I'm quite torn on Islands of Insight.
On one hand, the game includes some truly excellent puzzle design. Especially the puzzle grids, the most common type of puzzles, that manage to feel fresh even after solving hundreds of them, thanks to their variable rules. The meta puzzles (or "Mysteries") were also very interesting, and some of them were very cool to solve.
Puzzles that are scattered around the open world change every day, making the game very hostile to completionism. Which, as a completionist myself, I think actually improved my experience! It encouraged me to just go with the flow, solving only the puzzles I passed by when I feel like it.
Occasionally seeing other players in the world make the world feel more lively.
On the other hand, the game just isn't very good from a technical stand point, and feels too unpolished in many aspects.
The game has many bugs / server issues, that never completely break the game, but are frequently annoying (jumps breaking in mid air, progress not properly displayed, ...).
The online aspect of the game feels somewhat incomplete. Although you can ping locations and gesture to other players, with no way to know what puzzle the other player is in need of help with, you can't really meaningfully interact with them. The whole experience/resource system also felt like it was made with this online experience in mind, but just didn't gel very well with the rest of the game.
While I enjoyed the mysteries, I often felt like I had some idea on what could have been done to make them feel substantially more satisfying to solve.
The lore is also completely uninteresting.
Despite all that, if you're a big fan of puzzle games, I'd still recommend you to check this one out. It tries some unique stuff that is still interesting to see. But maybe wait a few months to see if some of the technical issues get fixed.
On one hand, the game includes some truly excellent puzzle design. Especially the puzzle grids, the most common type of puzzles, that manage to feel fresh even after solving hundreds of them, thanks to their variable rules. The meta puzzles (or "Mysteries") were also very interesting, and some of them were very cool to solve.
Puzzles that are scattered around the open world change every day, making the game very hostile to completionism. Which, as a completionist myself, I think actually improved my experience! It encouraged me to just go with the flow, solving only the puzzles I passed by when I feel like it.
Occasionally seeing other players in the world make the world feel more lively.
On the other hand, the game just isn't very good from a technical stand point, and feels too unpolished in many aspects.
The game has many bugs / server issues, that never completely break the game, but are frequently annoying (jumps breaking in mid air, progress not properly displayed, ...).
The online aspect of the game feels somewhat incomplete. Although you can ping locations and gesture to other players, with no way to know what puzzle the other player is in need of help with, you can't really meaningfully interact with them. The whole experience/resource system also felt like it was made with this online experience in mind, but just didn't gel very well with the rest of the game.
While I enjoyed the mysteries, I often felt like I had some idea on what could have been done to make them feel substantially more satisfying to solve.
The lore is also completely uninteresting.
Despite all that, if you're a big fan of puzzle games, I'd still recommend you to check this one out. It tries some unique stuff that is still interesting to see. But maybe wait a few months to see if some of the technical issues get fixed.