Isles of Sea and Sky
Last updated: 2025-05-11
- Excellent puzzle design and exploration.
- Charming retro aesthetic and soundtrack.
- Sokoban and Metroidvania gameplay blend.
- Unclear puzzle solvability/requirements.
- Game feels incomplete/unfinished.
- Poor guidance and navigation.
- Reviews
(sample size) - 887
- Helpful reviews
- 88%
- Unhelpful reviews
- 12%
- Protest reviews
- 0%
- 87%Helpful reviews with positive sentiment
- 13%Helpful reviews with negative sentiment
- Positive points
- 1996
- Negative points
- 1045
- Gameplay points
- 610
- Perf. points
- 33
- Rec. points
- 557
- Misc points
- 97
| Point | Description | Importance |
|---|---|---|
| Excellent puzzle design and exploration | The game features well-designed puzzles with a good difficulty curve, offering a mix of straightforward and clever designs. The open-world structure allows players to explore and tackle puzzles in a non-linear fashion, preventing them from getting stuck. The game also includes an undo function and quality-of-life improvements, making it a must-play for puzzle enthusiasts. | 72% |
| Charming retro aesthetic and soundtrack | The game has a retro aesthetic reminiscent of Game Boy Color Zelda games, featuring charming pixel art and a beautiful, tranquil soundtrack with a Polynesian vibe. The combination of art style and soundtrack creates a relaxing and immersive experience, enhancing the game's overall appeal. | 53% |
| Satisfying sense of accomplishment | The game provides a satisfying sense of accomplishment when solving difficult puzzles, with a well-crafted design that rewards observation skills and creativity. The game's length is enjoyable and does not overstay its welcome, with many collectibles and secrets to uncover throughout the game. | 35% |
| Creative and unique puzzle mechanics | The game introduces new mechanics through elemental spirits, with each element tying into its respective mechanic in novel ways. The game encourages players to explore the mechanics and think for themselves, with minimal explanation and a flexible design that prevents players from getting stuck on a single puzzle. | 34% |
| Sokoban and Metroidvania blend | The game offers a unique blend of Sokoban (box-pushing) and Metroidvania mechanics, providing a challenging mental workout with a solid mix of classic Sokoban puzzles and new ideas. The game's difficulty increases significantly in later islands, providing a challenge even for experienced Sokoban players. | 26% |
| Enjoyable and engaging gameplay | The game is enjoyable and engaging, making time fly by, with a decent amount of content for its price. The game has good controls and quality-of-life features, and feels like a big-budget product despite being made by a small team. | 18% |
| Varied puzzle mechanics and types | The game offers a wide variety of puzzle mechanics and types, with the puzzles evolving and combining in a natural and challenging way. The difficulty progression felt appropriate, allowing players to move to other puzzles if stuck and return later. | 14% |
| Rewarding exploration and secrets | The game is full of secrets to uncover that require closer attention, with exploration being essential for progressing through the adventure. Finding new tools is exciting and satisfying, and solving previously unsolvable puzzles provides a greater sense of accomplishment. | 14% |
| Varied island themes and mechanics | The game involves exploring a group of islands with different themes, such as water and volcano, with each island introducing new mechanics in a way that feels overwhelming at first, but allows players to gradually understand them. The ability to try out different islands was very enjoyable. | 9% |
| Simple and polished design | The game emphasizes simplicity, a quality that the reviewer feels modern gaming has moved away from. The controls are simple and effective, and the game's design is very polished and refined. | 7% |
| Charming and high-quality art style | The reviewer liked the art style, with the Game Boy-style art direction being great and the art style being charming. The reviewer was very surprised by the quality of the design. | 5% |
| Generous undo and reset features | The game includes an 'Undo' button that is generous, allowing for easy correction of mistakes. The inclusion of Undo and Reset buttons facilitates experimentation, with the undo function being well-designed and convenient. | 5% |
| Satisfying progression and difficulty | The play loop provides a solid level of challenge and reward, creating a feeling of progress. The game has a perfect difficulty curve, and the lock-and-key structure provides a strong sense of progression. | 4% |
| Exquisite and creative level design | The game features exquisite level design, with creative mechanics and fascinating areas. The locations are fun, beautiful, and varied in design, and the author has a strong foundation in level design. | 4% |