Ikonei Island: An Adventure Indie Game That’s Almost Paradise

In the veritable ocean of survival-crafting indie games flooding the Steam catalog, it often takes something special to really stand out from the crowd. Valheim, for example, used lo-fi graphics and robust combat while Subnautica used its deep-sea environment to force players into thinking with three dimensions. Snow Castle Games’ newest entry Ikonei Island: An Earthlock Adventure seems to be taking a different approach. Currently in beta, the game combines the resource gathering and open world of a survival game with the progression and combat of an old-school Legend of Zelda title. While our impressions were mixed, Ikonei Island has the potential to be something truly great.

Let’s start with the game’s strong points. The soundtrack is masterfully crafted. Right off the bat,  the player is met with an enchanting harp score as we explore the jungles and beaches of our new island home. Sneaking through a pirate encampment is accompanied by a delightfully whimsical shanty. The patrol routes of the scurvy sea dogs even match the rhythm of their song. The idea of blending stealth mechanics with elements of rhythm manages to do the impossible and create an enjoyable forced stealth segment! That alone is worth commendation, but there’s more!

Ikonei Island also features some excellent visuals. The art team clearly went all out, using bright colors to lovingly render ancient ruins, dense jungles and craggy rock faces. The landscape isn’t just beautiful, It’s also full of distinct landmarks that players can easily navigate by, even without a map. New areas and upgrades to your base can be unlocked by dedicating resources to larger construction projects, which is a great way to both establish clear objectives and avoid bogging down gameplay with managing a tech tree. Players can also befriend local wildlife to help them make the most out of resource nodes. It’s hard not to grow attached to the wild boar buddy as he smashes open rocks to reveal the precious ore within.

However, the game is far from perfect. Areas with tall grass can obscure the already small resource drops. This can turn pixel hunts into what feels like blindly groping for a lost contact lens. Resource nodes will only reveal that they can be mined if you have the tools to do so equipped, which can lead to confusion at the outset.

The biggest gripe is with the combat. It’s understandable that in a laid-back survival game like Ikonei Island fights can (and arguably should) be simple. But the bare-bones nature of the game’s combat leaves a lot to be desired. Using your starting weapon, a basic enemy dies in five or six hits. You die in three. On paper, this makes sense. You’re just starting out and you need better weapons to dish out damage and armor to take it. But taking damage should be a punishment for failing to prevent it in the first place. And at present, there’s no real way to prevent getting hit when an enemy takes a swing. You can’t block or dodge, and the clunky movement means you can’t evade attacks by running or strafing. When the player dies to a slime, It felt more like a failure of the mechanics than a failure in our tactics. This can leave a bad taste in your mouth. A system that lets you dodge-roll with a double-tap directional key ala Guild Wars or the option to block with an equipped tool (maybe at the cost of durability) could go a long way to relieving this issue.

Ikonei Island: An Earthlock Adventure sports a charming atmosphere, beautiful music and some unique approaches to progression and building mechanics. But it also sports some issues that will likely need a fair bit of tweaking if it’s going to stand on the same level as its peers. Simply put, we’ll be watching this game in the hopes that Snow Fort Games can turn this rough patch of sand into a true island paradise.