The Nerdy Type

Every so often, a game comes along that’s capable of quieting the mind in a special way that borders on trancelike. Every gamer has one of these games, but it’s not the same game for everyone. Regardless of what game it is, it’s the one that you start up when you’ve got a spare hour, only to blink and realize that you’ve missed dinner and probably should have been in bed hours ago.  

For me, that game is Island of Mine. 

Island of Mine is a cozy farming sim with a twist that’s still in ongoing development. It’s hard to put into words what makes it such a timesink for me, other than the fact that it’s utterly adorable and filled with a multitude of features that offer a constant stream of accomplishment-based endorphins.

A refreshing take on familiar mechanics

It doesn’t matter where you go to find your games, cozy farming sims are always there. If you like the genre then it’s an excellent time to be a gamer, but if not, then I don’t know what to say. Maybe give it a few years and I’m sure FPS and RPG Renaissance will arrive. 

What sets Island of Mine apart from other farming sims is the addition of a mechanic that’s often reserved for mobile games, at least in my experience: Land expansion through purchasing additional tiles with in-game currency. It’s definitely not a new mechanic, but it adds an almost indescribably addictive sense of achievement and progress that’s usually missing from farming sims that just give you an inherited, fixed-size plot of run-down land and say, “Well? Now what?”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Island of Mine is the first of its kind. There are other games, such as Forager and Nova Lands, which offer up the same tile-buying, land-expanding gameplay loop. However, Island of Mine manages to combine the mechanics with the cute-sy aesthetic that many cozy gamers yearn for, and it does it particularly well. It’s as soothing to look at as it is to play, with soft tones and curves everywhere you look.

Expansion is key

As you unlock more tiles with Gems, your land gets bigger, and each expansion has the chance to unlock something new for your use or enjoyment. These unlocks range from a new tree to chop for wood, stars that unlock basic features like music and level progression, and even some new friends to meet or dungeons to explore. All features in Island of Mine are locked behind expansion, which means you’re going to need to earn those Gems. 

Thankfully, there are many different ways to do that. They drop when you kill enemies like bats or slimes, they can be harvested from Crystal nodes, or you can sell basic or crafted resources to the shop to earn them. Once you’ve got them, they immediately get spent on more tiles, which get more expensive as you get further from your original single tile. It’s an earn, spend, repeat type loop, but it’s completely addictive. 

Constantly offering up new features, blueprints, areas to explore, or resources is an absolute recipe for success when it comes to retaining the player’s attention. Even for me, with a mind so distracted I regularly forget what I was doing five minutes ago, sinking hours into Island of Mine without even noticing is an easy no-brainer. That ever-lingering suspense about what’s coming next is a hook that you can’t escape. 

Level rewards that make a difference

After you’ve discovered the star that unlocked Level progression, you can start to unlock a new perk every time you increase your level. These perks include double resource drops, increased walking speed, and the ability to make Gems appear every time you do pretty much anything. That last one is really useful, obviously, because more Gems means more land, and more land means more gameplay. 

The whole “new level new perk” thing is far from new, I know, but the perks in Island of Mine are customizable in a way that reminds me of roguelites. You don’t earn a fixed perk; instead, you get to choose one from what’s available, and while it’s definitely not imperative that you pick them in a specific order, some are certainly more useful than others at certain points. 

There’s no point choosing to earn EXP from crafting if you’ve only got one crafting machine set up. That’s a waste of a skill point when the surrounding perks will do things like give you Gems for chopping trees or mining rocks. Choosing the perk that will be the most useful is an interesting way to keep things fresh, and allows for different styles of play at the same time. 

Don’t skip the Town Hall

Time for a personal and shameful anecdote from yours truly. I’m so sorry.

Early into my first playthrough, I unlocked what appeared to be a scary dungeon. Upon entering the dungeon, I was told to be prepared as the fight would be hard and I may perish. Cue some anxiety that led to the accidental avoidance of one of the most useful features of the whole game: The Town Hall. 

In my defense, I did not know at the time that all I’d need to do was defeat a series of individual slimes.

Anyway, the Town Hall, once unlocked, allows you to level up different aspects of your island by handing in resources and crafted items such as planks and fabric. You can upgrade everything from crafting speed to selling prices, which would have been really handy had I unlocked them earlier. 

Coming soon, but available now?

On Steam, Island of Mine is marked as “coming soon” with no determined release date or demo to try. If you discontinued your search for the game at that point, it would end up on your wishlist and rightly so. You should probably go and do that now, I’ll wait… Back? Good. 

If you do want to play a demo of Island of Mine, there’s one available through Itch.io, and it runs in your browser, so you don’t even need to download anything. In this demo, you can play for as long as you like in the Grasslands biome, exploring dungeons and meeting some of the important characters who will help you along when the full game gets released. 

If you want to keep up with development, the developer is very active on Twitter and Bluesky, regularly posting screenshots and videos of the development process that hint at huge and exciting things to come for Island of Mine.