Islanders is a really lovely, relaxing game that I got into a couple years ago.
Every time you start the game, you get landed onto a different type of island. You slowly build up your island with houses, breweries, temples, and other buildings. Each building has a base score that it will add to your total and a list of buildings that it gets additional points for being near.
There are often also buildings that certain other buildings do not like being near. For example, in the picture above, you can see that huts get extra points for being near to a city center, a statue, a shaman, a fisher, or a seaweed farm, and they get negative points for being near a sawmill, a lumberjack, a warehouse, brickyard, mill, or mason. Each building type has a small radius and you can move the pieces around the island to see how many points it would get you in different locations before you comitt.
The game requires a bit of strategy. Usually you want to find the exact spot on the board where a building can add most to your points and help you progress to the next island. But sometimes you want to get fewer points on one turn because it will allow space for a building it doesn’t get along with to be outside of its radius. The game gets trickier as you progress because you need a certain number of points to unlock more buildings, and if you don’t get enough points from the placement of your buildings, the game is over.
There are a couple things I really love about this game:
- It’s simple, and there are no adversaries
- It’s beautifully designed with different types of islands, flowers, tress, and rocks
- The game encourages your mind to wander. As I’m playing I find myself thinking about the village I’m building. I think about why a circus tent gets points for being near houses, but negative points for being near mansions. I think about the separation of industry from my town centers. I think about why the shamans enjoy being close to flowers.
I think I might be the ideal target audience for this game… Clearly there’s not a lot of action, and no characters, so it seems more adult than many other games. This game is maybe an artsy cousin inside the “cozy game” universe. It’s also very easy to learn and very intuitive, with minimal instruction needed to get going, so it works well for people who aren’t as well versed in computer and video games. It also appeals to me as a millennial who grew up playing world-building games like zoo tycoon and rollercoaster tycoon. And it suits where millennials are at in life now –looking for ways to relax and zone out from responsibility and work.
Islanders is not only a fun escape, it’s actively soothing. It’s not overstimulating and it has a calm soundtrack with soft music and bird calls. Somehow I feel a lot less guilty playing this game than others. It feels like I’m still doing something productive.
Love this game, would recommend!
