Maud Tarrow
The ship's carpenter, who laid or argued about every plank in her. She wants one good tree, tall enough for a new mainmast. She plays Nine Men's Morris.
Early prototype · 2D
Isle
Our first 2D game, and our first that is not a board game. A ship's crew are stranded on a small island after their ship strikes a reef. The first ship to call offers them passage home, and they say no: they would rather mend her. Isle is a working title, and this is an early prototype.
The story
A holed ship and a crew who stay
The Kittiwake struck a reef in the dark and lies half in the shallows, holed amidships. Nobody was lost, though most of the cargo was. The island has fruit, fresh water and an old jetty, and ships call often enough that leaving would be easy.
The crew stay anyway. There is no marooning, no rationing and nobody to escape from. The game is about a project: gathering what the island gives, trading it with whoever ties up at the jetty, and getting the ship to float again.
The island
Gather, sell, build
You walk the island picking fruit. A banana palm gives seven bananas and a mango tree three, and a picked tree comes back into fruit a few days later. Ships on a long voyage will buy anything fresh, and the basket shows what your haul is worth before you sell it.
Five ships work the island run, and one is at the jetty about one day in four. Their schedule is set in advance, so you can learn when they will come. Between sails you gather stone, driftwood and palm fronds to build a well, then a fire pit, then a cold store, which raises what you can carry from 45 items to 135.
The fire is also a workbench. Weave a net, set it in the shallows, and it fishes while you sleep. Whittle a rod and you can fish by hand at the water's edge, pressing at the moment the float dips.
Day and night
A day lasts 24 minutes
One real minute is one hour on the island, and the light moves through dawn, day, dusk and night. The crew sleep in four canvas tents round a hearth. Step into yours, lie down, and the clock runs forward to first light, so sleeping is how you wait for the next ship.
The music is composed as you play by Bloom, our music engine, and it changes at nightfall.
The crew
Three shipmates, three board games
Three of the Kittiwake's crew are ashore with you. Talk to them and they tell you one thing at a time: what they did aboard, what they liked about the life, what they have heard of the other islands, and what they hope to find. Then each one offers to teach you a game.
Jessa Wick
Second mate, who kept the ship's reckoning, and says the reef was on no chart she had. She plays the Royal Game of Ur.
Orrin Skell
The cook, who fed sixty off one stove. He wants pepper, nutmeg, anything with a smell to it. He plays Hnefatafl.
The rules engines are ported whole from our own versions of these games, so they play by the rules we tested there. The boards are drawn again in the island's pixel art, and the crew play one level below each game's strongest opponent, because they are teaching you.
Chapter one
Getting the Kittiwake to swim
The first chapter runs in seven steps. The bosun, Nan Fettle, went round the headland on the first day and has not come back, and a fallen palm blocks the only way to the far shore. With the whole crew you can shift it. Nan is alive but needs medicine from a passing ship, and once she is on her feet she surveys the ship's launch and writes a list of what mending it takes. Maud does the work.
24Real minutes in an island day
5Ships on the island run
3Board games the crew brought ashore
482Coins to mend the launch
We measured the economy. Stripping the island of everything once is worth 112 coins, and more grows back each day. Mending the launch takes about a fortnight of picking, and in testing the chapter ends somewhere between day 22 and day 32, depending on which ships the schedule sends. Nothing in the chapter can be missed, and it cannot reach a dead end.
Status
Where it stands
Isle is an experiment. The art is placeholder from asset packs we bought, the name may change, and it is not ready for testers yet. There is no release date.
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Done
The island
A generated island that checks its own map, day and night, gathering, the basket, and five ships calling on a schedule.
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Done
The crew and their games
Three crewmates with their own conversations, each teaching and playing one of our board games.
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Done
Chapter one
The missing bosun, the blocked shore, the first purchase and the mending of the launch. The crew follow you by walking your own trail, so they never get stuck on a palm.
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Now
Things to do between ships
The well, the fire pit and the cold store, the net and the rod, and the music. This is the build the screenshots on this page come from.
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Next
Seasons, tents and villagers
Turning the calendar through the seasons, tents the crew pitch themselves as new people arrive, and villagers with needs of their own.