Isles & Tiles

The game start is currently way too samey, with no reason to go deep into the tech tree. Of my 1.5 hours on record, maybe 15 minutes of that was spent on interesting choices. I'm not inspired enough to grind for more content. I'll be filing for a refund. There are 6 "modes" you can play, but again they are very samey. For example, one is to gain population, and another is to gain mana generation, and another is place tiles. Guess how you gain mana? By getting population. Which you need to place tiles to do. So all 3 of those modes feel the same, which you can do by playing the exact same starter deck. Here's how every run plays out currently: At the start stone is the bottleneck resource, and you're trying to get your stone+wood engine going to have at least a church and a house or two to make mana before the end of the 2nd year so you don't die. After that maybe you plop down some more houses and churches to ensure you have all the mana you need and will never lose, you just reroll your hand constantly until you draw the building/terrain you need to make the goal number go up, and then you win. Maybe if the game started with more card unlocks my opinion would be different. But…

Has potential, but at this point it's incredibly repetitive and there's really only one strat to win. There is no logical progression through the card unlocks, in fact it's better to not unlock any new ones because they'll just clutter up your hand for the intended goals. One scenario remains locked and there is no hint on how to unlock it (rune one). There is also no sandbox mode, which I would've expected from a cosy game. Positives: Great OST but would love some variety in it, friendly UI, goals and mechanics are clear for those who read the cards. Art style is also lovely. However the positives were not enough for me to keep playing and I've refunded the game. Hopefully I'll come back to it after improvements in the future, because it really does have potential.

I bought this because first of all I just love hex tiles games and I have rarely been disappointed so far and secondly because the graphics are just my cup of tea. For now, there are 6 scenarios which have their own focus (population, gold, island size...) and 5 difficulty levels. By finishing games, you earn points to unlock a lot of new cards and upgrades. You can manage your deck by filtering cards in your library. I only have played a handful of games so far but I already know this one is definitely a keeper! Settings are basic but sufficient. I prefer playing on the Steam Deck upon PC. The UI has its issues but they already made changes (incl. UI size slider) according to player feedback. For me, this, responsive devs, is already a star earned. Oh, apparently there is a workshop scenario but I won't check that out until I unlocked most of the cards by normal play so I can't give feedback on that. EDIT: After the update, I went back to PC. Even it played very well on the deck, it's so much nicer to see the world in big :) The workshop scenario provides a sandbox mode. I have unlocked all achievements now. It definitely gets much easier once you unlock most useful cards…

A relaxing island building sim in the same vein as Dorfromantik. In my hour with this game I played through 4 of the six scenarios on the easy difficulty. I only lost one game simply because of my hubris. So on the lower difficulties the game requires strategy but not so much that it is overwhelming. I can see how the higher difficulties would be a lot more critical. Also in that hour I discovered a small fraction of the available "cards" to build with and started to see that the game has a ton to offer in terms of play type and customization. Fantastic Colony Sim that hits a lot of the right notes with really no downsides.

I liked the game. It's a fun little puzzler. It does have some serious limitations in variation and the mechanics of it that made it difficult to the point of not being fun at higher difficulties. But even so, for the amount of money and the time I got from it, a good little game. It has a very nice look to it, which is what initially attracted me. As long as you temper your expectations, this can be quite fun.

Got to have a chat at Gamayo last week. Games really solid. Reminds me of Dorfomantik but with an emphasis on resource management.