Minute of Islands

When I first cycled through the pictures of the new game Minute of Islands, I assumed that it was going to be a light-hearted adventure starring a young girl in a long yellow dress bouncing between cartoony islands. Boy was I wrong. Minute of Islands is a game specifically designed to bum you out. It's slow, downbeat and introspective, putting us in the head of a character who is definitely going through some things. At the same time, it's a fascinating, gorgeous and deeply personal journey that is surprisingly poignant in a time when we're still reeling from a pandemic. It may not be the escapist entertainment you crave right now, but I'm here to tell you that this is the perfect time to play this newest release from Fizbin.

Minute of Islands throws us into a fantasy world controlled by four giant brothers who turn the gears and keep everything running. As they do the hard work, a normal-sized girl named Mo is left to do all of the menial tasks. She cleans up, maintains the brothers and uses her Omni-Switch staff to fix any mechanical problems that arise. She has an important job that puts all the weight on her shoulders and has isolated her from the rest of the world, two things that have clearly taken a toll on the poor girl's fragile mental health.

We pick up with Mo on one of the worst days of her life. The four giant brothers have all stopped reacting, allowing a toxic airborne fungus to spread throughout the islands and kill anything in its path. In order to save her sister, grandmother, friends and everybody else living on the islands, Mo knows that she will, once again, need to risk her own health in order to fix the machinery, get the blood flowing and, hopefully, get the brothers working for a little while longer.

All this is happening as Mo is having what could best be described as an existential crisis. She knows that the giants won't live forever and somebody will need to take over the everyday tasks when she's gone. This is a game about dealing with that trauma and seeing the effects it can have on the people around her. And while you may not live on a fantasy world controlled by four giant brothers, the emotional themes the game tackles are universal. There's a metaphor going on here that can easily be applied to the real world, which is what ends up making Minute of Islands so devastating.

You may have noticed that I've spent a lot more time talking about the story than the gameplay. There's a reason for that. This is primarily a 2D puzzle/platformer, which translates into a game where Mo walks around beautifully drawn levels looking for different paths, opening up closed doors, pushing big objects and using her Omni-Switch staff to restart the various generators. She runs and jumps and ... that's about it. The challenge will often come from navigating the surprisingly complex islands. There are platforms, paths, ladders, ledges and elevators all over the place. It's easy to get lost trying to find the generators or reroute the power.

As a puzzle game, there's enough here to make the game interesting to play. However, that's not the draw of Minute of Islands. Solving the mechanical problems almost feel secondary to reminiscing about the past or dealing with family drama. It may have platforms to jump on and a world to save, but this is a game that is more interested in what Mo is going through. This is about the expectations she puts on herself, the burden of responsibility, the way her choices have impacted those closest to her. She is clearly not in a good place in this game, and our understanding only grows and deepens the more we learn about her and the world she lives in.

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I think it's fair to say that the world we're seeing matches how Mo is feeling. It's messy, chaotic, out of balance and hard to navigate. There's also a dead whale rotting right outside her front door, which should tell you everything you need to know about where this game is coming from. All this comes to life with stunning hand-drawn graphics that make it look like a morbid picture book. At the same time, it's a harsh and ugly world that I didn't want to be in. I always felt a bit dirty as I explored the different islands, which is a testament to how effective the art style really is. This is a great looking game that really sucks us into its dreary world, for better or worse.

If there was one thing that left me cold, it was the repetition in jobs. There's a lot of Mo going around and doing the same thing from island to island, and the lack of variety started to get to me after a while. That said, I suspect this is on purpose. We're getting a small glimpse into the thankless tasks Mo is responsible for, so we can only imagine how monotonous the job becomes over a lifetime. Sometimes saving the world more about restarting a bunch of generators than fighting a big bad guy. Still, a little more variety in the puzzles and tasks would have kept the middle chunk of the game more engaging.

I think it's fair to say that Minute of Islands will not be for everybody. This is not a light-hearted 2D platformer about island hopping, but rather an introspective examination of a girl who is definitely going through something traumatic. The visuals, although gorgeously drawn and bursting with personality, are morose and filled with despair. The art style perfectly matches the complicated emotions conveyed through the well-written narration and deliberately paced quest. The only downside is that the puzzles and gameplay tend to take a backseat to the story, which ends up being the main reason to set sail on this devastating adventure. It may be slow, repetitive and a little depressing, but Minute of Islands is the kind of game that will stick with you for years to come.