Isles of Sea and Sky

2nd June, 2024

The Gameboy Colour looking graphics are really nice. They effectively use colour for each environment, and rarely do the visuals feels out of place with the look they're going for. Sometimes with this kind of emulation of a retro style, it isn't maintained enough to feel right, but they pretty much do it here.

A bit I like is that you gain power ups on each island. There's two on each: An item and an elemental. An item allows a new interaction, such as the digging gloves you gain on the first island. The elementals awaken previously dormant statues to add new functionality for puzzles. These aren't mixed too much, unfortunately. They mostly stick to their own isles. But there is some near the end, and it's nice to figure out these puzzles with so many moving pieces.

I will say I haven't fully finished all the puzzles, and like any puzzle game that isn't 100% a particular brand of logic puzzle I needed to look up the solutions for one or two particularly tough ones. This isn't really something I can criticise it for, though. I think having those kind of rule breaking puzzles is pretty much required, at least a bit. And that same rule breaking is always going to catch someone off guard at some point, because it's pretty much allowing anything.