Islands of the Caliph Reviews

Amazing game!

SOFTLOCK: I prayed at the mosque in Shifa and it softlocked the game. This was immediately after learning prayers, and after using the prayer rug twice. Also it was at night. No idea if any of these things factor in, but it wiped out a bunch of progress. This ocurred on 2/26/25. Some other feedback: I do not think keyboard only is a valid design choice. It forces every interaction with the game to feel like you're operating a machine, rather than playing a character. It makes navigating the inventory feel so much worse than it needs to feel. Outside of the keyboard only thing, I think Islands Of The Caliph will be super interesting to folks who like retro blobbers, but maybe not to players who like more modern Grimrock-y stuff. The pixel art is lovely, movement feels fluid, and there's a real funk to the game that I haven't seen anywhere else in a long time. A lot of its design just isn't optimal---including the keyboard only controls---and sometimes this produces little avenues of design that feel like they could be expanded upon. For example, you're constantly getting poisoned or diseased or getting blisters on your fingeys, and medicine is bulky and expensive. You have to carry a lot of different types, otherwise your condition starts building up on its own until its swallows your health bar. Poison in Islands Of The Caliph is just about the harshest I've seen in any game, and it (and the fatigue system, and the hunger system) introduces some real softlock potential. You can save anywhere---but because tiredness deals damage and sleep is only possible in certain locations, you *really* shouldn't. Quests are also not easy to track, and it feels lowkey miraculous that the game even has an automap. So you're managing your unwieldy overstuffed inventory and trying to remember where you took quests and if you save in the wrong place your entire playtime might be down the drain due to the game's single save slot per file, and this creates the feeling that you're actually doing logistics for some kind of jungle expedition. Expand the sickness and injury system, and I think it would be really interesting having to do precise and technical medicine on yourself in what is otherwise a straightforward old school dungeon crawler. So why am I recommending Islands Of The Caliph? Well, I'm going to play a bit further and update after I do, but for the time being I appreciate the risks Caliph is taking. It's built different. Sometimes wrong. But it has a ton of heart in it, and I don't think I've seen any other rpgs include complex mechanics around learning Islam. You can have a million designers doing industry standards and best practices, and if you only play their games you'll miss out on the cool stuff that people make when they ditch those best practices, lean into the jank, and design with reckless enthusiasm. Also the soundtrack is frequently a bop. Great ambiance overall, and lovely vocals on the town track. When you're just standing still, not touching the keyboard, this is a great game to immerse yourself in. Edit: Oh. It autosaves when you die. After it deducts most of your money. The money you need for the expensive boats to travel between islands. The money you have to slowly farm off of random drops if it gets too low. The money you spend a lot on traveling because the game is one big interlaced fetch quest with an unhelpful questlog and a clunky interface. I don't mind the ramadan fasting, the 4x daily prayer, the optional clunk that you voluntarily take on to progress the religion questline, but being stuck in a grindlock when the rest of the game is already a massive test of your patience is a bit much of an ask. I hope we get a sequel, and I hope it picks one or two fewer things to be clunky about, but I ain't finishing this. Support it if you have a *lot* of fondness for old school blobbers, or if you want more indie designers to be able to take weird risks (you should.) Wait for a deep deep deep deep sale if you don't have the patience of a saint, however. 2nd Edit: Oh, you lose ITEMS when you die too. Really strongly recommend not doing saves and death the way you're doing them. Soulslike gameplay works because you don't really lose anything on death, just some univested exp, and you can usually recover it. You also don't have to constantly pay that exp to get on a boat. You don't lose vital equipment. 3rd Edit: It is beginning to seem plausible that the item I lost on death was the letter that I'm supposed to deliver to the other island leaders, which is why they're all refusing to meet with me. Stellar! I'm going to see if I can get it back by talking to the sultan again. I really like the islam mechanics, I haven't seen another rpg really make prayer and fasting and tithing part of its rhythm of play (apart from the solmenics in dragonlance I guess,) which is why I'm giving this thing third and fourth chances, but there's only so many times I can bang my head against a wall before something gives. 4th Edit: Unfortunately you have to go back to the sultan to get a new letter after every delivery, so my suffering is not ended yet. At this point I'd trade the automap for the ability to use map pins, since nothing is labeled and all the stuff that's behind doors does not show up unless you're currently on the other side of that door. "Thanks for delivering this recipe book. Come back and find me after I've finished reading it." No I won't. Your quest isn't even tracked anymore. You're gone into the aether. I will never remember your location. The map is a meaningless spill of runes and I am in hell.

I dont know what to think. I saw that some reviews were complaining that its muslim propaganda, and while i dont think that to be true, i cant fault people for that. Islam is presented in as squeaky clean of a light as possible, and while playing the game i thought it was just some westerner highlighting what islam could be about, if it wasnt a supremacist religion, but i read that the author, 'Michael Karl Schmidt', which sounds *very* german, is actually a believer of muslim, so, now, i dont know how to feel. I have not seen or heard anything to suggest that he made this to create propaganda, so for now im inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, but, without the things that would let me call this game, *a game*, its hard to think otherwise. Its obtuse as hell, it literally spells out for you really strongly that if you dont follow the path of Allah you'll bring [spoiler]a [b]literal[/b] cataclysm[/spoiler] down on everything you know, islam is presented as 100% extra virgin pureness with no malice or anything that can even be misconstrued as malice, very little gameplay to speak of, no overarching story, no big bad villain, the UI is [b][i][u]fucking atrocious[/u][/i][/b], because everything requires way too many fucking button presses to do, you cannot swap inventory items with each other, the items will [b]NEVER[/b] stack themselves, the loot you get is almost always trash and even though you can buy animal parts and fishes, and keep them, you should absolutely not do that because you can only sell them, no other uses for any of them, besides the tuna fish, the stat system is completely redundant and i finished the game without spending a single point because i was curious how bad it'd be and it was piss easy, and the game literally ends with you [spoiler]finding the Quran and the Kaba, so now people can pray properly once again.[/spoiler] Ugh... At no point you are ever told that this is your goal, in fact, you are never given a goal besides tons and tons of fetch quests, and this just happens in the last 20 minutes. The worst part is, that while you're under the impression that there's a game here, you are actually having fun. The graphics and the sound design are top notch, the music is cool and fits really well, the combat is simplistic but fun, and the exploration of the mysteries are really interesting. And then you get to the end and then everything is re-contextualized. The mysteriousness of the game, the lack of directions, it all falls into place. Also, you should think about your decisions. Its an old school game, they matter, and it wont openly tell you that 'Clementine will remember this'. You also need to be aware that saving and loading in this game has a huge drawback that you wont know about until you die for the first time. If you die and choose continue as the option, not only will you lose some of your items and currency, but this can and [b]HAS[/b] softlocked people, who rightfully left negative reviews. Also, when you choose continue, the game autosaves over the only save file you are allowed to have, so you are permanently fucked. This is beyond ridiculous and if this happened to me half this review would be made up of fire emojis. With all being said though, i cant in good conscience give this a thumbs down, since, i did enjoy my time with it, despite my major, [b]justified[/b], gripes.