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Ikonei Island: An Earthlock Adventure – Review

Ikonei Island: A young, dark skinned woman, with her hair in two "space buns", standing in bright green grass, bent over talking to a small, round, polka dot bee like creature. The bee has a little glowing trail around it as it has just done a flip in the air in the shape of a heart.
Befriend the local wildlife!

Welcome to Ikonei Island, a calming farming sim, brought to you by Snowcastle Games, the creators of the cute but challenging RPG, Earthlock, that you can easily sink hours into. Originally a PC game, it was ported to consoles on 21st March 2024, and Treat Your Geek were kindly given a code for PS5 to play and review.

You find yourself washed up on an unknown island. At first, it seems abandoned except for one lonely spirit, but she has a request for you – restore the shrines and bring beauty back to the island. Although, she conveniently doesn’t tell you about needing to outwit the dancing pirates.

Alongside this, you can build and decorate your home, plant crops, collect resources, and craft weapons for the occasional enemy. There are also NPCs to befriend along the way, who are more than happy to fill your quest log with tasks for you to complete.

Ikonei Island: A little campsite with crops, next to a pond. A small blue tent with a treasure chest next to it. Next it is a few plants, and homegrown cacti. Next to this is a large, moss covered, stone wolf statue.Stood in front of this is am anthropomorphic frog man in a flannel shirt, and a small stone statue of a cat like creature.

Honestly, the first impressions were a little mixed for me, but I quickly got past any negative first impressions though. It’s a fantastic game and I sunk a fair few hours into it, completing all of the side quests, finding my animal companions, and bringing all of the areas up to 100% beauty scores.

It’s calm, it’s cute, it’s pretty, and it’s uncomplicated. However, it doesn’t really give much guidance at all and it’s not entirely intuitive. This doesn’t detract too much from the game itself, as you will most likely work out what to do, especially if you’re a connoisseur of survival crafting games. I was able to figure most of it out by just going through all of the tabs and menus. However, if you get really stuck, the game devs and other players on the forums are more than happy to help.

Ikonei Island: A landscape view of the town square. Four whimsical looking buildings surround a paved circular area in the middle. One is spherical with a tall thin chimney like structure on the top. One is a white stone, two-tiered round house with a damaged tile roof. The third is a square, stone building with a blue dome sitting on top. And the fourth is a mismatched, raggedy looking structure of stone and wood.

The controls felt slow and sluggish to me, but that may be more due to other games I usually play needing more speed and quick reaction times. Ultimately, this didn’t matter a whole lot, as Ikonei Island is meant to be a slow-paced, cosy game.

The graphics are simple – and I don’t use the word simple negatively here. The different environments are quite diverse and pretty. While the artwork wasn’t the fancy scenery we see in many big game releases these days, it was still really lovely to look at and did everything it needed to for the atmosphere of the game.

The combat is also simple. No parrying, minimal dodging, no spells, no fancy combos. All you have to worry about is hitting things until they die, which makes it a little button-mashy until you find more recipes and can craft stronger weapons. So for those who prefer easier combat without gimmicks and tricks, Ikonei Island is perfect.

Ikonei Island: An almost top down view snowy campsite. A small blue tent with a cave painting style drawing of a bison like creature. The tent is sitting in very deep snow. It's surrounded by a couple crates, metal lanterns, and street lights shaped like question marks. In front of it is a small, white, anthropomorphic cat creature. She has a pink flower behind her ear. She's stood next to a stone statue of an animal that looks sort of like a chicken. The snow is almost as tall as her. In the background there's a stone statue of a cat wearing a cape, and a bamboo and cloth fence.

You will need a good memory or a notepad too as each of the fourteen areas provides different resources, with no indication or guide to remind you. (Unless this has been added since I played since the devs pay close attention to their feedback, it seems). That being said, it’s an easy game to get distracted by, so much so that you won’t mind having to run around finding everything with the help of the island’s indigenous species.

