Isles of Sea and Sky Review (bup.)
I feel like this game should've used a couple more months of development before being released. If you're only going for the credits, then I recommend the game for you, but the endgame consists of finding the last few stars with a bunch of missing areas and hints for environmental puzzles that are currently UNIMPLEMENTED in the game which makes finding these last few collectables very unsatisfying.
This includes;
- Screens on some islands being inaccessible with one of them seemingly showing a route on the in-game map. This wouldn't feel too bad if these grids were grayed out on the map. As of this review there are 7 or 8 of these screens.
- 2 different islands that are shown on the ocean hub, but are again inaccessible
- Multiple environmental puzzles that are hinted at in the game but simply don't exist.
- mini whirlpools on the reef map that also can't be accessed
- current shown in bottom right of the stony cavern which is blocked by a block that can't be broken
- Most environmental puzzles are well designed and I have no issues with them, due to them having an eye symbol indicating where to look. There are a couple that have no indication whatsoever and require blindly running into tiles.
I went onto the discord expecting the above to be me just missing a new ability or just being dumb, but these are literally not included in the game. I appreciate that the dev has more plans for this game (I hope he adds more puzzles with the red + purple blocks), but I would've much rather have waited a few months for these areas to be added than to stumble across a bunch of red herrings that wasted my time and left me unsatisfied to the point where I've stopped trying to 100% the game.
I don't find the unsolvable puzzles an issue, because the density of puzzles make it easy to move onto a different puzzle and progress, it's also obvious for most of them that there's a power-up that you're missing. If only that same courtesy was made for the entire screens of missing content.
Once the above issues have been addressed (which I don't doubt they will be eventually), I'll change this review to a recommendation. I thoroughly enjoyed the base game and have collected 85+ stars and most the gems, I was torn between recommending this game or not. I don't want to use a guide to complete the game and I have no doubts that some people have managed without a guide, but why bother looking for clues in the game if they lead to puzzles that won't be in the game for another few months?