Islanders: New Shores is the second instalment of the minimalist city-building franchise with some added improvements and additional features.
Islanders: New Shores is a simple yet complex puzzler with two modes: high score and sandbox. The High Score mode is designed to help you achieve the highest score, challenging yourself and making it immensely fun. This mode features various buildings and boons that help improve your score, and careful planning leads to big scores and a better chance to move onto the next island.
Sandbox mode leans heavily into the artistic format; in sandbox mode, you can place anything anywhere. After completing a high score run, I opened the save in sandbox mode and made a mockery of gravity. Placing floating rocks and light houses, and anything of my choosing. It was wild and fun. I can see time disappearing in that mode as you build a fantasy island of your choice.
Islanders: New Shores features six unique biomes from volcanoes to tundras and many more in between. Completing an island is as simple as getting the score to a certain point and filling both the score and island travel rings. Once an island was complete, I could continue building my last buildings or, if the travel ring was filled, move on to the next island. Upon selecting the next island, I got a prompt to choose between two islands at random, each with its special building as a bonus.
Each island is procedurally generated, so no two are the same. Each of the islands has unique features and will affect the score, making each run both fun and frustrating at times. There are forty-four individual building types with four colour variations, making each island scape unique. Additional score boosters, such as boons, can be utilised to combat poor game runs. Boons are unique modifiers and can range from quickly moving to a new island to removing detrimental building placement scores and even boosting scores for a single building.
Islanders: New Shores works with controllers as well as the mouse and keyboard, and although I did play a decent amount with my PC, I found the game was a great addition to my Steam Deck. The sleep and wake function works perfectly for stopping mid-run to do other tasks and dropping back in when time permits. The lack of time limits also added to the relaxing feel of the game, allowing me to just enjoy my time with it with no additional pressure. The music in the game is also perfectly optimised to the game style, with the smooth melodic music lulling you into a relaxed state as I figured out the best position of my cities, logging cabins, lighthouse, and docks.
(Review code provided to Explosion Network.
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