Islanders

Time to beat

Main story

44.5 h5 reports

Main + extras

61.5 h3 reports

Completionist

Not enough reports yet (needs 3)2 reports

Median of the hours reported by players who completed the game.

Synopsis

Islanders (stylized in all uppercase) is a city-building game developed and published by German indie game studio Grizzly Games. It was initially released on Steam for Microsoft Windows on 4 April 2019, and support for macOS and Linux was added in June that year. A version for consoles was released for Nintendo Switch on 11 August 2021 and PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on 26 August 2021. This version was published by Coatsink, which announced it had acquired the franchise from Grizzly Games in May 2022. A version for the Meta Quest line of virtual reality headsets was released on 28 September 2023. A sequel, Islanders: New Shores, was released in July 2025. In Islanders, 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. The overall goal of the casual game is to obtain the highest score possible in a single session. Islanders was developed over seven months while the members of Grizzly Games were completing degrees in video 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. Islanders was one of the top twenty best-selling releases on Steam in April 2019. Critical reception was generally positive. Most reviews highlighted elements of the game's minimalist design: low poly visuals, relaxing sound design, and simple yet engaging gameplay mechanics. These same attributes also attracted a degree of criticism from reviewers who felt there was room for more complexity. Several video game journalists placed it on lists of favorites for 2019.

Text license: CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source

Details

Type

Game

Release date

April 4, 2019

Genres

city-building game

Platforms

Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch

Created by

GrizzlyGames

Countries

Germany