I am speechless. Well, not really. I mean, I'm still going to be taking up as much space as I can to talk about this game, but I still find myself really
feeling ISLANDS: Non-Places. It may go down in history as my favorite minuscule artsy game without a story of all time (and there are more games in that pool than you might expect). I'll be the first to admit that I often exaggerate in more than just my critical sphere, but readers, I'm serious here:
Islands is an astounding work of art. It is the kind of work of art that is not difficult to judge given that it is made for one kind of gamer in one kind of mood, but that is incredibly difficult to
score because of these exact same reasons. Because of this, I will be scoring this game based on how well it accomplished the goals it sets out to accomplish and based on your standard technical aspects. Like my review of the first two episodes of
The Walking Dead: A New Frontier, this review will be relatively short and unstructured.
Islands is up for a few awards in my end of the year lists, so I need to have a review up as a reference for all of you reading. The fact of the matter is that no amount of explanation on my part, no amount of screenshots I supply, none of these things will accurately explain this game. So, here is my advice: read on, think about whether or not this sounds like a game that you might want, and make a decision based on that. If you think you might enjoy this game, spend the $5 to get it on Steam, install it, put on your best pair of headphones, and dedicate 45 minutes to it. You won't regret it. If not, simply pass it by and don't feel ashamed for doing so.
--------------------- --------------------
Islands comes to us courtesy of a man named Carl Burton, head of Carlburton LLC. It isn't often that I feel compelled to research a developer immediately after finishing a game, but this was one of those times. I wanted to see if Mr. Burton had developed anything else. As it turns out, Mr. Burton appears to be an animator and an artist with work featured in places like the New York Times. This would appear to be his first foray into game development. If all that I've dug up is true, then it just makes this achievement all the more astounding.
So, a little bit about the game itself:
Islands is a surreal, artistic experience that is built on the Unity engine. You read that right: Unity engine. This has been a year with quite a few good Unity games (i.e.
Valley and
Oxenfree), and
Islands gets to take a place alongside them. Despite its humble engine,
Islands takes you through ten areas, all of which are beautifully rendered and run at a silky smooth frame rate. That is really all there is to it. That isn't a complaint on my part, but you should know that there is very little to
Islands besides picking your jaw up from off the floor and clicking around to cause the scene to change and have your jaw drop again. That is to say, all you do is click. That is the extent of the gameplay.
Islands is definitely not about gameplay, and I feel like that is self-evident when you look at the steam description and the like, but I'd still like to point that out and save you $5 if that isn't what you're looking for.
--------------------- --------------------
Really, the point of
Islands is to create atmosphere, and it more than accomplishes this goal. This is due to the game's
stellar sound design and artistic choices. Every level has its own color scheme and is rendered in a misty backdrop made up of various shades of whatever color scheme applies to that level. In the background, you can hear sounds that place you in the setting despite not showing human models or anything like that.
The steam description talks about how this game is about finding beauty in the mundane. That probably makes it sound like it is this deep discussion about humans and the concept of time or something like that, but I really don't think that is the case here.
Islands definitely does make a name for itself by giving beauty to fairly mundane areas the likes of which we see every day, but I don't think that there is any depth to be found beyond the beauty. In other words, the steam description should be taken literally. I'm sure that there are people better versed in visual symbolism than myself who might be able to refute my claim, but until then don't buy this game expecting to have your life changed.
--------------------- --------------------
At this point I have gushed about
Islands' atmosphere and beauty and called it my favorite art game, but it still isn't perfect. As I've mentioned, the gameplay is 100% clicking on things. That is all well and good, but there are times where the clicking doesn't work. I noticed that if you have the camera angled in such a way that one thing you need to click on is in the background of another thing you need to click on, the thing in the background may take a few clicks to register. It is far from game-breaking, but in a game this technically competent it really stands out. In addition, there are times when the way to progress is to wait for a while for an animation to play out and then click on something. Again, this is all well and good, but the game doesn't do a good job of indicating when it is time to wait and when it is time to click. More than once I found myself clicking on everything and getting no feedback until I finally heard some kind of droning and noticed a subtle animation happening somewhere. Again, this is far from game-breaking, but it does stand out.
--------------------- --------------------
Islands is not for everybody. If you want a game that relaxes you and immerses you in beautiful surroundings with excellent sound design and art, then I would recommend that you go out and purchase
Islands on Steam, Itch.io, or the App store as soon as you possibly can. If you don't want that at all, don't even bother. As an art game meant to be immersive and nothing more,
Islands absolutely succeeds in all of its goals with flying colors. Were it not for a few flaws in actual gameplay execution,
Islands would be a perfect game in its genre.
With that in mind, let us review:
Clicking sometimes doesn't register: -0.3
Poor feedback in gameplay -0.3
So the final score (keeping in mind that this score is specific to its performance within the genre) for
Islands: Non-Places is...
9.4/10 - Fantastic
Excellent work, Carl Burton, excellent work!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thoughts? Questions? Think I'm full of it?