Rogue Islands Reviews

I know I only have 5 hours in this game at time of review, but, this is the sort of game where after five hours you pretty much know what you're getting. I still have some different environments to explore, different monsters to fight, different quests to complete, etc, but I've repeatedly experienced the basic gameplay loop of going to an island, exploring, fighting monsters, and completing quests. Its really good! Don't be fooled by the blocky-game design and the gnome protagonist. This is a game about going to a hostile environment, exploring it under a time crunch, scavenging for everything worthwhile that you can find, defeating the monsters that want to eat you, and retreating. Two things make this game excellent. The first is the shooting gameplay, which is crisp, fast paced, and fun. Most of it is straight forward- run, shoot, jump. But there are a variety of spells to create varying extras on top of that, plus, your "jump" feature is more like "discharge your mana to rocket yourself skyward," and as your mana grows, so does it. This makes combat quick and dynamic. The second noteworthy trait is the way that Rogue Islands uses simple and easy to understand rules to offer the player meaningful choices. For example, when night falls the ghasts come out. These can't be killed, move about as fast as you do, and lock on if they see you. The easiest solution to this is to hide in your ship at night, which time shifts you to morning at the cost of the completion of all in-progress food (this makes sense with like 3 minutes gameplay experience, just trust me that its a small but real cost). The secondary solution is to stay out anyways- which is great, because nearly everything important you're scavenging for glows, so scavenging at night is actually easier. But the ONLY way to do this and live is to eat Lumen Berries, which make you invisible to ghasts. But there are a limited number of these on the island, and you can only carry two in your inventory at a time. It takes at least two to make it through an evening, and they're kind of wasted if you're going to spend your time in a death match with the local fauna. So you need to time these evening excursions for the right moment, and make the most of them. There are only two downsides that I've experienced so far. The first is that there isn't much in game tutorial or documentation. I figured everything out pretty quickly, but did have to restart a few times after getting blindsided by unexpected game mechanics. For example, one of the most crucial things you can scavenge in the early game is "gurgleweed." The game will tell you that you need gurgleweed when the need arises. But it doesn't tell you where to find it, or what it looks like. Which... might mean telling you would be a spoiler? I'm not sure, so I'm going to leave you in the dark. Once you know its easy enough to hunt down, but not knowing cost me one game. Which was only like 20 minutes, so, no big loss, but you get the idea. The second is that using items from your inventory takes way more clicks than it ought. Click to select, click to use, click somewhere else to confirm, click to return. Its just annoying. It doesn't come up THAT much (you should do most of your basic item use from the map, not your stockpile) but it is annoying at times. All told, I strongly recommend this to anyone who enjoys the exploration aspect of a virgin minecraft map, and the shooting gameplay of a single player FPS like Painkiller or Shadow Warrior. Edit after more hours of play: Ok, the late game is GREAT. I was a little nervous comparing this to Painkiller and Shadow Warrior- I am no longer nervous about that comparison. Fully upgraded Motworth transforms into a tiny gnomish GOD OF WAR. He hits each island like a hurricane, his feet barely touching the ground as he leaps, bounds, and levitates across the landscape, smiting foes with death lasers and landscape deforming meteoric bombardment. It doesn't make the game easy, necessarily- your foes are more dangerous, and there are some SERIOUS friendly fire issues with the most powerful of your spells. Sidestrafe behind a tree while firing your ultra murder laser and you instagib. Not, you take damage, no. Instagib. You can't lift your finger in time to save yourself, you just die. And try not to shoot yourself in the back with meteors either, that's also ill advised. You fall faster than they do. Anyway, I'm still having a ton of fun. The mechanics of the game evolve from survival/horror/crafting to "I am the God of this deathworld."

This game is great i love the idea...only issue is it is way too hard for me i can't even get past the first island. yes i am bad at the game that is obvious but regardless i would very much rather a mode where you don't die so easily. suggestions would be not starting the game starving and dying before you can even find food, nerfing the damage that enemies do to you and not having to restart completely after your second death. these are only a few suggestions and no doubt in my mind that this game is meant to be challenging but as a player i can only recommend that you make the game a bit easier for those who arent looking for an extreme challenge and just want to explore the game and its mysteries. Once again this is a great idea for a game and i look forward to seeing what you do next.

