Islanders

Genre: Management Simulation / Puzzle

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

Islanders, alternately referred to here as Islanders: Console Edition, is a family-friendly Management Simulation with Puzzle elements released on PC in 2019 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2021. This game boils down the Management Simulation genre to a simple matter of placement – unlike other games in the genre, players aren’t concerned with managing resources, and instead are focused purely on where to put buildings so they score the most points for associated buildings nearby, while leaving the most room for future developments.

Given the game’s focus on simple, streamlined gameplay, the presentation here is pitch-perfect. The game uses simple 3D visuals that at first are pretty unimpressive, with the landscape and structures depicted using simple, relatively low-poly models. However, as you continue putting more and more of these structures on the island, the overall complexity of your growing city can become impressive to behold, and while it never reaches quite the same level of impressive complexity you may find in some other Management Sims, its consistent art style ensures it retains its look of elegant simplicity throughout.

These visuals are backed by a light, almost dreamy soundtrack that gives the game a relaxed tone that helps this to feel like a great game to just sit back and chill with. I can’t reference the songs in the soundtrack individually at this time, but you can check out the soundtrack in its entirety here. This wonderful chill tone is further enhanced with some excellent sound design for the game’s effects, which not only make each placement sound satisfying, but give players a good feel for how their growing town sounds as they move their camera close.

When it comes to the gameplay, Islanders is clever about how it delivers on its simple themes while still pushing players to strategize how to proceed. Players start off with a procedurally-generated island and a choice of two sets of structures to place, with each individual structure earning points based on the other structures falling in range of its placement, with some types of structures adding points and some deducting them. Replenishment building sets are earned by meeting point thresholds, and earning enough points will allow you to start anew with a new island while keeping your score, something you’ll need to do once your island fills up and you run out of room for placement. Ultimately, the goal is to earn as many points as possible before you either run out of room to place buildings or run out of buildings to place.

The game thankfully lets players know what the building they’re placing does and doesn’t want to be placed near, and before long, you get an idea of how this works into the game’s strategy – Town centers are ideally placed where there’s a lot of room, because they’ll form the hub of a city, since multiple types of structures earn points for placement near town centers. Houses like being placed near the town center, near other houses, and near other city structures. Mansions like being placed near the town center, near other mansions, and near other city structures as well, but they differ from houses in that they earn more points for many of these adjacent structures, but their range is lower than houses. Shamans like being placed near nature, but hate being placed near each other or other noisy structures.

Sometimes placement is about finding just the right place to put a structure so it earns the most points from buildings in the area, and sometimes it’s about getting an oddly-shaped building to fit as tightly into its surroundings as possible, almost like Tetris in that respect. This actually makes for one of my few frustrations with this game, and that is that it can be fiddly at times getting a piece to go in just the right spot, and you’ll sometimes find yourself moving the cursor back and forth trying to find the “sweet spot” where the placement works how you want it. Giving players the ability to use directional buttons to move the cursor instead of requiring them to use the analog stick would have helped to remedy this issue. Also, while we’re talking about the game’s controls, it bears mention that the Nintendo Switch version of the game does not support the touchscreen, even though it seems like that would be a great addition to this game.

I suppose there is one other criticism of Islanders that I can make, and that is that in part due to its simplicity, it doesn’t feel like an especially deep game. There are absolutely strategies that players can aim for here (though they’re not always clear), and the game is subtle about hiding development trees behind rudimentary A or B choices when offering sets of structures, with some of the more difficult-to-place structures only available after other structures have been placed. However, there definitely feels like there could have been something more to this game, even if I can’t quite put my finger on what.

However, the counter to this line of thinking is that for its shockingly low price tag of $5, Islanders doesn’t need to be deeper than what’s on offer here. And it’s hard for me to complain about this game when I can happily spend 5-15 minutes at a time growing my little city, or drop a few hours into a marathon, trying to top my best score and place higher on the leaderboards. If you find yourself on the fence about this game, I would argue that the low price tag should make it far easier to pull the trigger on giving this game a try, especially if you enjoy Management Simulation-style games or Puzzle games, or are looking for something mellow and relaxing to play. Islanders is a joy of an experience, and I can’t recommend it enough.

tl;dr – Islanders is a family-friendly Management Sim-style game with Puzzle elements that has players placing buildings on procedurally-generated islands. This is a game that boils down the Management Sim genre to an elegant simplicity that makes for a truly compelling experience, and one that is absolutely worth the tiny $5 price tag, even if it could stand to have a little more depth.

Grade: A-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2021 Game Awards:

Winner:

Best Value – Islanders is a beautiful, calm, relaxed game, and one of my personal favorites of 2021, and for this game to sell for only $5 is absolutely bonkers to me. While this year’s finalists in this category all pack a lot of value into their dollar amount, Islanders is one game where I felt like there must have been a mistake made with the pricing… a mistake I’ll gladly exploit.

Most Underrated – This is the award for the game I feel was most wronged by its Metacritic score. Some of the games on this list got terrible scores despite being pretty good, and others got moderate or even good scores despite being outstanding games. This is a case of the latter. While Islanders may be a bit lacking in depth, it is an immensely enjoyable game, and one of the games that brought me the most joy in 2021, and while 75 is a good score on Metacritic, in my eyes, it isn’t nearly as high as what this game deserves.

Most Efficient Use of File Storage Space – All of the other finalists for this award were noteworthy for packing a great presentation into a surprisingly small amount of space. Islanders, meanwhile, packaged a solid presentation in an absolutely tiny amount of space. I can see some of how this game kept its file size down, by keeping textures to a minimum, not including voice and having a simple soundtrack. However, 154MB is smaller than most 2D pixel art games I see on the Nintendo Switch, so it truly feels like there’s some kind of wizardry going on here.

Runner-Up: Game of the Year, Best Strategy Game/Simulation, Best Puzzle Game

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Islanders

Genre: Management Simulation / Puzzle

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

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Review:

With the 2025 release of this game’s sequel, Islanders: New Shores, I thought I would look back at the original Islanders to see if it saw any improvement on Nintendo Switch 2. I wasn’t expecting much – New Shores had some minor improvements but nothing outstanding.

Let me just say, the original Islanders is a completely different story.

Right from the start, there is a massive improvement in load times – On Nintendo Switch, Islanders took 8 seconds to load the opening logos, and 20 to load up your opening island. Nintendo Switch 2 cuts those times down to 2 seconds and 10.

However, as impressive as the loading time improvements are, they don’t compare to the improvements to resolution and framerate. Right away, this game looks so much clearer and cleaner on Nintendo Switch 2. The difference is like night and day. I don’t have the equipment to measure it, but you can definitely tell this is a massive improvement.

Out of all of the Nintendo Switch games I have tested on Nintendo Switch 2 so far, Islanders is absolutely one of the biggest performance improvements I’ve seen in any game that didn’t get a Nintendo Switch 2-specific patch. And since this is already an incredible game selling for only $5, I would strongly argue that this is a no-brainer for any fan of Management Simulation and Puzzle games on Nintendo Switch 2.

tl;dr – Islanders is a family-friendly Management Sim-style game with Puzzle elements that has players placing buildings on procedurally-generated islands. This is a game that boils down the Management Sim genre to an elegant simplicity that makes for a truly compelling experience, and one that receives significant performance improvements on Nintendo Switch 2, even without a patch. This is absolutely worth the tiny $5 price tag, even if it could stand to have a little more depth.

Grade: A

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2025 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Free Nintendo Switch 2 Game Upgrade

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