Find out how open world multiplayer puzzle game Islands Of Insight works in its open playtest
Friends, flying and floating islands
Announced earlier this year at Summer Game Fest, Islands Of Insight is, somehow, both an open world multiplayer game, and a puzzle game - something akin to The Witness but in a fantasy world you share with other players. There are serene floating islands, wide open flying and a varied chocolate box of puzzles. Publisher Behaviour Interactive (from Dead By Daylight fame) have now announced a free open playtest, available to everyone from now until September 21st. As lovely as the game looks, I’m excited to try Islands Of Insight for myself.
Islands Of Insight is really a melting pot of different puzzle types. Some perspective puzzles require you to line up objects in the environment (hence my Witness comparison), some Tetris-esque tablets have you fit together blocks, some challenges feature more typical box pushing, and then there are brain twisters I can’t begin to understand. Not without playing the game first, that is. That variety probably means that you can focus on whatever your mood calls for. Take a nature walk and look for patterns in the sky or sit down and burrow your eyebrows in concentration.
The Witness’ main strength was that, if your brain froze on a particular puzzle, you could just very slowly walk to another. I’m happy to see Islands Of Insight play with - or at the very least simply expand upon - that structure. I do have some reservations about the Ubisoft-style icon-filled map, which can sometimes feel more like crossing off a to do list rather than playing. But well-designed puzzles don’t go stale as fast as clearing endless forts does.
Islands Of Insight comes from developers Lunarch Studios, who previously made the RTS-inspired deckbuilder Prismata and the cutesy puzzler Jelly Is Sticky. To get your hands on their new brain twisters yourself, simply head to the Steam page and press the “Request Access” button. There’s no release window yet, but producer Carla Rylance says it’s still in “active development.”