Isles of Sea and Sky (Nintendo Switch and PC Review)

Isles of Sea and Sky
Platform: Nintendo Switch and PC
Released May 22, 2024 (PC)
Released October 8, 2026 (Switch)
Designed by Jason Newman
Developed by Cicada Games
This review was played only on Nintendo Switch
$17.99 (normally $19.99) is grateful for the lack of a death counter in the making of this review.

I think Lolo took one look at this and was grateful for his forced retirement.

I guess I must have been feeling nostalgic, because it’s been quite a while since I reviewed an indie game. I was actually checking the Nintendo Switch eShop for retro collections when I saw this in the new release section, and it demanded attention. I mean, look at it! It’s just so ambitious! An open world, non-linear crate-shoving puzzler with a seafaring theme similar to Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker? That sounds awesome, right? And, at its best, Isles of Sea and Sky is exactly what you want it to be. I just wish it wasn’t so damn abstract at times.

At the time this screenshot was taken, it was impossible for me to finish this puzzle and grab the star in the lower right corner. Remembering where certain puzzles are and figuring out the moment they become open to solving is arguably the main aspect of the game.

First off, non-puzzle fans need not apply. If the type of puzzle seen in the clip below isn’t your jam, you might as well stop reading now. Despite being open world and nonlinear, nothing Isles of Sea and Sky does from a gameplay perspective is going to blow your mind and make you reevaluate your stance on puzzle games. If you’re thinking “that looks just like Zelda!” it’s actually barely like Zelda at all. Zelda has the occasional box puzzle. Isles of Sea and Sky is all puzzles, all the time with no combat, bosses, or even dialog.

By the way, there is a story, but it’s told entirely visually. There’s also the occasional monster too, but even when there is, they’re still block-shoving puzzles. There’s other kinds of puzzles too, and actually, the entire point of the game is kind of a puzzle. Isles of Sea and Sky is made specifically to cater to the old school gamer who bitches about games holding hands too much these days. Right from the very start, you’re given no instructions at all for this one. You’re not told where to go. The game doesn’t even tell you what the goal is. You’re placed in a simple puzzle on a starting island, and then it’s up to you to figure out what to do and where to go from there.

This early puzzle gives you the gist of the main concept: hit gongs. When you hit the gongs, their corresponding blocks disappear. If you reset the room, those blocks will return. HOWEVER, like in the above room, if you were to grab the key and then hit the reset button, you would still have the key. Breaking those green blocks with the arrows is also permanent. Some puzzles require you to do one set of actions that breaks a block, then hit the reset button and do something different now that those blocks are removed forever. Any item grab is permanent. Hell, you don’t have to survive the process of getting the item or need a way to be able to escape the room. The only actions that aren’t permanent are crate pushes and gong hits.

Don’t worry, though. There’s no action buttons to push. In fact, besides movement, you don’t push buttons at all unless you f*ck up. One button undoes the previous move or moves and is quite extensive. You can sometimes undo moves even if you left a room. There’s also a room reset button, and if you press it by accident, it can be undone. There’s no lives and you have unlimited fails to solve everything. Oh, and sometimes the rewind/reset buttons are worked into the puzzle design, though even the puzzles themselves adhere to the nonlinear mentality. It’s entirely possible to enter a room that has puzzles you can’t solve now but will be able to later, but sometimes you can solve half of a room now and the other half later. It might take you a while to realize that, though.

It looks like one of the Game Boy Color Zelda games, but gameplay isn’t even a little similar.

The actual point of the game is to awaken four elemental gods on four separate islands by collecting six of their specific gem stones. When you have six (and there’s a LOT more than six) and return to the God, they open up some kind of special block that adds to the puzzle design. There’s also an item on each elemental island, and, while I’m sure there’s probably some kind of trick to finishing the game without the items, I can’t imagine how one could do it. Then, you have to return to the starting island and solve four more puzzles to beat the game. You make progress by collecting stars and keys that allow you to open up more of the game’s world. The closest the game comes to linear design is using the stars to gate you out of areas you’re not ready for. In theory, at least.

