Review: Islanders

• Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch (Reviewed), PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S (All coming soon)
• Developer:  Grizzly Games
• Publisher: Grizzly Games/Coatsink
• Release Date: August 11th, 2021 (Nintendo Switch version)

Islanders, on it’s surface, is a city builder game. You place houses and industries and watch as your little village grows and expands over every surface of your island. Dig a little deeper, however, and you’ll see that Islanders isn’t a city builder at all. It’s a puzzle game.

Let me explain.

The goal of Islanders is to build a series of cities along a chain of procedurally-generated islands. You’re given a limited set of buildings —pieces, essentially —and you get points when you place them. Earn enough points with your placement and you’re given a new set to play with, chosen by you from two options. As the game goes on, your selection expands and your inventory fills up with more pieces that you’ve placed previously. Get enough points and you can leave your now-burgeoning village and move onto a new island (just don’t forget to snap a screenshot first) and new scoring opportunities. However, if you fail to get enough points before you run out of pieces, it’s game over and you have to start a new run.

The puzzle aspect really comes into play with how pieces are scored. Every piece has a base score and area of effect. Points are added or subtracted to that base score depending on what other pieces are within their area of effect. Woodcutters, for example, get bonus points for every tree that is nearby, while the Shaman piece benefits the most from being as far away from other pieces as possible. This can lend itself to strategy. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll find yourself placing pieces with gaps between them, waiting for pieces that might come up later. Houses, for example, gain a bonus for being close together, but you’ll quickly learn to leave yourself spaces in the middle of a block so that when a fountain comes up you’ll have a place to put it and gain the massive bonus it receives for being near as many houses as possible.

The best part of Islanders is how relaxing it is. There’s no timers, or resource management, or pieces and objectives endlessly flying at you. You can take your time. You can spend minutes deciding on the perfect placement of a piece, or just fly the camera around your island and admire all the little details. Even the colour palette is subdued and relaxing, and combined with the low detail models that look more like an abstract concept of a building than a well-defined architectural drawing, gives Islanders a vaguely nostalgic feel.

It’s an addicting game, and one that’s easy to get lost in for hours. Between the “just once more” feeling you get after barely missing the score threshold on your fourth island in the run, and the low pressure music and visuals, Islanders is a game that’s just begging to be played more. Even if the puzzle aspects don’t do it for you, it’s satisfying to look at your creation after a few rounds of placing pieces and just take in the scenery. I loved seeing what new islands were generated and how I could build on them, and seeing what would be regenerated kept me going as much as placing my pieces did.

Not to say that Islanders is perfect. The controls take some getting used to — Camera rotation is relegated to the shoulder buttons while the right stick is used for making subtle, minute adjustments to your piece placement. After hundreds of other games drilling into you that camera control belongs on the right stick, it can be a tough adjustment to make. Additionally, placing pieces in the exact right spot can be a tad difficult at times. It can sometimes be tough to find a camera angle that gives you the right view, and quite a bit of fiddling with the stick to fit a new house in between houses you’ve placed previously.

Now, it’s worth noting that none of this is new to PC players; Islanders was originally released on Steam all the way back in 2019 – a time that feels like a different world now. However, for console players this is a new experience. It was a good game then, and it’s a good game now on the Nintendo Switch. In some ways, I’d call it better; being able to play it portably (i.e. in bed) is a great way to enjoy Islanders.

Ultimately, Islanders is a game worth playing. It’s addictive and relaxing qualities make it a game that can be played when you only have ten minutes, or when you have two whole hours kill. If you’re the type of person that appreciates a chill experience, you’ll find no better way to relax than with a game of Islanders.