ISLANDER
ISLANDER is an idle crafting game inspired by games such as Forager and Minecraft. Use your pickaxe to mine any and all materials you can find, and craft your way off the islands.
[9/12/2020 UPDATE]
Added New Game+! Once you Escape the Island, press Return to Game to continue playing with new recipies and goals!
How To Play
Arrow Keys - Move/Menu Select
Z/C/🅾️ - Hit/Select
X/❎ - Menu/Back
TAB - Save game to clipboard
Credits
Design, programming, art & audio by @CarsonK
With help from the lovely folks in the PICO-8 Discord
With 2 obsidian left to collect, I accidentally reloaded the tab...
I love it! Cute graphics and it got me hooked straight away. I hadn't played minecraft or similar games yet. What does the word "idle" come from in this context? Is something automated compared to for example Minecraft?
You should make a youtube tutorial series. I would subscribe. Great job tho
@Hofnarr The reason I classify this game as an "Idle Crafting" game is because you have to wait (idle) while things craft, and wait for things to spawn after you've cleared an island of it's objects :)
This is super fun! Nice work and thanks for sharing. I really appreciate the save system!
Great game! Very entertaining! However, I encountered a bug: when I got the boat it sailed through the land.
Congratulations!
Very nice! The UI is great and easy to use. I also appreciated the option to turn off the camera shake because it was a little disorienting. Congrats on your game!
Nice job! I especially like the menu/crafting interface, it's simple, intuitive, and a great use of a small number of buttons =).
I do have one small suggestion, you might try speeding up the pickaxe animation a little and adding more emphasis on the impacts, this would make the waiting for processes to complete feel livelier and more engaginng.
Edit:
Oh, it looks like the animation might speed up as you upgrade your abilities, I guess that works.
This is a really fun game. I love the graphics and animation. It reminded me a lot of Stardew Valley, and Minecraft obviously, I haven't played Forager so can't comment on that. I recorded this playthrough/review of the game, but only realised after I'd finished that you can turn the waves sound off--which was the my only real gripe--d'oh! But yeah, I really enjoyed this game. I usually expect the menus to get in the way in a game like this on Pico-8, but these are really well done and don't get in the way of the gameplay.
this game is really awesome in general AND you can save your progress AND it gets updates!
Extra cool game also I found a glitch and also how do you make flags?
This game seems like a game called Forager! That game was fun so I hope this is too!
The game is really fun! I will sink some time into it on the P8 player ;)
Wow! This game blew up! It reminds me of minecraft! Really Fun
with all my experience in this community i never thought this was possible like this is the most well made game in history of this platform this benjamin soule levels of well made
Awesome game. One thing that would make it better would be if you're holding the action button when you move that you don't change direction.
I really like how the terrain can be manipulated to your own will. I wish I had realized that before I used all those trees to make bridges. A lack of wood was a serious problem in the end game until I discovered the item duplication bug.
@Gabe_8_bit pointed this out already, but there is an item duplication bug. The way it works is this, if you have 2 stacks that equal more than 100, then when they should overflow, instead they duplicate, and same for taking them out.
I also managed to craft a gold axe before I made an iron one, which messed up the achievements. I got stuck with the "build the boat" goal after I managed to build the blimp. Also, once you build the boat and go back in, you can't craft another boat because you don't have another flag. But, besides that, so solid game.
Hah, super broke the game.
I decided on this play through not to waste any more wood than necessary to get the achievements so I could more quickly take advantage of the duplication bug. SO instead I shoveled the left most islands to nothing and used them as bridges that spawn stuff, and to build up the islands where I wanted them to get more of the resources I need. (By the way, the middle grade of islands are worthless.)
But, because I nuked the left most islands, when I went back into the game, it couldn't find any land to put me on. Apparently it stop searching after far too soon. Pitty, I was gonna build a maze.
i found a bug noone seems to have reported so far: when you press esc twice to get into game editor, then resume game, you can walk through rocks and trees lol
sadly not through water, as that would make potential speedruns completely broken
this does seem to mess with many other things, as bridges cant be crossed anymore after you do this. tried doing it while on a bridge, simply warped me to the last island i stood on
Any chance of this game having procedurally generated maps? idk how complicated it is.
Finished my saved game today. I enjoyed it a lot. I found myself wishing I could deconstruct old bridges into wood, because I had a little trouble waiting around to get enough wood to build the boat at the end. Secondly, does mulch do anything? I tried to set it down and hoped trees would grow when I was trying to find wood. Maybe there's something I didn't discover. Very nice game.
