Minute of Islands

While having charming graphics that reminds me a lot of Adventure Time and a very good soundtrack, Minute of Islands doesn't have anything else going for it. The gameplay is lackluster at best, just a few platforming parts and puzzles here and there, otherwise it's just walk in the direction your magic wand indicates and watch a few cutscenes until the end. Even if the story does have its moment, I don't find it particularly interesting and I would have preferred watching it as a 30 minutes short or even a movie rather than this game deprived of any depth in gameplay.

I wanted to like this, but it's too boring. Exceptionally cute visuals and sounds, but it's a linear sequence of cutscenes that you can't interrupt or make faster. There are sometimes very simple puzzles between one cutscene and the next, that you can solve by moving about maddeningly slowly around the landscape. The only choice left to the player is, "do I explore every tiny detail looking for the last 1 or 2 optional cutscenes, or do I go to the next?" I read very good reviews about the story and the ending, but I can't be bothered to finish the game.

This game lives and dies by its plot, visual style and sound design; it's all about the aesthetics, but it's not much of a game; you're here for a sightseeing, art-appreciation trip, NOT Super Mario Bros. This is NOT a game you play to come away from in a good mood; it's very quiet, contemplative and self-reflective, and beckons you to do some soul searching in real life; it's VERY moody; best played when you're in a bad mood. The comparison to Adventure Time is apt ONLY to its visuals, but it's a serious story, no comedy whatsoever. Visual warning for marine-life carcasses being feasted upon by avian lifeforms; a very sparse few scenes in the game are veritable visions of HELL; there's an island that's essentially a mass of marine-life corpses FUSED TOGETHER. It's kind of death metal, at least. The platforming sections are tedious at best, a lot of unnecessary jumping, seemingly randomly placed steps, and vertical shafts that're time-consuming to traverse (think ladder-from-Metal Gear Solid 3 joke), often with a lot of backtracking you have to do manually, as opposed to getting an automatic exit when you finish a "dungeon." At some points, there are obstacles to avoid, and if you hit them, you get sent back to the beginning of that area; some areas (the hallucinations) involve gathering "spirits," and if you collect them out-of-order, you also have to restart from the beginning of that section; very slow, tedious and time-consuming, and that's even when you're able to run. The last 2 pairs of islands only had short scenarios, like they got tired of making the game... As someone else has already said, probably would've been better as an animated short film, or at least as a point-and-click adventure title. Played this game through GOG Galaxy, but only HALF the Achievements popped, despite actually fulfilling their requirements. A rare visual glitch here-and-there, involving background scenery overlapping foreground scenery.

The artwork is definitely the best part of the game, and I can definitely see the Miyazaki-influenced ideas and imagery. The general story is simliar to Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind, with a lone female hero trying to fight a miasma that's killing everything. But strangely, she's kind of a jerk to some people, judgemental, even attacks somebody to steal something of hers. Kind of an unusual approach, and especially the ending, which will feel like more of a letdown but is kind of reflective.(I had to look up whether I had somehow picked a "bad" ending but there's only one) Some nitpicking about slow repeated animations, and I wish they could have dialed down the narration, or ideally found a way to eliminate it completely so it would be more a piece of art with visual storytelling.