TL:DR
Avoid this game if you're an achievement hunter, as the last achievement alone take dozen of hours.
And that's if you don't fail anything due to RNG upon RNG ...



Quoted from the game shop page :
"You want to build beautiful cities without investing hours on end into stressful resource management? Say no more! ISLANDERS should be right up your alley."

This is a straight up lie.
It was like this before, that's right. But that's no more the case after the game was sold to another dev company.

The game is now a grinding game, and no one should advertise a game as "stress-free" with an achievement as hard to get as "Conqueror" (reaching the 21st and last island)

The island you build on is randomly generated : you may stumble upon a vast sandy beach, an archipelago, or a mountain with many cliffs and almost no flat land, making it difficult for you to put down any building.
The building packs you draw are somewhat random : some building are always there, others may vary.

So you're basically putting down RNG buildings on RNG land.

The devs said on the forum that "Conqueror" can be "done in less than 3 hours".
That's also clearly a lie, as the last few islands ask you to achieve around 4000 points, so you need to plan carefully.
Took me more than an hour for these islands, so 3 hours total for 20 islands ??? I'll believe it when the devs will show us a proof...

In highscore mode there are 21 islands, but :
- there's no way to know how many islands you already completed.
- there's no way to know how many points you need to do to complete an island
- if you fail an island, you start from scratch all over again... imagine throwing away a save after dozen of hours because you had poor luck...
- no new gameplay mechanics introduced along the way, making it even more tiresome

The update the new devs pushed ruined the game for me (and for a lot of other players, according to the forum).
That's incredible, it feels like they removed all the fun !

TL:DR Avoid this game if you're an achievement hunter, as the last achievement alone take dozen of hours. And that's if you don't fail anything due to RNG upon RNG ... Quoted from the game shop page : "You want to build beautiful cities without investing hours on end into stressful resource management? Say no more! ISLANDERS should be right up your alley." This is a straight up lie. It was like this before, that's right. But that's no more the case after the game was sold to another dev company. The game is now a grinding game, and no one should advertise a game as "stress-free" with an achievement as hard to get as "Conqueror" (reaching the 21st and last island) The island you build on is randomly generated : you may stumble upon a vast sandy beach, an archipelago, or a mountain with many cliffs and almost no flat land, making it difficult for you to put down any building. The building packs you draw are somewhat random : some building are always there, others may vary. [b]So you're basically putting down RNG buildings on RNG land.[/b] The devs said on the forum that "Conqueror" can be "done in less than 3 hours". That's also clearly a lie, as the last few islands ask you to achieve around 4000 points, so you need to plan carefully. Took me more than an hour for these islands, so 3 hours total for 20 islands ??? I'll believe it when the devs will show us a proof... In highscore mode there are 21 islands, but : - there's no way to know how many islands you already completed. - there's no way to know how many points you need to do to complete an island - if you fail an island, you start from scratch all over again... imagine throwing away a save after dozen of hours because you had poor luck... - no new gameplay mechanics introduced along the way, making it even more tiresome The update the new devs pushed ruined the game for me (and for a lot of other players, according to the forum). That's incredible, it feels like they removed all the fun !