Ok I have no idea how to find the "grey material" you need in the game+
Also, the goals in the game+ are broken... it still just says escape the islands.
amazing! it is really cool and is giving me 2d minecraft vibes!
Loved how there's a post-game! Thanks for this wonderful cartridge :)
Una pregunta.
Esta Islander en su ultima versión?
A question.
Is Islander in its latest version?
I frigging love Forager, but cuz my computer isn't exactly great, it does tend to lag a little sometimes. So when i saw a Pico De-make, my eyes lit up like a minecraft skeleton in daytime! it runs so good, and the controls are so simple. you've done agreat job, defo going on my favs list
Edit: Only one problem so far, and that's the chest contents. To actually use them, you have to remove them from the chest. which if you've played minecraft or stardew makes sense, but if you've played forager, you can basically put all your stuff in your chests, and still craft things without taking them out of the chest. its actually one of the best aspects of the game, and would be cool if there was a way you could add it here also.
I personaly don't like the controls. I know why you have done it that way, but it think this type of control is designed for a keyboard or pad with much more buttons.
I thought about this and would suggest a context-type control.
You highlight the with the cursor what the player want to manipulate. When you highlight a tree, normaly you will cut it down. When you highlight a stone, you want to destroy it. When you highlight the water, you want to place a bridge and so on.
So simple highlight the matching inventory-item for the highlighted terrain-cell. Now the player must only press X to choose this action.
There is of course a problem, for example when you have a fishing-pole and a bridge in the inventory and you highlight water. In this case you can circle with the Circle-Button through all alternates.
You can mark the alternates by draw a white border around the items, so the user can see that he can do more.
You should add two more "fake"-items for control "Craft/Use" and "Dropdown". When no normal action is possible it should switch to "Craft/Use".
And don't forget you can place items in the pause-menu. You can Place your goal or something in it, the menu-items aren't static, you can change it on the fly.
Highlight the right Item could be a problem, I see three possible solution: Prefer Tools (like the pickaxe, fishing pole and so one), Prefer Placement (when i craft items, i usally want to use them), last one (simple remember the last item that I used in this terrain). Best way would be an option in the pause-menu.
When you have a battle system, live-potions could be a problem. One simple solution would be an auto-use, before you die.
I would love to see this expanded, I can give you some ideas if you want
Great game! I did find a bug however. When I was about to build the boat, I had so many stones mined, my inventory had 99 stones and in another slot 2 stones. I could not create bricks anymore, despite having coal and stone. I discovered I could drop the 99 stone slot, without losing them from the inventory.
So the stones kept duplicating when dropping or moving to a chest, while prohibiting me from using the furnace to create bricks.
I will have another go at the game, trying to collect not too much resources;)
haven't played forager but I assume this is what it's like.
Awesome
This might give you a good idea of why this "inventory slot duplication" glitch is happening, @CarsonK.
My set up for this glitch is to get more than 99 of an item to get two item slots of the same item, one having more items than the other. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to refer to the bigger stack of items as "[1]" and the smaller stack of items as "[2]". After I dropping [1] on the ground, [2] moves closer to one items slot to the left. When I put put [1] back into my inventory, it is now on the right of [2] instead of being on the left. Now when I try to drop [1] now, [1] stays in my inventory and a copy of [1] now on the ground.
Here's how we could fix that:
Because of the way items stack, I think the best way to fix this problem is to let the items stack into smaller pieces, not full chunks. This leads to parts of [1] moving into [2] instead, leaving the rest of [1] into the slot on the right of [2]. That way, the bigger item stack is forced to stay on the left, thus patching the glitch once and for all.
I found another glitch that was definitely not reported yet. It deals with the boat/blimp and reusing it at will without ever needing to craft it again.
After making the boat/blimp, you might assume that the only way to leave the island again is to make another vehicle (if possible). But, just like the Invisible Boat Mobile from SpongeBob or the Invisible Car from Megamind, that is not the case. Using the pickaxe on the tile you placed the vehicle, you'll see that it was just invisible. And, you can use the vehicle again! Some magic trick, huh? And, if you REALLY want to let out your true magician: escape the island using the boat. When you mine the tile you placed the boat last, you won't get a boat; you'll get a blimp!
This glitch might seem useless (because it is! :D), but this trick could be used for speedrunning. Whenever you leave the island, the game acts like you've completed the achievement you're currently on, no matter what that achievement is. So, if someone were to speedrun completing all the achievements as fast as possible, they could keep entering a blimp to finish the achievements in seconds!
Great game CK, it's minecraft... but in 2D... just a question, can the game be translated to another languages? like the ñ one: spanish
@CarsonK
There's a glitch where you can double items but overall I loved the way you made the game (Demake of Forger?)
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