Islets (2022)

Playtime: 15 minutes

Played: 2025

Review

I don't like backtrackvania games but wanted to give this a try. It didn't last long, but i did get to enjoy the insanity of the controls. By default, S is jump and Space is attack. Just... what?

After fixing that i got to the first boss and died a few times because 'attack' doesn't just 'attack', it also makes you lunge forward. That's honestly a dealbreaker for me.

I beat a game!!!

For the first time in a long time, I actually finished a game. Thanks to @tylerisrandom, I played this little gem of a game.

It's a fairly by the numbers metroidvania. There's not much in the way of story. All of the areas are pretty similar and there's not a huge variety of enemies. It gets 4 stars from me because it controls amazingly and it has a great map. It also just looks really nice. I never felt lost, and generally knew where I needed to go next. Nothing was terribly difficult. Some of the bosses took a few tries, but nothing made me want to throw the controller.

It plays perfectly on the Steam Deck, and it's not overly long. I played in 20 minute chunks before bed over maybe a month or so. My in game clock said I finished in about 7 hours 30 minutes.

I don't really know how to write reviews. Fans of the genre will like this game. It's a good game. The end.

What a fantastic little game. While it lacks the challenge and high-precision combat of Hollow Knight, I enjoyed it overall much more. It's still a good challenge, and otherwise improves on Hollow Knight (albeit while ripping it off shamelessly) by:

• Having inviting, engaging dialogue
• Providing the player with a better sense of direction
• Way less backtracking

If you're into 10-30 attempt boss battles, this will come up a little light, but even on Normal mode (there is a hard), I still died a number of times (maybe 20-25 times over the 8:30 it took to beat the game.)

I can't recommend Islets highly enough.

Really cute and fun little metroidvania. Nothing too earth-shattering, but it follows the formula well and is overall a good time.

The combat is a bit simple, and I'm not a fan of some boss fights, since they tended to overstay their welcome (on hard mode anyway). Still, I always wanted to keep going and play more, so that's always a good sign.

Free @ Epic this week:

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/islets-5f2670

Next week is another good one. Thief (2014) is a decent stealth game despite its bad reputation. And on top of that The Outer Worlds: Spacer's Choice Edition! A game that would've been great if not for a few glaring flaws. To prepare for next week, read my review:

Bordershock Effect: Fallramafly

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Wow, this took me by surprise! Islets is a concise but tightly controlled and elegantly designed metroidvania, astoundingly crafted almost entirely by one person. The animation and environments are rich and detailed, the writing is charming, the map is fun and well-paced, and the combat and boss battles are challenging but approachable and fair.

Honestly, I think I might have overlooked this one due to the blank stare of the protagonist in the key art… there's something a little unexciting or even generic about it? But that's not the vibe of the game at all.

For my fellow Steam Deck users, Islets is listed as "unsupported," but the only issues I found were needing to manually set my resolution (quit and start again to apply) and some minor graphical glitches taking place in the unused space above and below the game's 16:9 presentation.

Islets is a short but charming Metroidvania. You play a mouse on a quest to reconnect a series of sky islands. The game is a standard Metroidvania-like Platformer, with occasional bullet-hell style fights.

The game isn't too difficult, the platforming is manageable and the average boss fight shouldn't take more than a few attempts each. The game takes about six to twelve hours to beat. So if you're looking a relaxing Metroidvania that doesn't overstay it's welcome give Islets a try.

This game is really relaxing. Good for if you want to chill with a metroidvania but don't want something that will really test your brainpower too much. Very pretty, nice peaceful music. Cute dialogue. Doesn't do anything particularly new, just does what it does really well. Sometimes that's what you want from a game.

I played on hard and it was still not super challenging, but also never a sleepwalk. Some boss battles took a handful of attempts. Typical metroidvania bosses with lots of ground pounds and projectiles. Some bullet hell airship bosses too, these were really fun.

Exploration is quite easy - you will basically always know exactly where you can go next, you will never get stuck. While it is a metroidvania, there is not a ton of backtracking, and for the most part the map is split into linear segments that play almost like straight-up levels that you will go through once and won't return to unless you missed something. There is not really a sense of piecing together a large world and being like "ohhh, so this part is connected to this, and this shortcut here is..." etc like some metroidvanias have.

The game suffers from an issue that lots of other metroidvanias with skill upgrades do - If you collect currency & upgrades at a reasonable pace (I did no grinding, no major backtracking), you can upgrade your strength enough that bosses in the second half of the game just melt. They will transform to phase 2 at like 40% of their healthbar (would be 50% but you can push them so fast while they're finishing their current move) and then sometimes you can just mash attack and murder them before they even do their whole second phase of attacks. And this was on hard mode! Probably worse on normal. You can do them at proper difficulty level in the boss rush mode later, which I did, and the later bosses were quite difficult this way!

One criticism I have is that the difficulty level does not increase a lot, even when you revisit old areas. A cool thing many metroidvanias do is, like, you return to the first area with a late-game ability and now you can get into this part of the area you couldn't before - and even though it's still the first area, this little nook of it has upgraded versions of the enemies and harder obstacles, so it feels like you've really found something new. In this game, when you go back to early areas and find new parts of them, the difficult level remains the same and you're just fighting through more of the same early-game worms and plants that you're now super overpowered for.

Overall just a really well-done complete package though. Kept me invested the whole time just through everything being impeccably designed in terms of U.I., physics, sound, etc.

Edit: 6/6/23

Did a replay and I updated my score to 5/5. I love this game, it is so polished, unique, cute, and is a blast. On hard mode, it’s still fairly gentle and just a relaxing game. I needed a break from some harder MVs, and this is the perfect one for it. One of my favorites.

—-///

By mini, I mean around 13 hours for 100%. But wow, this game blew me away! I don’t even like the more cutesy light-hearted types of metroidvanias, but this totally broke the mold.

Every new mechanic introduced is so fun and surprising. The level design is great. The character is amazing to control, super fluid. The difficulty is relatively easy, but on hard mode it felt just right for me. The game is extremely hard to put down, and I highly recommend it if you’re a fan of the genre.

I just can’t do 5 stars, because a) it doesn’t really reinvent the wheel, and b) personal taste - I just don’t connect as deeply with games that aren’t a bit darker in tone. But I still adore the game and hope more people experience it.