ISLANDS OF INSIGHT - A Captivating Puzzle-Based MMO(ish) | Review After 10+ Hours
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- Опубликовано: 11 фев 2024
- I can all but guarantee that you’ve never played anything resembling Islands of Insight: a strange yet serene shared-world puzzle adventure game set across a massive floating archipelago stuffed full of ancient wonders, natural beauty, and puzzles, puzzles, SO many puzzles.
Steam Curator: store.steampowered.com/curato...
Steam Review: steamcommunity.com/profiles/7...
Reddit: / megathemicro
#islandsofinsight #review #pc #puzzles #puzzlegame #puzzle #steam #mmorpg #multiplayer #adventure #adventuregame 
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Hello and thanks for watching, everyone! If you're interested, I recently posted a "Future of the Channel" update here:
ruclips.net/channel/UCYLJS7tXPo-1XA3zeA9TkOAcommunity. Long story short, I'm developing a board game with my wife and will be spending a good chunk of time on that in the near future. But don't worry, I will continue reviewing interesting games that come my way :)
I really don't mind the multiplayer being bare bones because it at least makes the world not feel lonely and I'm far too busy solving puzzles to talk to others tbh, BUT maybe a central hub-type area players could congregate at to chat and show off their earned cosmetics would be a really welcomed addition imo.
Agreed! There is a de facto central hub in the game, but no (even optional) chat function makes it less interesting imo.
Personally I'm happy with it. Games like the witness have a completely different feel due to the isolation that simply having other players visible is a breath of fresh air.
Yay, puzzles :D Thanks mate for bringing this to my attention. Well done, as always.
You bet, my dude! Thanks so much for watching, and I hope you're having a nice weekend :D
Did you find a clear curve with the puzzles you were solving? Or was it too easy, too difficult, repetitive, or any other significant aspect based on gameplay alone?
Each puzzle is rated out of 4 and star puzzles are elite-tier difficulty. I found that the rating scale was pretty accurate, though sometimes I'd blitz through a level 4 and struggle through a level 1. All in all, I think the majority of puzzles strike a nice balance between challenging and satisfying.
@@MEGAthemicro thank you!
I have always admired the core mechanics and sheer genius behind puzzle games but the best kind always seem to lean into 'way too hard for my tiny brain' territory by the end. Some examples of these being Baba is You and Stephen's Sausage Roll.
I was instantly intrigued by the idea of this game and thanks to your review, I could tell that there does seem to be a vast variety of puzzles for each difficulty level. You gave it a very high score of 3.9 too on your MTM Scale. It should allow more people to see if they might like the game and push them into giving it a shot!
Thanks for watching, DD! I, too, tend to admire puzzle games from afar and then struggle mightily when actually playing them. But, unlike in tough linear puzzle games, you'll never get truly stuck in Islands of Insight because it's open world. It's a unique experience and I really enjoyed it :)
If you haven't played it, Patrick's Parabox is a game with some mind bending rules, but overall significantly easier than something like Baba. I enjoyed it a lot, while I found Baba pretty frustrating.
@@Yotanido Wow, just watched some gameplay of Patrick's Parabox and it looks amazing 🤯
Do they have any puzzles that require a co-op element? Seems like that should've been the move if they didn't want to make a full-on chat system. There are plenty of ways to chat with your friends (Discord, etc.), so I get that, but it would be nice if some puzzles required a friend, perhaps in one section of the map or a few islands.
Not really, no :/ I agree that co-op puzzles sounds like a fun no-brainer for this game, but the devs seem really set on creating a "Massively Single-Player Online" game that doesn't require any cooperation.
Can you release a video to show about all types of puzzles 1-2 examples of medium and hard difficulty of each type?
And what happens if you only want to solve one type of puzzle, the game doesn't force you to solve another? What if your favorite type of puzzles run out, they are not upgradeable?
Hi! Sorry, I only have limited time to devote to this channel so I prefer to prioritize reviewing new games instead of creating extra content for titles I've already reviewed. Hope you can understand :) but to answer your question, you are free in Islands of Insight to solve puzzles in any order you wish, and the puzzles "refresh" every day, and there are apparently 10k of them, so you probably won't notice them ever "run out."
