As I said above, the game is very much about grief, loss and coping, so if you find these topics at all uncomfortable then you would probably be better off giving it a miss. You can certainly play the first half or so ignoring the metaphorical commentary, but it becomes increasingly dominant as the game goes on.

It’s certainly worth knowing going in that, despite the cheerful artistic style, this is a game that deals in quite heavy topics. Mo’s world is one where a fungal plague has driven an exodus on the islands of almost all their inhabitants, leaving rot, ruin and a concerning amount of sea life in various stages of dismemberment and decay. It’s a distinctive style, and works fantastically to capture some truly macabre and gory imagery that, in a more realistic style, would be unpleasantly graphic and highly disturbing. The art style is beautiful, even more so in motion than screenshots can capture, with a huge amount of detail and character captured in the hand-drawn environments. Really, though, this is a story about death, grieving about letting go and moving on. From here you guide her exploration of a post-apocalyptic archipelago on a mission to wake the giants who power the great subterranean engines that keep the air breathable.

You play as Mo, an engineer of sorts, who wakes one day in her underground hideout to a worrying quiet- the machines have gone silent.

Minute of Islands is a narrative-focused puzzle-platformer from German developer Studio Fizbin. 2 September, 2021 - 8:49 am by Rob Prescott

Minute of islands switch