Isles of Sea and Sky [Review]
What if Sokoban wasn’t boring?
Isles of Sea and Sky. Credit: Cicada Games
With his game originally Kickstarted as Akkura, developer Jason Newman took that premise and ran with it. Isles of Sea and Sky is Link’s Awakening if it was all block pushing puzzles, and I love it.
You wake up as a castaway on a mysterious island. You’ll explore this island and soon ride a giant turtle to visit other islands, revealing the narrative along the way. Cicada Soft describes Isles of Sea and Sky as an “open world puzzle adventure,” and that’s exactly what it is. There are puzzles on nearly all screens in every one of the islands. While there are some areas with gated access requirements, you can tackle the puzzles in any order you wish. If you get stuck on a puzzle, you can simply go elsewhere and you’ll find more. The feelings of exploration and discovery evoke memories of the best Zelda games.
Isles of Sea and Sky. Credit: Cicada Games
Controls in the game are simple—you can move in four directions. Walk into a block to push it, step on a switch to activate it, bump into an object to interact with it. Unlike Sokoban’s puzzles, where you need to get boxes to specific spots, here you must move blocks to allow you to reach keys, stars, and other collectibles. Many puzzles have multiple items to collect, some harder to reach than others; often you must reset a puzzle to find an entirely different solution to get each item. I found the need to reset as being part of a puzzle really clever. Some obstacles are cleared permanently, so they will stay gone when you reset, and it feels very rewarding to open up these paths.
Isles of Sea and Sky. Credit: Cicada Games
Islands in the game have different themes—water, fire, ice, and more. Each one also introduces new gameplay mechanics that add depth and variety to the puzzles. For example, the water island introduces the ability to make waters rise and recede, along with water elementals that you can use to clone other block types. The lava island forces you to carefully plan your steps, because the ground hurts you, while throwing chain-reacting bomb blocks, monster battles, and fire spewing elementals into the mix. Reaching a new island is always delightful because every new addition is just so much fun. Like in a Zelda game, you’ll also find items that will open up new abilities like digging, swimming, and breaking certain blocks.
Isles of Sea and Sky. Credit: Cicada Games
The game’s graphics are in an 8-bit style, slightly resembling Link’s Awakening on Gameboy Color. I believe this is no accident; the game clearly wears that inspiration on its sleeve. The art is executed perfectly to fit the style. The environments, character sprites, and their animations all have a warm old-school charm. The art direction lends itself perfectly to making the puzzles clear and all the moving parts easy to identify and understand, going hand in hand with the game’s intuitive controls.
My only negative thing to say about this game is that there are some puzzles that are not intuitive, because they require information that isn’t available in the puzzles’ screens. However, it’s my understanding that upcoming updates will be addressing issues like this.
There’s plenty to do in Isles of Sea and Sky and I haven’t been able to put it down. I need to play other games for review (and also sleep) but I’m obsessed with completing every puzzle in Isles of Sea and Sky. That being said… you should get it and play it and let me get back to playing it myself.
Isles of Sea and Sky is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 10/10
Played on: Steam Deck
