author: Sebastian Purtak
Islanders. Top 10 overlooked strategy games in 2019
Table of Contents
- Developer: Grizzly Games
- Release date: April 4, 2019
- In a nutshell: a game about sustainable city building on small islands
We have decided to conclude our list with something special for urban planning enthusiasts. Islanders is a small project of Grizzly Games studio, which tries to implement some brand new features to the genre of city builders. It introduces an interesting idea that forces players to continuously optimize their cities.
The gameplay begins on a single procedurally generated island, on which you have to build your first settlement. By constructing more buildings, you get positive or negative points – depending on what is in the vicinity of your structures and premises. This determines the development of your settlement, because erecting buildings in wrong places may result in severe penalties.
After collecting a certain number of points you can get access to a new island. Although the game mechanics used by Islanders may seem to be simple, they add more depth to the gameplay and engage players for many hours. Each island has a limited amount of resources and space. Also, in each consecutive stage you have to collect more points to continue your expansion. Because of this, you always need to think about the proper location of buildings that will allow you to obtain the highest number of points or the slightest penalties.
Everything is completed by a minimalist and quite impressive audio-visual design. Islanders is a very relaxing title and at the same time a strategy game that should satisfy every fan of urban planning who enjoys solving dozens of puzzles.
Cliff Empire is an interesting alternative to Islanders. It's a post-apocalyptic sci-fi city builder that is based on a similar concept. This time, the Earth was devastated by a nuclear disaster, after which the only inhabitable places are cliffs located high above the sea level. Limited territory and lack of resources are another major challenges. In other words, every stage of further expansion and development of your city has to be carefully calculated. Cliff Empire, unlike Islanders, has a more futuristic setting and offers several game modes, including free expansion mode on a completely flat map.
