I’ve been playing through Angeline Era and I’m nearly done with that, unless it hits me with a surprise extra act. While I was playing that, I was also playing something that caught my eye before the end of the Steam sale. Do you remember ISLANDERS by Coatsink? As it happens, it got a sequel a few months ago, and since I really liked that game, I was eager to dig into this. And so, I’m taking a short detour to yap about ISLANDERS: New Shores!

New Shores is a revisit of ISLANDERS. In fact, I encourage y’all to just look at my post on the original one so that I’m not just regurgitating summary like a video essayist, because I largely feel similar about the games. Was I being too much of a nerd trying to read a colonialization angle into things? Maybe. But we currently live in an age with open desires for land grabs, so I don’t care.

So, instead, let’s focus on the new stuff! One of the new additions that New Shores brings is boons. After reaching certain points, you get a boon to spice things up. There are simple gifts like an extra statue to place, or a platform to build on. Then there are some spicier things like making it so that you can place buildings of the same type near each other while removing the score penalty; it’s really handy for stuff like towers when there’s only one ideal place for towers to feed points off of. A fun one is the wisp boon, which jumps between buildings placed near where it once was and blesses it with more points. If you’re casually playing the boons might not feel like much, but if you’re chasing after high scores they’re, well, a boon.

Though, an addition that really draws me in is challenges. The challenges change the conditions of the game and tests your understanding of the game’s mechanics. That wisp stuff? There’s a challenge where you exclusively make points through wisp point gains, so you need to plan for clustering things together. There’s a few speedrunning challenges that call for fast and efficient building. There’s a challenge where a building pack gets cancelled out when you pick its opposite when you level up, so you really gotta plan ahead for good building in the future when half the stuff becomes off limits.

New Shores is a casual experience, but the challenges turns it into a more cutthroat puzzle game. I spent, like, an hour on this challenge, and what do you mean I’m not even halfway to unlocking something to take photos with? I said in the past that I fell out of love with games that call on lots of replayability like New Shores is presenting me… but the sheer ease of play makes it more attractive.

Overall, ISLANDERS: New Shores is a great revisit of a game I liked. Want the sheer joy of building up of a cool place? Want a casual experience that can become something more hardcore if you wish it? This might be something for you.