Recent reviews by commonvermin

Incredibly simple and relaxing gameplay that retains a surprising amount of depth and strategy. All you do is select one of two sets of buildings which you place to earn points. You need a certain number of points to unlock the next set of buildings, and your goal is to earn enough points to move on to the next Island (essentially the next plot of land). Where the depth comes into play is that each building has modifiers for point value depending on nearby buildings. For example, mansions gain points for being placed near other mansions and near city centers. Very easy to learn, but then as you progress in building sets on a single island you start to unlock more complex but potentially much more valuable buildings. Houses - distinct from mansions - grant HUGE point bonuses to circuses, but mansions DEDUCT points from circuses. This means that if you've clustered your houses and mansions together around a city center, circuses will be fairly useless for you, but if you've built your city to have distinct districts then you'll amass massive bonuses from the late game buildings. This casual-yet-rewarding gameplay loop thus encourages the development of unique and varied cities without ever really restricting the player except by how many points the player needs to earn to continue forwards.

There's also a sandbox mode if you don't feel like dealing with even those few restrictions, and given how gorgeous the game's highly stylized graphics are you can have hours of fun just detailing a small island town without any limit whatsoever.

The only real downside to the game is that your cities feel somewhat lifeless. There are no citizens buzzing about and working at the lumberyards or relaxing at the parks - just buildings. Still, this helps add to the game's serene atmosphere, a tone bolstered by its soundtrack which is just perfect for the laid back tone that Islanders aims to achieve and fully accomplishes.

HOW IS IT SO SIMPLE YET SO ADDICTING ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

The best RPG of the past decade.

Thiiis is a very strange game, but definatly not in a bad way. It's like a combination of an RTS and a tower defense game, again it's strange but it works very well! Once you get used to the controls and learn how to actually win things, this game is completely awesome. The Music, in particular, deserves notice for how appropriate sounding it manages to be, notably during the small comic scenes. It's very Pulp Fictiony sounding and is awesome. I don't understand why I'm the only one of my friends who owns this game. Why don't you people get this game already.