“Islands of Insight is the modern rebirth that the puzzle genre needs.”
Pros
- Tons of fun puzzles
- Near endless challenges
- Clever progressive hooks
- Great co-op integration
Disadvantages
- Some dirty formats
- Repeating grid puzzles
- A meandering tradition
When I was a kid, my most prized possession was a subscription to World of Puzzles magazine. Every month I got a physical problem to the brim with puzzles to keep me busy until the next delivery. I’ve been obsessed with certain puzzle formats, like their unique spin on cryptograms and crossword puzzles. The others were total jerks that I skipped over every time, but that was okay.
Islands of Insight captures that exact feeling in a way that few games can. A unique project from Dead by Daylight publisher Behavior Interactive takes the concept of a newspaper puzzle page and spreads it across an open world filled with thousands of puzzles. As soon as I jumped in, I found myself in a familiar stream. Some puzzles had me exploring every corner of the vast Sky Island for more problems to solve, just as I flipped through each new edition of World of Puzzles to find the few formats I liked. And a few more made me groan every time I ran into them.
This mixed experience can be disconcerting for those who feel compelled to solve every problem they see, but Islands of Insight offers a huge open-world puzzle book that will keep your brain sharp for a very long time.
Open world deconstruction
Islands of insight are best described as open-world genre deconstruction. Imagine such a game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, but with all the story and combat removed. Instead, imagine what it would be like if you were just stuck with her huge explorable map full of small-world activities to solve. That’s exactly it Islands of Insight it delivers and plays almost like a modern version of Myst.
Receiving clear clues Witness, Islands of Insight throws the player into an atmospheric open world densely strewn with puzzles. Rather than riffing on one single type of puzzle, it provides a wide variety of formats that are often small in nature. Some of these are very traditional, such as the grid problems where players fill in the black and white squares correctly using different rulesets. In the first area alone, I would hunt down the five objects in the domed area, find and connect the two symbols in sight, and go through the invisible arch.
What works so well here is just how quickly and densely a lot of these puzzles are thrown in. No matter where I am on the island, I’m always surrounded by a handful of puzzles that I can quickly solve one after another. Some take only a few seconds to solve, such as lining up a hidden pattern painted on the environment or looking at interlocking rings and clicking on the point where they all intersect. Even if I only have a few minutes to show up, I can usually solve a dozen puzzles in that time.
Developers Lunarch Studios seem to favor quantity over quality, packing in what seems like an endless amount of puzzles. This approach has its pros and cons. While there are plenty of formats that I enjoy, there are a few duds in the batch. One irritating type forces me to try to properly line up a photo of the environment with the real world, while another forces me to realign a psychedelic mosaic to recreate a particular pattern. Others aren’t puzzles so much as simple traversal challenges that ask me to touch a stack of blue balls within a time limit.
I feel like I have an almost endless amount of problems to deal with.
While I like that there are so many challenges, it lacks the more traditional puzzles that escalate in difficulty. This is mostly only found in grid puzzles that start to repeat themselves with some cleverly changing rules. The more creative variations have me recreating sounds by filling in the squares correctly as if I were sequencing a beat pad. Another has me looking at the environment to find hidden solutions in the world. Such twists help diversify the puzzle menu, but filling in black-and-white boxes gets old after doing it hundreds of times.
A huge number of puzzles help in this. The world is so crammed with little challenges that I can completely ignore three or four formats (aside from a few challenges that need to be completed to advance the “story”) and still feel like I have an almost infinite amount of problems. solve. Islands of Insight in this respect reminds me of the modern puzzle world; it’s a digital magazine with enough pages that I don’t feel bad skipping a few now and then.
Progress in puzzles
A massive open world filled with puzzles is a new concept, but the real trick is finding a way to make problem-solving meaningful. Islands of insight in this challenge, he lands multiple jabs with varying degrees of success. What doesn’t work is its loose story, which boils down to a lot of philosophical meandering in vague lore logos. Think The Talos Principle 2 with less concrete world-building.
More appealing is its approach to progression, which makes casual puzzle-solving rewarding throughout. The main catch is that I need to collect items called Mirabilis to unlock other parts of the island. These are obtained through specific challenges located around the world, as well as on separate islands that almost function as “dungeons”. This collecting loop is enough to see players through more than a dozen hours of game time just to see the entire world, though it also forces them to complete certain types of puzzles they hate in order to progress through the game.
I’m still unlocking something or upgrading my character in some way…
What’s more effective are its RPG-adjacent hooks. The more puzzles players solve, the more money they earn, which can be spent on the skill tree. This will unlock additional traversal options that allow players to glide around the islands, as well as bonus rewards for completing specific types of puzzles. Players also level up throughout the adventure and earn cosmetic rewards that can be used to customize their character. Each of these systems combines to make me feel like I’m still unlocking something or upgrading my character in some way, even when I’m completing random puzzles outside of the main line.
However, his biggest ace in the hole is the co-op hook, which he really does Islands of Insight special. Friends can explore the island together, solve puzzles, or split up and solve challenges alone. At first, I was worried about how it would work. Why would I want someone else to solve my puzzles? But that’s another area where the sheer meat and variety of challenges go a long way. If I hate a puzzle format, maybe I have a friend who would be willing to fight it. And when the puzzles are really hard in the late game, it can help to have a buddy to brainstorm them.
It does everything Islands of Insight feels like the kind of progressive approach to the genre that games need. While the indie puzzle scene is bustling and alive, it’s a genre that has largely been abandoned by major studios over the years. The genre is increasingly bucking modern trends such as open-world design, RPG progression, multiplayer, and MMO-like hooks to keep players engaged for longer. Islands of insight proves that these ideas are not entirely incompatible with the logic game and this is perhaps his most important solution.
Islands of Insight was tested on PC.