- Excellent sequel with significant improvements
- Introduces new mechanics and content
- Relaxing and calming atmosphere
- Improved visuals and aesthetics
- Gameplay can become monotonous
- Lacks significant difficulty or challenge
Emotions
Players are highly satisfied with the game's overall quality, particularly its improvements over the original, new features, and expanded building possibilities. The game's relaxing nature, engaging gameplay, and balanced difficulty contribute significantly to this positive sentiment, making it a strong sequel that retains core mechanics while introducing fresh ideas.
Excitement stems from the game's significant improvements, new mechanics, and visual enhancements compared to its predecessor. Players are also enthusiastic about the game's future potential, including promising roadmaps and planned features, which appeal strongly to city-building enthusiasts.
Disappointment is primarily caused by the reuse of assets from the previous game, a perceived lack of building possibilities, and low difficulty that leads to repetitive gameplay. Players also express dissatisfaction with the current graphics, missing features, uninteresting additions, and the monetization of cosmetic filters.
Enjoyment is driven by the overall gameplay experience, appealing visuals, and the quality of the music. The game's addictive gameplay loop and new content also contribute significantly to players' enjoyment.
Joy is experienced due to the game's characteristics and genre, providing a relaxing gameplay experience with creative freedom. The release of a high-quality sequel also contributes to this positive emotion.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 96% · Negative 4%. Score: 4 / 100
Positives:
- Reviewers widely consider this game a significant improvement and a well-executed sequel to the original Islanders. It builds upon the foundation of the first game, refining and expanding its core elements.
- The game introduces a variety of new mechanics, content, and features, such as the boon system, diverse biomes, and expanded building options. These additions enhance gameplay depth and replayability, offering both strategic challenges and creative freedom.
- The game is consistently praised for its relaxing and calming atmosphere, making it ideal for unwinding. This is further enhanced by its soothing soundtrack and overall aesthetic.
- The game features improved and beautiful graphics, maintaining its charming art style while offering cleaner visuals and more detailed animations. The aesthetic appeal is a significant positive for players.
- The game's controls are considered convenient and reasonable across different platforms, contributing to a smooth player experience.
Negatives:
- The game is perceived as significantly easier than its predecessor, leading to a lack of challenge and repetitive gameplay. Players can easily achieve high scores without encountering difficult situations, which contributes to monotony.
- The music manager has bugs, such as cycling tracks prematurely or looping the same track. This disrupts the audio experience and indicates a need for technical improvements.
- The game's core mechanics and possibilities are revealed very quickly, leading to a monotonous experience. Gameplay feels prolonged without introducing new engaging elements.
- Players desire more diverse and exciting special buildings, including 'fortified' structures and proper bridge-like elements for terrain traversal. This suggests a need for more varied and functional building options.
- The game lacks basic quality-of-life features such as a volume slider and a borderless window mode. These omissions hinder player convenience and customization.
Gameplay:
- The core gameplay revolves around a building placement scoring system where players strategically position buildings to maximize points. This involves considering positive/negative effects, resource coverage, line of sight, and managing limited space, especially as maps become smaller and harder in score mode.
- The game offers a wide variety of content, including 6 biomes, 44 building types, and up to 50 levels. New additions like lava expanding islands, animals, and aesthetic choices enhance replayability and customization.
- As a sequel, the game expands on its predecessor's core gameplay by introducing new mechanics and features. Players can now choose new islands with unique features, adding a rogue-like element to the progression.
- The game offers a relaxing and addictive gameplay loop, often accompanied by chill music. Players can enjoy a low-stakes strategy experience focused on beating their high scores.
- Game runs can be quite long, potentially exceeding three hours. However, the game allows players to save and quit at any time, ensuring their progress is preserved.
Performance:
- Many reviews highlight that the game feels unfinished or unpolished, lacking content and features expected from a full release. This suggests a need for further development and refinement.
- Some players express disappointment with the game's graphics, finding them outdated or not meeting modern standards. This impacts the visual appeal and overall presentation of the game.
Recommendations:
- Many players highly recommend the game, especially to fans of the first Islanders game or city-building enthusiasts. They find it a relaxing and enjoyable experience, considering it a worthy sequel and a good value for its price.
- Players express strong long-term enjoyment and dedication to the game series, indicating a high level of satisfaction and replayability. They anticipate playing the game for an extended period.
- One reviewer stated they are returning the game. This is a single, isolated negative comment without any specific details or constructive feedback, which significantly reduces its importance.
Miscellaneous:
- Players are looking forward to continued development and updates for the game, including new features like additional photo mode options and potential mobile versions. There's also appreciation for specific localizations.
- The game's minimalist aesthetic is a notable design choice, contributing to its overall visual style.
- Players appreciate the bundled discount offered to those who previously owned Islanders, indicating a positive reception for loyalty rewards.
- A specific UI suggestion was made to relocate boons to the top right or left for better user experience.
- Some players express a personal preference for the sandbox mode over the score-based mode, suggesting a desire for more open-ended gameplay.
