Isles of Sea & Sky
If you’d asked me, I’d have told you the world needs more block-pushing puzzle games like it needs more billionaires. But I’d have been wrong. Not about the billionaires thing, they all need to go. But Isles of Sea & Sky proves that there is definitely room for more Sokoban-inspired puzzling.
This enormous game is a collection of islands, each made up of 25 screens that contain unique and quite brilliant puzzles, sometimes multiple overlapping challenges, that become increasingly interesting as you gain new abilities, Zelda-style. The result is a deep sense of RPG underlying the puzzling surface, making for a game with vastly more substance than your standard block-shoving sim. That the puzzles are quite so clever is the icing on the cake of a game that has gone almost unnoticed in 2024, but deserves to be everywhere. — John Walker