This is what I call a “treasure tease” in the Zelda franchise. I stumbled upon this island very early on, but you can’t partially solve it until you’re about halfway through the game and can’t solve the whole thing until you’ve collected the item from the fourth island. And then the game doesn’t even tell you what the crystal ball does.

I got the game’s ending with 67 stars. Afterward, I went back to my save file and checked out a few more of the smaller, non-essential islands that I knew I never finished completely, ultimately bumping my star count to 74, which still isn’t even a little close to 100%ing the game. There’s actually 120 total stars plus a surplus of extra god gems. Like, I found a big cluster that had one of each type on a random island post-credits. To give you an idea how much stuff there is to do, including “post-game” content, I saw the end credits without ever knowing what these do:

I was calling them arrowheads but maybe they’re bird beaks. Maybe they’re lumps of coal. Maybe they’re Cthulhu’s tear drops. (shrug) Also note the star gate with “35” in this picture.

It turns out that they’re the gems you need for the fifth God on a special “dark” level that I think requires you to finish the game first. After the credits, I remembered “oh right, there’s an entire fifth island with mirror puzzles I walked out of.” The island is locked until you get 45 stars, but once I opened it I realized that I was probably going to get an item that let me jump over holes. And I was right. So I returned to that area and found out what those paperweights do.

This is an optional post-game island.

I think you have to beat the game to activate this.

And you need nine of those black stones here.

The thing is, those black stones meant NOTHING up to this point. The game never told me what they do or why they would be important, and honestly, I didn’t care. While I’m sure a lot of people will really enjoy that the game has no dialog or instructions and stays abstract and vague the entire length of the f*cking thing, the problem that comes with that is a lack of tight design. After a while, I was really sick of the vagueness and lack of direction and wondering if I was in a section of the game I wasn’t supposed to be in. There’s a LOT of content in Isles of Sea and Sky and some jaw-dropping awesome puzzle design. But, it’s presented in a way that I don’t really want to 100% because I don’t want to wander around aimlessly hoping to stumble upon puzzles I haven’t done.

There is an undeniable joy in finding new levels, and there’s a TON of smaller islands to explore. Again, you can tell the people who made this were fans of Wind Waker and wanted to invoke the sense of exploration that game had.

Actually, there were a LOT of things that I never solved in Isles of Sea and Sky while still getting the end credits. In 2025, the PC version got an update that included a lot of bonus content. I didn’t play the original build so I’m not sure what’s the new stuff that was added, or if the Switch even got that stuff at all. But there was a puzzle in the water level involving seashells that I never solved or even found out what the point of the seashells was. There was something involving seagulls in the ice/sky level that I never solved. I didn’t find all the music notes in the fire level OR the ice/sky level, and I really don’t care to keep looking. I enjoyed Isles of Sea and Sky, but not so much that I had to ace it.

Here’s a tip: if the snakes in the upper left and right corners have red eyes, that means there’s a hidden path (or something else hidden) still to be uncovered in a level. I didn’t even notice this until after the game and was using the shaking of the Joycons.

While the puzzle design is amazing, the gameplay can be janky. Hidden pathways like the ones seen in the above screenshot you get just by walking into them, and I discovered the existence of hidden paths in Isles of Sea and Sky because I accidentally triggered one via loose controls. In other words, I found something because I took more steps than I intended. It wasn’t a one-off accident, either. Don’t get me wrong: I was usually actively searching for a pathway when it happened. BUT, there were many times where I was focused on finishing a puzzle and discovered hidden paths just because of the loose movement controls. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever played a game in my life where I found more hidden things by accident. It makes me wonder if the controls were deliberately made to be loose and inaccurate in order to aid in the discovery of the game’s secrets. I hope not.

The fire level has three rooms where you have to outwit monsters and shove blocks into them. I really enjoyed these and wish the other main islands had stuff like this.

