Exposition is only given in the last act, in a colossal information dump, long after you stopped asking questions. Character interactions are extremely thin on the ground, and everything gets filtered through the narration, rather than hearing them talk. It’s never truly clear if this is an omniscient narrator, a long-dead character or a kind of detached inner monologue, but it definitely aims a raspberry at the whole ‘show don’t tell’ wisdom. It does the Bastion thing of having very little dialogue, but slathering narration over the top whenever it can. Minute of Islands breaks virtually every narrative design rule that you can imagine. You’re also responsible for four giants who sit below the surface of the islands, turning pistons that keep the islands and the purifiers powered. These spores trigger madness and then Clicker-like mushroom protrusions on the body, before a horrible death. It’s your job to maintain the purifiers on the islands, removing fungal spores from the air. You’re the only one who has this device, and you’re clearly relied on. In Minute of Islands you play Mo (pronounced ‘Maw’), a young girl who is the custodian of the ‘Omni-device’, a staff-like thing that can activate alien machinery on an archipelago of islands. It’s a cartoon Goya painting.Įnough gushing. The remarkable detail in the environment means you pick out a new rotten corpse or fungal explosion each time you pass by. The ambient soundtrack makes each island lonely and ramshackle, bursting into occasional life.

It’s across the presentational board, too: hulking creatures creak and moan with lumbering animations. We can’t understate this enough: purely in terms of the world that’s been crafted here, and the sheer panache it’s been done with, Minute of Islands is worth playing.

Minute of islands gameplay