Hollow Island

if you're looking for a new exploration/crafting/mining thing, this is pretty good overall. I would've liked a casual difficulty without any death penalty (see below), and since it wasn't immediately obvious to me: hold lmb to attack and use tools, clicking does nothing. and mine the monoliths after grabbing the stat upgrade. there's a steam guide with all the info you need but I recommend going in blind and figuring most of it out yourself, more fun that way. pros: - difficulty settings - rebindable controls - separate volumes, resolutions, brightness, contrast, saturation - save and exit anytime, periodical autosave plus when leaving an area - no hunger/thirst - no tool/gear durability - instant crafting, hold or shift-click for more - decent default inventory size, mostly big stacks - storage can be renamed, auto-stack, loot all, stack-splitting - mining, chopping wood and combat don't deplete stamina - don't have to sleep but can skip nights and restore hp and stamina - simple farming (no need to water, just plant and wait) - non-annoying fishing (click, wait, click again) - can have your own settlement for extra income, animals, etc. - great exploration, lots of hidden stuff …

The animations are incredibly badly done. Why the attack cancels if you stop holding the button in the middle of the attack bugs me. Simple things like talking to NPCs and opening doors are just weird and clunky. Not for me.

By no means Hollow Island is a perfect game. But given the price, and the very generous demo, I think it's safe to say that it's a good purchase. Give the demo a go, you can easily decide for yourself, no strings attached. Some features are refreshingly casual, you can repaint tiles for free with a shovel, later unlock the same option with carpets, for no resources and only for cosmetic effect. My little pixel artist heart really cherished all the decorating options there. At the same time it's painstakingly slow, you can't just use it as a paintbrush, you need to oh so very slooowly pull it through your screen, otherwise it will miss a lot of tiles. This duality is everywhere in the game: nice, refreshing (yet familiar) features, however some aspects of them falls short or unbalanced. No need to water crops, however after cooking some meals and stocking up on them, the crops are not really good for anything, but unlocking NPCs, which would be a fun reason to keep farming, but even then you just buy a few animals because each is worth dozens of crops in food value, so crops after early game are not worth bothering with, except for aesthetics. Each NPC you recruit needs a food va…

Hollow Island is an open-ended sandbox adventure developed and published by Edym Pixels that combines elements of exploration, crafting, farming, combat, and light settlement management into a single cohesive experience. Rather than guiding players through a tightly scripted storyline, the game drops them into a mysterious island environment and allows them to carve their own path forward. This design philosophy places player agency at the forefront, encouraging experimentation and self-directed goals instead of rigid quest structures. From the beginning, Hollow Island emphasizes freedom. The island is divided into numerous distinct regions, each featuring its own resources, environmental hazards, and enemy types. Exploration is central to the experience, with caves, mines, and dungeons scattered across the landscape. Many of these underground areas incorporate procedural elements, ensuring that repeated ventures feel fresh rather than predictable. As players venture further from their starting point, they encounter stronger enemies and more valuable materials, naturally creating a sense of progression without relying on explicit narrative direction. Combat plays a steady but bal…

Very tame, very safe, very chaste. Can't say anything better than that.

Combat is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rubbish that you can't even hit the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mobs in the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tutorial. This means that you SLOWLY get beaten down, while frantically swinging your sword at them, without ever hitting anything. Never playing this absolute arsewater game ever again, and I regret even buying it on ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sale. ♥♥♥♥ this game.