The concept and style seemed promising. Enjoyed the first half hour. Then: - I unlocked the second spell, selected it, and ... it did nothing. Simply wouldn't fire. No indication of why. Short range? Seemingly not. Maybe it needs more mana than I have? If so, why isn't that in any way indicated? Very poor feedback. - Eating food, which you have to do all the time, takes four keypresses/clicks, including effectively a double confirmation dialog. Tedious. - After 40 minutes, I wanted to take a break. Oh: "If you exit, all progress on this island will be lost." For anyone with kids, that's a total deal-breaker, and is *not* expected behavior for roguelikes. Console games, yes; roguelikes, no. Refund requested. Too bad, since the game did seem original and worth exploring.

I bought this seeing that it was made by the developers of BEEP, which was a great game. So far i like it but it starts out pretty frustrating for me as the instructions are not too complete. This is still an early review as i have only made it to the 2nd island with maybe about 20 to 30 times.. Lots of deaths. It is super smooth on my computer and plays at 4k with top settings. Graphics are great as is the sound. Level design is beautiful and is procedurally generated. Controls are Good with a keyboard, but the pace of the shooting makes it harder for me to aim with an xbox 360 controller. Upgrades and gameplay are not very well spelled out and guides are far and few to be found online at the time of this review so basically you are going to die many times to find how to do something. Perhaps that is the intent of the developers or they are just working on the game first, instructions later. While looking through the steam discussions it was suggested that the game may have multiplayer coming in the future, which will really be nice. I recommend this game, given all the issues i mentioned it is still deserving of the 5 dollar price on the Christmas 2017 sale. While you are at it, check out BEEP, if you haven't. Merry Christmas!

The game is really fun to play, though there are quite a few issues, also one time I died in a game and tried to see if I could close the game and re-open it to get my save back, and instead I got back a save from 2021. But anyway, I was horrible at the game at first, then after I watched a friend play it I learned the trick of NOT BEING GARBAGE, and after that I had tons of fun playing! My main issues are: 1 Un-kill-able enemies exist. 2 The bloat and Horik both have to much health, while the silken mother has to little. 3 You go through a pattern in the game where you go to an island, close the demon portal, then another island, where you find a very, very, very big tree, then another island where you find a structure, then a tree, and then do a boss fight. Wince and repeat 3 times, then a fourth time without a boss fight, but then you just do another boss fight in the next island. And then you complete the game! Overall I had fun with the game, but you should decide if those issues are to big.

Only a bit of time playing but I already love the idea behind this game. Couple levels in on perma death mode and I was sweating bullets as my character was on 8 hp. Then as night fell, I tried to hide but it made no difference.... The ghosts got me. Back at it. Great concept. Lags a little here and there on my mid-level alienware. Lots of fun. I'll update as I get further.

Seemed fun, but there's a consistent issue with win7-64 bit installs (check the discussion boards!) where it stutters massively--literally 1-2 hangs every 5 seconds. These aren't new issues and I'm not sure it's going to be fixed any time soon. That said, the game play I encountered seemed interesting and fun--and if/when they fix this stutter issue, I'm happy to return. I'm not going to say "Don't buy it" but if you get the stutters, know that there's nothing client-side that can fix it.

This game had potential, unfortunately the original developers were scammed into releasing it to crooks who promised to update and help build their game. Instead the scammer bankrupt the developers and the game stopped updating and died. Don't buy this game, its unfinished, buggy and unbalanced. It looks awesome but you get maybe 4-5 hours playtime and some enemies one shot you while others you one shot. You clip into walls, fall through the world, get lit up by invisible foe's, and many more irritating problems. If you have to play it get it for 2$ or less

