Islanders (video game)


Islanders is a casual city-building game developed and published by German independent game studio Grizzly Games for Microsoft Windows in April 2019. Support for macOS and Linux was added in June 2019.
The goal of the game is to obtain the highest score possible in a single session, which can span multiple islands. Players earn points by strategically placing buildings from their inventory onto a procedurally generated island. Earning points restocks the building inventory, eventually unlocking new types of buildings and the ability to move to a new island and continue the session. The session ends when no more points can be gained because no buildings are available or there is no space to place them.
Islanders was developed over seven months while the members of Grizzly Games were completing degrees in game design at HTW Berlin. The developers were inspired by a mutual love of city-building games, and chose to embrace simplicity in designing Islanders because of the limitations of working with a small team. Employing procedural generation of new islands enabled them to keep the game's mechanics simple while still providing the player enough variety to make the game engaging for repeat sessions.
Critical reception to Islanders was generally positive, with most reviews focusing on the game's minimalist, low poly visuals and simple yet engaging gameplay mechanics. In April 2019, it was one of the top twenty best-selling games on Steam. Several video game journalists placed it on lists of favorites for 2019.

Gameplay

At the start of each session, players are presented with a small procedurally-generated island and a pack of basic buildings to place. There are several types of islands, some of which have terrain that restricts the placement of certain buildings. Placing a building earns points, influenced by the natural features and other buildings within its scoring radius. The size of the scoring radius varies between building types. Buildings gain points from being placed near relevant structures, but lose points for incompatible buildings. A circus, for example, gains points for being placed near houses, but loses points for being near mansions. Points are shown in preview before building placement, with gains shown in gold and losses in red. Once placed, buildings cannot be removed or built over, so careful placement and forward planning are important to maximize the score.
Earning points refills the player's inventory of buildings and gradually unlocks more advanced building types such as gold mines and resorts, which have higher scoring potential. Scoring points fills up the island gauge at the bottom of the screen; when filled, the player can click on it to move to the next island. The number of points required to restock the inventory and move to new islands increases with each unlock. Players are free to remain on their current island and continue to build and increase their score until they decide to move on. The session ends if the player runs out of buildings to place, or space to place buildings, before unlocking the next island. The player's score is cumulative across all islands in a session, and the overall objective is to reach a high score for the entire session.
The game intentionally omits many features common to city-builders, such as resource accumulation, traffic management, and technology research. There are no sidequests or optional objectives, although there is a short list of achievements to earn. The sole multiplayer element is the global high score board that ranks every player's highest-scoring game.
Several post-release updates expanded the game with new content. Early updates added new island types and new buildings, such as seaweed farms and monuments, as well as new gameplay features, such as a photo mode that removes the user interface elements to allow for uncluttered screenshots. A sandbox mode added in June 2019 removes the scoring mechanic and provides the players with an unlimited selection of buildings. The same update added an undo button to the regular mode to allow players to remove the last building placed.

Development

Grizzly Games is composed of Paul Schnepf, Friedemann Allmenröder, and Jonas Tyroller, who met during the Bachelor of Arts in Game Design program at HTW Berlin. Schnepf and Allmenröder first worked together on a second-year project, a short experimental game called ROM. Later in their second year, they worked with another student, Shahriar Shahrabi, to develop minimalist wingsuit flight simulator Superflight; Grizzly Games was founded as a means to release it. Shahrabi left after Superflights release. During their third year, Tyroller joined Grizzly Games and development began on Islanders.
The development of Islanders began with a three-week process of researching, prototyping, and refinement of several concepts. Inspired by a mutual childhood love of city-building games like Anno, The Settlers, and SimCity, the team decided to move forward with the concept that became Islanders. The game had a short development cycle of seven months: four months of major development time, and another three months of refinement and preparation before release.
In an interview with Game World Observer, Allmenröder described the game as an evolution of ideas explored in the earlier Superflight, particularly the embrace of minimalism and procedural generation. Because there were only three team members, each had to fill multiple roles in the development process. Rather than struggling against the limits of working with a small team, they adopted simplicity as a design philosophy and decided to create a game that was simple enough to be played in short sessions, but engaging enough to be returned to repeatedly.
The game's use of procedural generation had its roots in the development of Superflight. In order to test game mechanics, the developers created a script that quickly assembled new levels from pre-generated blocks. They found that having new levels each time they played kept their experience entertaining without extending development time, so they decided to use the process for Islanders. When developing the mechanics of the game, Allmenröder explained that his team constantly discussed simplifying the systems they were implementing: "Every time we made a decision, we asked ourselves: Can we make it simpler? Can the game still be fun if we cut this feature?" The gameplay went through various iterations, including one with a day-night cycle, before the team settled on a simple proximity-based scoring system.

Reception

Critical reception to Islanders was largely positive. Reviewers praised the game's intentionally simple mechanics, as well as its minimalist, low-poly visual aesthetic and relaxing soundtrack. It was commercially successful; in April 2019, it was one of the top twenty highest-selling games on Steam. In July 2019, Rock, Paper, Shotgun placed it on a list of the year's best games so far. Luke Plunkett of Kotaku placed the game on his list of the top 10 games of 2019. Paul Tamayo, also of Kotaku, named it as one of the most relaxing games of 2019.
In his full review on release, Plunkett called Islanders "pure city-building. No fuss, no distractions." Michael Moore at The Verge found that the transformation of pristine natural islands into densely packed settlements reflected "humanity's exploitative relationship with nature," and noted that the short time spent building up each island felt "like a more honest simulation of how humans actually build cities." Writing for Polygon, Cass Marshall praised the developers' decision to focus on the core gameplay experience, calling it a "beautiful example of intent in design." Alec Meer of Rock, Paper, Shotgun found the game deceptively simple, remarking "there’s a fierce brain throbbing away beneath those sedate low-poly models." Kelly Pask of PCGamesN felt that unlocking new buildings and increasing point combos gave the game a feeling of constant progression while maintaining "sandbox purity."
James Cunningham of Hardcore Gamer called it "the kind of relaxed affair that's more concerned with letting you create than getting lost in the details." Christopher Livingston of PC Gamer highlighted the relaxing play style and suggested the game for players who "enjoy city-building but hate dealing with traffic problems." Benja Hiller of German indie magazine Welcome to Last Week felt similarly, remarking that "there are no annoying people. Nobody who wags his finger maliciously in front of you and says: Now take care of the road damage." Samuel Guglielmo of TechRaptor enjoyed the art style, which prompted him to place buildings "in locations that looked pretty" even if it meant scoring fewer points.
The game's simplicity did attract criticism from some reviewers. French gaming site enjoyed the color palette and "soft and relaxing shapes" of the game's models, as well as the selection of achievements that could be earned. However, their reviewer found that the single-song soundtrack quickly became repetitive and wished there were more objectives aside from simply earning points. Guglielmo similarly found the soundtrack limited. Alessandro Barbosa of Critical Hit found the lack of an undo button at launch frustrating, but overall found the game "immensely satisfying." Rogan Chahine of Indie Game Website found the game simplistic, but called it an excellent choice for players "with a few minutes to spare." Rahul Shirke of IND13 wished for an option to choose the size or type of island, as he found repeatedly working through basic island types at the start of each round "a waste of time when you just want to get to the more spacious islands." Both Nicoló Paschetto of Italian gaming site The Games Machine and Alice Liguori of Rock Paper Shotgun were disappointed that the game did not have animated inhabitants to give the islands a sense of life.