Did you play the demo? If so, has the technical performance improved? I had issues with some basic menu functionality for example.
With the puzzles refreshing, are there still ways to feel "done"?
Performance is still one of the game's question marks. I'd say it's butter smooth about 95% of the time, but 5% of the time I hit some framerate lag patches. I wouldn't call it game-breaking, just occasionally annoying. But I never had menu issues.
While I doubt many if anyone will ever truly complete Islands of Insight, I'm sure most folks will feel "done" after visiting all of the biomes, completing a significant number of each puzzle type, and unlocking a high-tier of cosmetic upgrades.
What would be the pros and cons of this compared to something like The Witness or The Talos Principal.
Hmm, interesting question. On a per puzzle average, The Talos Principle is much harder and much more linear-eventually, if you can't solve a puzzle you can't advance the story. Islands of Insight is much, much easier on a per puzzle average and semi-open world, meaning if you get stuck in one area you can move on to another without losing story elements. It's also multiplayer, of course, and while those elements are minimized, you can theoretically receive help from other players. Both fun, very different.
In this game, puzzles get rotated out on a daily basis, so even if you've completed every puzzle in one area, you can still come back for more tomorrow! And grinding through puzzles can be very relaxing.
@@stepexgd6628 It's true-this is the only game I've played where puzzle grinding feels relaxing instead of complex/tedious.
Okay, so, what happens when you max "level"? Nothing? Is there a max? Is there loot? Puzzle Raids? And I'm, being 100% serious.
As is, endgame in Islands of Insight involves unlocking cosmetics, playing new puzzles when the map resets, and maxing out your skill tree. It's ultimately a single-player game, so I'm afraid there aren't any puzzle raids (but that concept sounds rad).
It sounds super rad, do we know if they're going to add new content or features eventually?@@MEGAthemicro
Nice review, played the demo and watched some others play it.
As a game it is meh for me, the puzzles aren't even that challenging. There is no clear line of difficulty and you can't even stay on one puzzle type if you wanted, it is all very inconsistent and heavily weighted towards the easy side of puzzles.
Parkour seems nice but compared to other games it is just too janky for me to have puzzles revolving around the movement system in my opinion. It should either be more rooted into the ground or have enough freedom to not be restricting you accessing puzzles.
I don't mind it being marketed, or not, as an MMO, MP online, "richly" environment (which for me doesn't seem like it) or whatever but it should still retain all the qualities of a game which for me it doesn't.
Patching and game updates, I've been trying to follow some discussions but without any clear line of communication about upcoming patches or anything this game is set to die in its current state. Which is disappointing since they went with BHVR as the publisher which is the same as Dead By Daylight which has an awesome live-service component going on.
Right now it is 40% discounted off to 17 dollars. I feel like that would be a much better initial asking price for it rather than it being the discounted price. So at the end of the day I'm not getting this puzzle game and instead would rather get one that more focuses on one "type" of puzzle than a bunch of mediocre puzzle elements that have been explored to death.
Islands of Insight is perhaps the epitome of quantity over quality. But there's simply SO MUCH quantity here, and most of it is at least mildly enjoyable, so I ended up enjoying the experience. It'll be interesting to see if the devs add more biomes in future patches. I'm not expecting much, given that it didn't seem to sell particularly well.
or... play The Witness. The game that this game is a sad attempt at cloning. :D
The Witness is absolutely sick of course, but I think Islands of Insight holds comparatively similar value in terms of puzzle quality and exploration. However they need to improve player interactions, servers and add non-online. And potentially a few more puzzle types. Otherwise still a strong recommend
Witness and Islands of Insight are 2 inherently different games. Witness is taking a mechanic and expanding on it to its absolute limit. Islands takes several puzzles and and turns it into a scavenger hunt/ collectathon.
@@F2PAlius His comment kind of suggests he didn't play either
@@sadaksara I adore both, but one can't deny that The Witness executes a new approach to puzzle design masterfully.