love Island It’s okay: It’s a good game I love it it’s just the diamond problem. Questions you need diamonds for are usually (17,18,27) are more diamonds than we get each day so it forces you to pay for more diamonds just to get pretty clothes and sexy ect answers. I want them to bump up the diamond pay so every time you log in you get at least 20 diamonds every time you log in. Plus please make the spicy sc
- [R22] Love Island Everything Is Locked: I wanted to give this game the benefit of the doubt but it’s extremely bad and definitely not worth the install. Firstly, all cute clothes and hairstyles are locked away by gems, the free options are very limited and super ugly. If you don’t buy the cute outfits, the game guilt trips you by having the characters call your outfit things like “basic” or “boring”. Secondly all t
- [R44] Love Island Idk what to put: The game and story lines are good it’s just that sometimes To get the options you want you have to save gems for a prolonged period of time. Watching an ad for 3 gems And having to wait 15 minutes each time is the bad part. the gems can be expensive at times 29 gems is a lot especially when you do only get 3 per ad. Final thing you should let us play out the after villa. It could
- [R85] Tabou Stories® The stories are okay however..: I don’t really like having to use the gems to do everything 20 gems for an outfit is outrageous!! 25 to push the story forward. I am highly disappointed
- [R6] Love Island so fun…until you need gems: i really have enjoyed playing this game, but there are so many things you need gems for. it’s impossible to be fun without them. the only way to get them without spending money is watching an ad or two every fifteen minutes for literally 3 gems. i really wish you didn’t need hundreds of gems to be successful in this game but you really do. it’s honestly a money grab.
- [R24] Love Island I like this game but…: The game is good but you have to watch so many ads just to get a few gems at a time and almost everything needs gems. And you can only watch 5 ads at a time to get 3 gems then you have to wait ten minutes before it shows up again and it only does that twice a day. Even when choosing your responses some of them cost gems. So basically I think they should do an update with get
- [R18] Love Island Amazing, except…: I think it’s rude that I play through entire stories, pay for gems and buy outfits and gem events, but then if I start over to play through again you guys make me have to pay for all those gems AGAIN to buy outfits and gem events I already bought, AGAIN. 😒😞 why am I not allowed to keep what I’ve already paid for? 😤
- [R35] Love Island gem-purchased outfit items should transfer to other stories: i love this game but ive spent ~$45 on hairs, outfits, accessories and i wish it would be available for the next seasons because i dont want to be dropping $5 for every outfit and hair i want individually
- [R93] Tabou Stories® Money: Love the stories, very intriguing. My only issue with it is everything cost !25 this 25 that! Like we should be able to keep the clothing we purchased! I done spend more than $150 on this and it’s not right!
- [R96] Tabou Stories® Hard to obtain diamonds: The game itself is okay, but they should let you pick previous outfits that you’ve paid for again. It’s hard to obtain diamonds and that’s what makes this game insufferable. Change it to where we can choose what we’ve already spent diamonds on.
Synthesized from 120 recent App Store reviews · updated July 2026 · View on the App Store