Islets
Review

Islets (2022) is a running and jumping game about a small mouse exploring a sky kingdom to reunite a fragmented world. You play be defeating enemies in each area to gain powers that let you delve further into the world. It's like other Metroid-style games with a large interconnected map, but here the focus is on the quirky cast of Studio-Ghibli-inspired characters and fair fights rather the super hard sci-fi enemies.

As Iko you adventure through the beautiful hand-painted islands slowly finding letters from the characters you meet. Hopping from island to island on your airship lets you work to reignite each location's magnetic core to expand the world with new places to explore as the separate island maps are joined together. Over the course of the game you scour every nook and cranny in order to collect as many upgrades as possible to be ready for the increasingly challenging enemies.

All this is a nice twist on Metroidvania games, but here not everyone you meet is as they seem. There's a tour guide with some rather weird vibes. There's a pretentious warrior classmate. There's a suspiciously friendly frog. Figuring out who is helpful and who is less so is all part of the fun.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Islets 15 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 3 months ago.