Isles of Sea and Sky: A Relaxing Puzzle Adventure
Scout Report, an irregular series of indie game recommendations from Sin Vega, offered first to RPS supporters.
- Developer: Cicada Games
- Publisher: Cicada Games, Gamera Games
- Release: Out now
- From: Steam
- Price: £17/€20/
It’s Sokoban! A game whose name I recognise as shorthand for this type of puzzle, and yet have never seen. It’s also a genre I’m not overly fond of, preferring puzzles I can sometimes get through by intuition (Spring Falls), brute force (every switch-the-lights puzzle ever), or entering chaos mode (real life).
But I like Isles of Sea and Sky. From starting it almost on a whim, I was playing and figuring things out with zero fuss and no overt tutorialising pretty much immediately, and from there suddenly found that several hours had breezed by without frustration or boredom.
Your wee island person washes up on a beach, and naturally starts pushing stuff around so he can collect keys that open up more screens full of stuff to push around. There are other bits to collect here and there, most notably stars that act partly as keys, but in a way that tells you what area you should be moving to next. Got 15 stars? It’s probably time to go past that 15 star bit and maybe the tool you need will be there.
There’s a hit of the Metroid to it, see. You’ll find inaccessible areas very quickly, or a path will take you through a tiny corner of a puzzle you’ll tackle properly later, offering a glimpse that’s sometimes a hint, and sometimes just tantalising.
More blocks come soon enough, and periodically gain new powers or activate something that opens new paths. That’s true within its quite elaborately linked levels (the solution gap is sometimes bigger than I’d prefer, with a bit much backtracking if you’re as dense as me and under-use the map and its flagging system) and the wider world.
It’s low on frustration, too. Isles has an instant reset button and a “go back one move” (but only if you changed something, discounting inconsequential walking) you can take several moves deep without cost. Even blundering into drowny water or spikes just tuts and puts you back one move, not the whole screen.
Isles of Sea and Sky is an excellent puzzle game all round, neither punishing nor overwhelming, but requiring you to stop and think just often enough. It’s honestly hard to fault, and the only block-pushing game I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend even if they’re not your usual scene.
