Title: Islanders: New Shores
Developer: The Station
Publisher: Coatsink, Thunderful Publishing
Release Date: July 10, 2025
Platforms: Steam, PS5, Xbox Series S/X, Nintendo Switch
Reviewed on: Steam
Price: $9.99 (USD)
Six years ago, the indie studio Grizzly Games released Islanders. The casual city builder featured a minimalist, pastel aesthetic, which was also reflected in the gameplay. Unlike many other titles of the genre, Islanders is as straightforward as it can be. Despite the simplicity of the premise, there’s a lot of emergent, interesting strategy to discover.
But if the original Islanders succeeds by its simplicity, does New Shores’ added complexity work for the game?
Absolutely.
Synopsis
Islanders: New Shores is a city builder. Unlike other titles in the genre, Islanders: New Shores only has one explicit resource: points. Placing buildings near certain natural features or other buildings scores points. If you score enough points, you get more buildings, and when you reach a certain threshold, you unlock a new island to visit.
Gameplay
Much like in the original, Islanders: New Shores focuses around placing buildings on an island. You have a limited number of buildings that can be placed, and once you put a building down, it’s there for good (unless you immediately use an undo). Buildings score points based on what other buildings and natural features are in an area. A fishery, for example, scores two points for each group of fish in its area. Some buildings also lose points for being near certain types of buildings, or their own kind, such as city centers getting -45 points for being near another city center. Other buildings check for how blocked or unblocked their vision is within a certain radius. Lighthouses love having a large, unblocked field of vision. On the other hand, Shamans prefer to be stuck in a small crevice with no vision.
The placement of buildings have large, long term implications for the development of your island. You may curse yourself late in the construction of your island for a poorly positioned building in the early game. Balancing where to position your industry, markets, housing, amenities, naturalists, and resource harvesters requires serious thought. Perks add a further layer of complexity, with some reducing the restrictions placed on buildings, whether it be size, vision radius, or penalties from other buildings. Others place more natural features, unlock rare buildings, or provide direct point scoring. This is my favorite system of the game’s sequel.
I had some notes about the game’s lack of challenge, but Coatsink released an update as I was writing this review. The update contains several new game modes:
- A Short Journey: Limited to three islands
- No Time to Dillydally: 30-minute timer
- Temple Trouble: High temple score is submitted to the leaderboard.
- Fully Stacked: Start with full building and boon bar, but never earn more.
New Shores also has a sandbox mode, where you can freely place and destroy buildings without concern for points. The Sandbox mode also allows the player to procedurally generate islands using several different settings, and add terrain features manually. That extra control makes the difference between a good and great sandbox mode.
Art Style
Like the original, Islanders: New Shores has a low-poly, minimalist art style. All of the buildings unique to the sequel stay loyal to that; none of them would look too out of place in the original. New Shores adds a lot of visual improvements. For example, a day and night cycle that buildings react to by turning off and on their lights. The new weather system also looks great, with wind, rain, snow, or *stellar* battering the shores of your island. The water now features waves, eddies signifying schools of fish, and also reacts to rain.
Furthermore, many of the new island types look stunning. The Volcanic Island stood out to me especially, even though the molten surface made me wonder how my islanders ended up there, or how the wooden sea platforms can sit on the lava without catching fire.
Another underrated element regarding art is the photo mode, where players can apply a range of filters to make the most picturesque island possible. Postcard and Old Film are my personal favorites, but there are also options for Black & White, Sepia, Halftone, Color Gradient, and Retro. Other than that, the settings for this mode are rather limited.
The biggest issue with the game’s art style is a lack of variety. Islanders: New Shores only has seven different biomes, which may feel like slightly more when combined with multiple island types, sizes, color schemes and other generation settings. As with many procedurally generated games, this only goes so far to differentiate the different biomes. But it is fully possible to see every island type on your first run of the game. Some variety would do the game wonders.
Final Score (5 out of 5 stars)
Islanders: New Shores is everything I loved about the original title, but better. There are more buildings, but none of them feel outside the spirit of the original. The perk system is fantastic and adds another layer of strategy without any of them feeling too hard to understand. The artwork is greatly improved, with a cool day and night cycle, additional islands, and better-looking shaders.
I only hope the developers add is more of everything: island & building types, challenge modes, shaders, biomes. And with the pace of updates since launch, that seems very likely.
Does Islanders: New Shores scratch that casual city builder itch? Do you have any picturesque islands you would like to show off? Let us know on our Boss Rush Facebook Group or our Boss Rush Discord.
Featured Image Credit: Coatsink
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