Nurikabe is a challenging logic puzzle about rivers and islands. The objective is to ensure all islands have exactly 1 number and are the correct size, and all rivers are connected and don’t include any squares.
And if that sounds familliar, you would be right. Islands of Insight logic grids are a superset of this. Nurikabe on its own is similar but with only 4 rules:
- Exactly 1 number per island.
- Island size equals island number.
- All water connected.
- No 2×2 areas of water.
This leads to a easy to learn but tough to master puzzle set that gets explored through the game’s campaign mode, containing about 300 handcrafted puzzles to go through, from tutorial to super-expert bullshit.
The game includes an endless mode, which randomly generates puzzle grids on 6 different difficulties, but the puzzles here aren’t quite as elegant as the main campaign is. The 3 daily puzzles that cycle every day mostly suffer a similar fate, but some special dates have special boards, such as Valentines day having all heart shaped boards.
Where this game shines though is the level editor. Anyone can make levels, decorate them how they wish, and have them validated as unique by the game, and then upload them to the Steam Workshop as individual levels, or user created campaign packs.
Yes, I said decorate
While I’m a massive fan of the simple elegant design of Island of Insight’s black and white squares, Nurikabe World blew me away with the gentle sound design, and wonderful visuals, growing trees, houses, windmills, and temples out of the completed islands. Each puzzle can pick from 2 themes, Finland and Japan, as well as one of the four seasons, each having their own ambient sound effects, colours, and foliage palettes. Autumns are golden hues following the trees losing their leaves, and the wheat fields growing tall. Winters are snow and ice with the aurora visible in the background.
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2964540 £8.50
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