A potentially good game buried under some iffy plot choices and a steaming pile of tedious busywork. The initial premise is good, albeit a little goofy, and the LI's are all appealing. The render quality is decent, no comments about the sound because I prefer to play games muted.
Now for the bad stuff. The MC is
seriously creepy, and as the player you have very little agency in the matter. During the prologue
No choice given, you are just doing it because reasons. That alone would push Idol Island towards the not recommended category, but then you get to the end of the prologue and into the game proper, and goddamn is it rough.
In order to keep himself and his little group alive, them MC must venture forth into the jungle in search of supplies. While he is there he may encounter animals that have to be fought, or sources of food or water that can be brought back to the camp. All good in theory, but the implementation is awful. For one thing you can only carry about 7 items, most of which will be empty water bottles to fill up at the stream, so even if you do find food half the time you won't have enough inventory space to carry it. The combat encounters occur far too often (it's not uncommon to have to fight a wolf, lose a big chunk of health, then immediately step on a snake, lose more health, then have to fight another wolf, and lose even more health.). The combat itself is simplistic and boring, just attack every round and hope that the animal you are fighting runs out of health before you do. Every jungle screen looks more or less identical, and navigating your way through it is needlessly confusing. Once the prologue is over, this is what you will be doing for around 70% of the time you are playing the game. Fun.
There is the germ of a good game here, but it needs some serious revisions before it gets there:
- Significantly dial back the MC's creepy weirdo factor, or at least give the player some level of choice so we don't feel railroaded into playing as an utter creep.
- Revise the free roam part of the game. At an absolute minimum put directional arrows on the jungle screens so we at least know where to click in order to navigate the jungle.
- Redo the combat. Make the fights shorter and much less frequent. Give the player meaningful decisions to make in combat instead of just spamming the attack button because the only other option available (block) does nothing beyond extending the length of an already overlong fight.
- Either increase the inventory size or reduce food and water consumption. Having the player give up a part of each day (or every other day) looking for supplies is fair enough. Having them spend 70% of their time trying to find supplies and still coming up short is not.
in its current state it's not one I can see myself coming back to.
