"Minute of Islands" is yet another of literally thousands of console ported 2D retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. It's a handheld (Nintendo Switch)/console game that's also been put on Steam as a bit of an afterthought, as it's very much designed for the handheld/console gaming audience.

This one has slightky production quality than your usual Adventure Game Creator construction kit job, but not much. It carries a story about a young girl who has to deal with various psychological traumas and other problems as this game attempts to be more "art" than "game". And it's true, games can be art, but only when they exceed the sum of their parts... when "artists" try to just dump their work onto Steam without pairing it with an exceptional gaming experience, this doesn't make art better, it just makes gaming worse.

Trying to address social issues through the medium of video games is misguided and can be harmful. While it's plausible to suggest the intention was noble, this can do more harm than good. Game developers are not professionals in areas of mental health and social problems, and when they use video games to pretend they are, this can cause far more harm than good. It's my opinion that it's improper to use video games to push political or social agendas. Apart from the harm such hamfisted attempts at addressing social problems can cause, this offers zero benefit to PC gamers. People suffering from health issues or other social problems should seek out professional help rather than going to crap shovelware video games attempting to get sales by exploiting such problems for their own benefit, as is the case here.

There's an overwhelming amount of mediocre Visual Novel/E-book style cutscenes in this game. The developers failed one of the most basic, fundamental requirements of game design.. "Show, don't tell." So you'll spend a huge amount of time not playing the game, but clicking through endless lines of poorly written VN text cutscenes because the developers couldn't work out how to relate their narrative through the game mechanics, and decided instead it would be better to compete with reading a book for your time.

We're here to play games, not read through hours of garbage intersituals. My gaming rig is not a Kindle.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

The game is comprised of somewhat mediocre hand drawn 2D illustrations instead of professional looking 3D game assets. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget to arrange someone who can create graphical assets properly, or lack of talent. Regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is very low, beneath what PC gamers have come to expect in this era of cutting edge photorealistic 3D graphics. At least it's not pixel "art", but if you're looking for contemporary, immersive visuals, this game is a fail.

While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals.

Arrogantly, the developers demand you should find a way to plug headphones into your gaming PC to experience the craptastic audio they shovelled into this terrible game. I run a 9.2 surround sound system for my gaming rig, I'm not interested in downgrading just because the developers demand I experience the game in a compromised manner.

Developers must never dictate to gamers how a game should be consumed, it's their JOB to ensure a game is experienced well on any gaming rig. Failure to do this is a failure on their part, and not the gamers.

The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just point and click stuff like a browser/Flash game. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.

Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The game never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players launching this game every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just aren't using it.

So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

"Minute of Islands" has the farcical price of $20 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.

For comparison, the $20 asking price for this game could get you games like "Age of Empires IV", "Yakuza 0" or "Red Dead Redemption 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

My newest game. The graphics are great, the control sometimes irritated me. The story and soundtracks are great. 9/10 for me