Len's Island
Last updated: 2025-06-20
- Relaxing, engaging, and enjoyable experience overall
- Simple, intuitive, rewarding building system
- Extensive content and multiplayer support
- Tedious, repetitive gameplay loop
- Poor combat and enemy design
- Clunky controls and poor guidance
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 70% Ā· Negative 30%. Score: 30 / 100
Positives:
- The game is praised for its relaxing and engaging gameplay loop, beautiful graphics and music, and overall enjoyable experience. Many reviewers highlight the balance between challenge and relaxation, making it accessible to both casual and hardcore players. The game's positive reception is consistent across many reviews.
- The game features a simple, intuitive, and rewarding building system that allows for extensive customization and creativity. Players appreciate the ability to easily construct and decorate their bases, with many options available early in the game. The building mechanics are often compared favorably to other games in the genre.
- The game offers a substantial amount of content, including a large map with varied biomes, dungeons, and islands to explore. The addition of multiplayer mode enhances the experience, allowing players to team up with friends to fight monsters and build together. The game provides many hours of gameplay and accommodates various play styles.
- The game blends survival, crafting, exploration, and dungeon crawling elements into a cohesive and engaging experience. Players appreciate the variety of activities available and the sense of progression as they explore the world, build their bases, and delve into dungeons. The game avoids unnecessary complexity, making it accessible to a wide range of players.
- The developers are praised for their active communication with the community, responsiveness to feedback, and consistent updates that improve the game. Players appreciate the developers' dedication to quality and their willingness to incorporate suggestions and address bugs. This ongoing support contributes to a positive player experience and a sense of investment in the game's future.
Negatives:
- The game is criticized for lacking content, depth, and polish, especially considering its price and/or development time. Many reviewers feel it's unfinished, repetitive, and doesn't offer enough unique features or engaging gameplay to justify the cost or time investment. Some reviewers explicitly compare the game unfavorably to other titles in the genre.
- Reviewers frequently mention issues with combat mechanics, enemy variety, and overall difficulty balance. Combat is often described as clunky, basic, or frustrating, with enemies being either too easy or overwhelming. The lack of enemy diversity and repetitive dungeon designs further contribute to a negative combat experience.
- Many reviewers found the gameplay to be tedious and grindy, involving repetitive tasks like resource gathering and combat with little sense of progression or reward. This issue is exacerbated by limited inventory space and the need to constantly farm resources, making the experience feel more like a chore than an enjoyable game.
- The game suffers from unintuitive controls, a lack of customization options, and poor controller support. Many reviewers found the controls clunky and difficult to use, especially on Steam Deck or with a controller. The game also lacks sufficient tutorials and guidance, leaving players confused about basic mechanics and objectives.
- The game's inventory and crafting systems are often described as cumbersome and restrictive. Reviewers dislike the limited inventory space, the need to manually transfer items, and the lack of quality-of-life features like one-button sorting. These issues make resource management tedious and slow down the gameplay.
Gameplay:
- The game blends survival, farming, building, exploration, and combat, often compared to games like Valheim and Zelda. Players gather resources, craft items, construct bases, explore diverse islands and dungeons, and engage in real-time combat. The core gameplay loop offers a mix of adventure and relaxing elements.
- Dungeons and mines are key areas for exploration, combat, and resource gathering. Dungeons are essential for progression and often feature boss battles, while mines provide valuable ores for upgrading equipment. The underground is split into caves (more resources, less enemies/treasure) and dungeons (more enemies/treasure, less resources).
- The combat system features a unique rhythm-based mechanic for critical hits, requiring timed inputs to maximize damage. While early combat may involve spam clicking, later stages introduce abilities and shields for a more methodical approach. Different weapons offer varied abilities, encouraging player engagement and strategic combat.
- The game features a large, explorable world with an isometric or top-down perspective. The world consists of multiple islands with diverse biomes, interconnected cave systems, and a sizable underworld area. Players can explore the open world, build structures, craft items, and complete quests.
- The game features a comprehensive and intuitive building system that allows players to construct visually appealing structures. Building mechanics are adjustable and structures can be easily snapped together. Dismantling structures returns the resources used, allowing for experimentation without penalty.
Performance:
- Many players report inconsistent performance, including FPS drops, stutters, and lag, especially during specific actions like building, chopping wood, or during nighttime/co-op play. These issues occur even on systems exceeding the game's recommended specifications, suggesting optimization problems.
- Players are experiencing long loading times, especially when transitioning between the overworld and underground areas, entering dungeons, or gathering resources. This significantly impacts the flow of gameplay and can be frustrating, especially when dying in dungeons.
- The game appears to have limitations regarding base building. Players encounter issues such as clipping and mob spawning within larger, multi-story bases, suggesting the game may not be optimized for extensive construction.
- A specific bug causes players who die in a dungeon and choose to respawn at the entrance to spawn outside the dungeon. This doubles the loading time as the game unloads and reloads the dungeon.
- Players are reporting issues with graphics settings not being saved correctly. This includes settings such as VSync, FPS lock, and G-Sync, requiring players to readjust them each time they launch the game.
Recommendations:
- Many reviewers express overall positive sentiment, praising the game's potential, relaxing gameplay, and unique blend of genres. They recommend it to fans of survival, crafting, and farming games, often highlighting its addictive nature and the developer's dedication. However, many suggest waiting for updates or sales before purchasing.
- Many reviewers suggest purchasing the game only on sale, indicating that the full price may not be justified by the current content or quality. Some reviewers suggest a specific price point that they feel is more appropriate for the game's current state. This suggests that the game's value proposition is a key concern for many players.
- A significant number of reviewers express concerns about the game's current state, citing issues such as poor controls (especially controller support), performance problems, and a lack of content. They suggest that the game needs more development time and quality of life improvements before it can be fully recommended. Some reviewers are refunding the game.
- Several reviewers mention the need for more content to enhance the game's replayability and attract a larger audience. They express hope for future updates and expansions to add depth to the characters, world, and narrative. This suggests that the game's longevity is a concern for some players.
Miscellaneous:
- The game is in early access, with developers actively working on it and planning future updates. Players should expect changes and additions as the game progresses towards its full release, with some reviewers noting the game already feels complete and polished.
- The game features specific resource locations, tiered equipment, adjustable difficulty, and a focus on planting and baking for food. Olive oil is a key ingredient in cooking and other processes, and some players compare the game to Stardew Valley.
- The developers have plans for future content updates, including a multiplayer mode. Players are anticipating these additions and looking forward to the full release of the game.
- Some reviewers express general dissatisfaction, describing the game as 'mid' or lacking innovation. These points lack specific details about gameplay or mechanics.
- Some reviewers mentioned receiving the game for free or purchasing it at a discount. This information is not directly related to the game's quality or features.
