ISLANDERS Console Edition (Switch eShop) Review

What is the meaning of a game? Is it the essentially human nature of the interaction? The complexities of the fundamental laws of the universe? What does it mean to be human? That it is the universe? What is the meaning of life? These are the questions that Islanders Console Edition came to answer. Woah.

In Islanders, you build peaceful settlements on quiet islands. To do this, place serene buildings so that the right kinds of relaxing things are grouped together. Homes, for example, benefit from proximity to things like markets and circuses. Unlike city simulators, no infrastructure is installed, no asphalt, no cables or pipes, no zoning, and there is randomness that determines which structures are available to place at any given time.

Your settlements do not generate income and there are no citizens to please. Your choice of location for each building only earns points the moment you place it. Good locations score well and open up opportunities for later locations to score well, if the right buildings appear. Get a high enough score and more buildings will be unlocked. Feel enough in a municipality and you can go to a new island.

The gameplay experience is more Tetris than SimCity: finding the best arrangement for the pieces that arrive, preparing for the key piece to deliver that great score. However, there is no increasing rate, there is no inevitable decline from piece to piece. Islanders progress only when you decide you want it, after idly surveying your island in search of the ideal location for a seaweed farm.

Islanders is at home on Switch. Its low polygon style looks great on the dock or handheld, stays smooth even while filling the island, and the interface accommodates TV or portable gaming. Grizzly Games told Nintendo Life this month: “We really hope someone can play Islanders Console Edition on a desert island under a palm tree one day.” Well brace yourselves cause we did better and we tried it while Looking at a tree (without palm) from a window on a rainy day in Coventry. It really is a go anywhere game.

While Islanders works for short sessions, each high-scoring run can take several hours in total. Having to finally go back to zero doesn’t hurt too A lot though – you can see the end approaching and let it happen when you’re ready.

After putting in those long hours, the game systems become completely transparent. Rather than building cities, the gameplay is to find the correct pixel coordinates to achieve just one more point before moving on to the next piece. You’re thinking about the level of individual pixels, but over time, a beautiful, ramshackle habitat consumes your entire island. It is both incredible and epic.

Islanders is an elucidation of how games construct meaning from abstract systems. However, more than that clarification, the islanders gave us time to reflect. It is a repetitive, prolonged and relaxing experience that uses enough power from a collection of faculties narrow enough to induce a half-conscious presence in reality. That’s when you think of all the dumbest questions: Could it be that you contemplate the meaning of life? it is The meaning of life? Woah.