You do this by light puzzle-platforming and exploration, finding sets of purifiers to cleanse the air of spores before retreating below to awaken the giants one by one. You play Mo, a young tinkerer who must explore the underground of nearby islands in order to awaken four giants and repair her world on the brink of collapse. Minute of Islands is a game that is both simple and complicated to explain.

In the end, however, the game surprised me with an emotive, disruptive last quarter, which ended up providing a disquietingly beautiful conclusion – even if the whole product can be a bit rickety. While I would never dare to suggest that these games are all the same, especially considering the number that have affected me in small or great parts, I can understand how an outsider might make a mockery of it.Įven with my distaste for that aphorism, I had it a lot on my mind during much of my playthrough of Minute of Islands, an indie puzzle-platformer by German-based Studio Fizbin, as it seemed to go through the motions that a lot of its fellow indie games had inspired. There’s a joke I hear around the gaming community sometimes that’s some variation of “every game these days is either about a man with a gun or a woman with depression.” While obviously reductive for comedic purposes, at times it feels like there’s a real strain of truth to that observation, as more and more AAA games become open-world shoot fests that you can all play with your Buddies™ for Hundreds of Hours™ while indie games in turn offer personal, abstract, non-violent games that often center around mental illness or other struggles that are difficult to headshot away in real life.

Minute of islands gameplay