ISLANDERS Critic Reviews

Islanders is a uniquely-designed city builder that offers a relaxed experience even if you only have ten minutes to spare.

GrizzlyGames offers a vision of city building with Islanders as rarely seen before. Forget the management of the population, the economy and all the cumbersome settings, the game starts with the bare minimum to travel and appeals to your optimization skills. Building a city has rarely been so pretty and satisfying, and you'll probably end up your games thinking "Come on, I can do better". We will simply regret the music being a little too repetitive.

Islanders is a relaxing little builder more concerned with letting you get right to making the town than bogging you down with the details. There’s a learning curve, of course, but it’s a gentle one that lets you pick up the details at your own speed without feeling like it’s a failure when you can no longer advance.

Islanders is simple and straight-forward but still manages to make each of its city-building runs engrossing with a high-score to chase and procedurally-generated spaces to explore. It's the charming visuals and meditative soundtrack that make your brief stays worth it, enrapturing you in a relaxing aesthetic as you try to survive as long as you can.

ISLANDERS is great, especially for the extremely low price tag. At times it may feel a little simplistic, but I can see this being a great title to come back to whenever you have a few minutes to spare.

Modest and ingenious and smartly priced, Islanders is as engaging to tinker with as a palate cleanser between bigger games as to take seriously in pursuit of a high score - wonky mansions and all.

After gunning down enemies or carefully aligning resources in a survival title, sometimes my brain needs a little help winding down. Islanders is perfect for that; it’s a breath of fresh air in my game rotation.