The first ISLANDERS showed up at a random time when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to play. It turned out what I wanted was a relaxing city builder that made me stay up late at night watching numbers go up, meters fill, and tiny little towns grow on abstract islands.
The concept was simple, the player places different kinds of buildings and based on what is within its range of influence it accrues positive and negative points. Points fill up a meter that unlock more objects to place – fill up a world meter and it unlocks the next island.
This formula had me playing for hours, it was calming but incredibly more-ish. It was also not a game I felt needed a sequel. It was so perfectly contained that I couldn’t see a reason for more.
I am happy to say that ISLANDERS: New Shores is absolutely worth existing.
Although the recipe is still the same, the developers have improved all of the minutiae without robbing it of what made the first so great.
There are now more edifices to choose from, and their dependencies are now more complicated. There are saunas that need to lead out to the water, cliff houses that can now line the cliffs, and lighthouses that need line of sight clear to gain points. Tweaking their position is more finessed with there being more degrees to turn them, but rather than it being annoying it feels more like being I was able to angle a puzzle piece with greater accuracy.
There are now rare bonuses that add new tactics – like being able to ignore negative impacts of surroundings or drawing bonus points from items that wouldn’t normally give any. Again, I imagined this would add an unwanted complexity but in practice it just made me feel like I had more options to play around with. It also didn’t feel essential to use them, except for on much later levels.
There are now new biomes that change how a player interacts with each of their pieces. Lava biomes, ice biomes, deserts etc. that all bring complications and opportunities to play.
The sound design remains impeccable; the sound effect of collecting coins and filling up the bar gave me a dopamine hit every time, without fail. The music is pitched perfectly and at the right volume (although there is one song that reminds me of Coldplay’s “Yellow”, and I could do with less of that) to just sit in the background and soothe. I zoned out on multiple sessions and got lulled into a rhythm of placing stuff and watching numbers go up.
The visuals have also been tweaked and look gorgeous without ever getting over complicated in their geometry. There are nice touches like lanterns floating in the sky, day and night changing the lighting and the view. There is also now a proper photo mode with multiple different visual effects – the team had to have known that all I wanted to do was take pictures of the vistas and provided some great filters.
I think this is part of the real masterclass of both ISLANDERS, they are able to foster a desire to optimise placement and chase scores, but they never generate the pressure of other puzzle games that require the same precision. In ends up being all pleasure without any of the stress. I imagine that it is the same satisfaction that people feel painting miniatures or constructing railway sets.
For those that want to lean into the feeling entirely and remove points there is a creative mode, where screenshots will be abound.
The only reason the first game did not get a perfect score was its instability, ISLANDERS: New Shores has none of that and runs flawlessly. In every way, it is a perfect sequel as it never diminishes its predecessor’s charm while enhancing all its strengths.
Conclusion
ISLANDERS: New Shores is an absolute treasure that improves on everything set up before. Amazingly, it also ends up being a great entry point for newcomers by remaining soothing and unstuffy even with the added bells and whistles.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