There are five companion animals that you need to befriend, that you help grow and evolve. They in turn help you find the resources you need to rebuild the shrines. A cute addition to having animal friends is you get to “bond” with them and actually play as your companions, as well as have them follow you around. So you can run around headbutting trees and rocks to your heart’s content, and enjoy each animal’s theme music. You do have to remember to feed, praise, and wash them though, so having all five with you all the time brings an awful lot of upkeep.

Ikonei Island: An indoor temple. In the centre is the trunk of an ancient tree, so large you can't see the roots or branches. Shelf mushrooms dotted around it. Inset into the tree is a small stone shrine. To get to the shrine you need to cross a small bridge across a circular protective chasm around it. The outer walkway has spotlights projecting upwards, illumning the tree in a light blue green glow. There is rubble and stone frogs of varying shapes and sizes. A small, anthropomorphic fox/rabbit is stood by the bridge to the centre.

You need these animal friends to open up further areas too, so keeping them happy and helping them grow is important. Also, if you don’t wash them regularly enough, they get hilarious little stink clouds around them. And for those of you who hate fishing mini-games, there is a companion that does all the fishing for you, so no awkward fishing game here! Unless you like fishing in cosy games, then your luck’s out on this one.

Now, the pirates. You don’t have to fight them per se, just manoeuvre around their bases and knock down the crow’s nests. They’re simple stealth puzzles (I use the term stealth loosely here) where you need to manoeuvre around the base without being seen by the pirates as they dance and turn on the spot, or you get sent back to the beginning. This little gimmick was infuriating at times with the sluggish controls, but it did mean more time listening to the pirate’s music which was my favourite music in the game.

Ikonei Island: Pirates! This base is situated in a dusty old desert area. There's a maze of clay walls, and spiked wooden fences. With pirates mid dance around the maze. There's a Pirates crows nest, with an accordion playing pirate. There are small round cannons dotted around, one of which has just been fired by a small human boy, who's crouched over and protecting his ears. The cannon ball that's just been fired has made contact with the crows nest.

On the subject of the music, there is a constant calm and melodic tune in the background. This adds to the cosy feel and helps immerse you in the relaxing vibe of the game. I never felt stressed while I played, even when surrounded by four or five enemies, losing hearts, or chasing after frogs (the frogs are important, you can’t progress without them!)

The story is short and sweet, but there are lots of things to do, levelling up the beauty of the area, growing your animal allies, uncovering secrets, and finding recipes around the island. Ikonei Island game did have a few glitches, small but slightly panic-inducing things like your inventory chests disappearing or the screen freezing. These glitches resolved themselves pretty quickly. Also, when I looked on the forums, Ikonei Island has ongoing updates and seasonal events, with a communicative dev team who had responded to pretty much every thread and question I looked at.

Ikonei Island: A delightfully laid out garden. There are four neat rows of crops planted, with a walk way down the centre. At the front end of the walkway is a quaint little wooden archway, and tiki torches. At the back is a wooden trellis with flowers winding up it. Standing in the walkway is a girl wearing a gardeners apron and blue bobble hat, holding a watering can. Behind the garden is a glowing stone sphere, with a frog sitting on the top, and also what looks like a stone stool with a glowing blue top.

The game has co-op which I didn’t explore, though I imagine it makes resource gathering much quicker, and I wouldn’t say no to chilling out with friends while we restore Ikonei Island

Overall, Ikonei Island: An Earthlock Adventure is a solid game. I had reservations at the beginning, but stick this game out past the first couple hours and you’ll have a really good time. I enjoyed this Ikonei Island: An Earthlock Adventure enough that I’ll probably look up the other games they’ve made, and maybe even check back into Ikonei Island to see what’s been added. Thoroughly recommend giving it a go.

8/10 star rating

Platforms: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, GeForce Now, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S
Developer: Snowcastle Games
Publishers: Snowcastle Games, The Iterative Collective, Jetpack Collective, Jagex

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