Ok, yet another 'not yes, not no' recommend. This is not a bad game, and there are some fun aspects to it. But it slips over into 'not recommend' because of how many times I had to platform my way up those damn trees. It's bright - psychadelic almost. Minecraft on acid, without the building stuff. I mostly liked the aesthetic, although it does suffer from every island feeling pretty similar to every other island with slight variations in theme. Out of the gate it was pretty brutal I have to say. Even playing on 'easy' was punishing to begin with (well, most of the way through tbh, but hey). First time I get off the boat and the first outcropping of land has about 4 of the introductory skele guys and they just wasted me. Died, repeat, died, repeat, title screen. All within a few minutes. And the 2nd game was very similar as I experimented with keyboard+mouse vs controller. The controller just wasn't going to do it for me - perhaps with the later locking/homing missiles meaning your aim is not such a big deal the controller would have been ok, but with your initial zap needing to be aimed fairly directly at the mobs the controller just seemed too inaccurate to aim while trying to keep moving to avoid getting hit. The 3rd game I was both frustrated, but also had a better idea of what to expect, and ... I played it through to the end. In many ways it is a small enough, simple enough game (and that's not a criticism - a well made small, simple game can be an utter joy) that it mostly didn't need instructions. BUT there were a couple of things that really needed to be more obvious, or better explained. The 'nightmare' items that allow you to revive after death are pretty critical, obviously, and as a new player you're going to need to know what you need to make more of them pretty much instantly, and checking under water is not as obvious as it should be... I guess as a 'rogue like' it's ok for the game to just punish you straight up until you work out what you need to know. But particularly with the 'nightmare' items once you know (and you're not playing hardcore) then there's pretty much no reason to fail the game which is why once I'd figured it out I pushed through to the end instead of constantly having to restart. The 2 mechanisms that force you to keep moving ahead - the day/night cycle, and the food (omg the food) - both mostly annoyed me. I get why they're there, and they do add a constant tension which the game needs, but urrgh. The day/night thing pretty much forces you to make short sorties and scarper back to the boat to hide when the ghosts come out. It makes for a very fragmented experience, and always this sense that 'really, I have to head back already?' which ... yeah. Worse, it combines with the constant food grind because you always wake up hungry so if you weren't starving when you get back to the boat you've wasted some food. But you get used to it and just deal with it. But I can't say I ever thought 'jeez I'm glad I have to scrounge for every last scrap of food'. It's not a survival game and the food mechanism just seems particularly gratuitous. The story is ... well, I didn't find it particularly gripping. A fantasy setting with some sort of moral/eco warrior thing going on. Clearly the developers felt a story was needed and tacked it on, but it's all a bit underwhelming. You get a narrator giving you fragments in the intro to each island, although it's not specifically an intro for each island - I guess there's a pool of descriptions they use that are loosely tied to the general area because it will play a different fairly generic narration if you quit and continue for example. That's kind of nifty in some ways, but also means that it all feels pretty generic and only tenuously connected with the actual gameplay. The combat, and this game is mostly about the combat (ok, combat and platforming but I'll get to that), is ok. The 9 spells seem perfectly functional. I used 4 of them a lot, 2 not really at all. I liked that there were tradeoffs, and the downside to some of the spells is potentially fairly severe (I think in the end I killed myself using the basic pyro spell more often than I got killed by mobs), but you can choose to risk it or not and live with the consequences. The feedback on spells hitting was a little bit cute (increasing frequency of a little 'ping' sound) but also surprisingly effective at letting you know what was going on at range. There aren't that many different mobs, but they are quite distinct. Some of them will strike fear into your heart once you experience how brutal they can be, and that's good. They each have some distinct audible cues with their attacks which works well if you learn what to listen for, but still I got close to one-shotted (on easy) quite a few times due to a mob coming from the side or behind me while I was focused on something else. I can't imagine playing this on hardcore - you'd have to be insanely dedicated to this game, and to me I just can't imagine the appeal in this case. But then there's the platforming. At first I was a bit incredulous - you want to turn this fantasy action shooter thing into a platformer for the main quest goal in most of the islands? Really? The first you encounter is little floating islands which I hated the first time I attempted (your character's jumping ability improves over the course of the game, and initially it just seems very frustrating - and less than obvious is that your jump is magic based, so you need to make sure you're not low on magic, and don't try jumping any height on an empty stomach), combined with fatal falling distance. But then you get to the first tree, and I just found the trees so frustrating, and there are so many of them. The demonic gate closing islands were blessed relief from the tree climbing ones. And the platforming is why this gets a down-vote.

Every 2 or 3 months someone named Jane comes to the forums to tell us there is a full time development team working on improving and finishing the game but nothing ever happens. Read the news and the forums. It's not worth more than $3 or $4 in it's current state. I'll change my review to a positive one if any progress is made of the game.