Did I have fun? Yep. More fun than not? Also yep. But I’m fairly certain I would have enjoyed the puzzles and overall design of Isles of Sea and Sky if the game had made it more clear what the requirements for victory were, or what certain items do, or hell, even what levels you WANT to be be in and which ones you want to avoid for now. The lack of direction all but assures the game will get off to a slow start and have a lot of self-inflicted downtime. It’s artificially slow at times and it didn’t have to be, since that slow start and all the aimless wandering is in “service” to the no instructions, no direction, “figure it out yourself” mentality.

The hero is celebrating the discovery of a music note. Each of the four main islands has six of these “hidden” though if you look closely you can usually see where they are.

BUT, once you start solving puzzles and get a feel for what puzzles can’t be solved until later in the game (and thus waste less time staring at them), Isles of Sea and Sky becomes a very good game. One that might have come close to reverting back to slow and tedious at the end. I was actually grateful to learn that some of the larger scale puzzles are totally optional. I didn’t really care at all about the giant musical instrument puzzles and never actually completed the last two.

I didn’t finish this puzzle and I’m grateful I don’t actually need to, because this crosses the line into being an outright slog to get through.

Had a Facebook follower not clued me in that I didn’t actually NEED to solve the seagull puzzle in the sky/ice level, I’m not entirely sure I would have finished the game at all. To be honest, I was kind of getting bored by the more convoluted puzzles that require you to turn some boxes into bombs that have a fuse based on how many steps you take. Later still, you have to push little tornadoes that you then can control independent of the hero. I had the most fun with Isles of Sea and Sky when it was just pushing boxes. The more complicated the game got, the more I was ready for that game to be over.

For what it’s worth, they’re not necessarily boring. Just convoluted.

Okay, so I wish Isles of Sea and Sky was more streamlined. I don’t necessarily think the game scales properly even if you stick to just the main islands in the correct order they’re meant to be played. You see, the more convoluted the puzzles get, the easier it is to recognize which ones you can’t finish yet. During the water level, I genuinely wasn’t sure if I was going to get an item that let me swim, but in the sky/ice level, it was very obvious (and had been for a long time) that I was going to get an item that let me jump over holes. I’d figured that part out before I even got to the ice/sky island. Additionally, the tornadoes also make it easier to figure out where the “final move” of a puzzle is and reverse engineer from there. I think Isles of Sea and Sky (what a dull sounding name) was MUCH stronger during the first two elemental islands, then it kind of tapered off.

I’m sure this “U” has some significance.

With that said, I easily got $20 worth of entertainment out of Isles of Sky and Sea. It’s an elite puzzler that also does an excellent job at the non-linear exploration elements. Okay, so I personally think the game would have been better served with tighter design that focused a player’s attention, which would have allowed for proper scaling. Apparently a lot of the more abstract puzzles come from that 2025 update. I likely won’t ever go back to finish them, but that doesn’t mean I disliked the game. I’m walking away from Isles of Sea and Sky having gotten the end credits and being totally satisfied with my purchase.

Please don’t ask me to explain what the story was about. The princess kept slapping me when I met up with her, but then I think they made love, then they transformed into Moana and Maui or possibly the Navi from Avatar, and also there were Power Rangers too, at least from what I could gather. Oh, but it’s not pretentious. No sir. Not at all.

I bought Isles of Sea and Sky expecting nonlinear, open world box shoveling puzzles, and by golly, those were everything I wanted them to be. MOSTLY enjoyable, and even when the game slowed down, I wasn’t forced to play the really out-there puzzles to get the ending. So yes, I enjoyed Isles of Sea and Sky, and if you’re into games like Lolo or Baba is You, I think you will enjoy it too. And hell, if you’ve got more patience than me, apparently there’s another full game’s worth of content after the credits. It’s like a brainy indie version of Super Mario Odyssey, only without the variety or jumping or bosses or….. Okay, so it’s nothing like Mario Odyssey except for the amount of content, but I think you got my point.
Verdict: YES!