This is very addictive. I'm hoping it will also be available as a print and play game someday, so that I can play it away from my computer as well! I love roll/flip & write games.
Lovely game, all the scoring feels intuitive, except for one tile: the beach. I've accidently put beaches on land far to often. Feel like beaches should work the other way around, being put on land, and gaining +1 per side touching the sea. Would encourage the player to put them in peninsulas, instead of having beaches in the middle of an island.
I've only played the game a few times and it's a fun concept. Just in the process of trying to nail some form of strategy. I notice I am starting to fall into a tendency to prepare for boats and beaches. What do y'all think of boats? Worth the concern or should they just be an afterthought?
Boats fall into the "nice if it happens" category for me, you can plan a bit for them because it's not really that hard to do, but I tend to focus on making each individual island compat and have good coastal points and space for forests/mountains
Yeah from what I'm seeing in the screenshots, plump forest/mountain combos most reliably get hefty scores. I'll see if I can get boats to work in the next few goes, if not I'll just abandon them cus they seem wishy washy.
Today was quite boat friendly turns out haha. But any more than 2 boats seems hopeful. Unless the islands are real tiny or a single island with lakes. Keen to try a truly ocean heavy build next, waterworld style!
This game no longer loads properly for me, not sure what happened? It loads the Unity screen and the load bar gets about 90% full then stops. Besides that...one of my favorite games I played in 2020. SO fun, perfect level of strategy, I hope to play it again once I figure out what's wrong!
hey thanks for responding! Still the same issue, tried starting it several times but it gets stuck on that loading screen. I tried it on my old PC and was having this issue for a while, and now I'm on a new PC and have the same issue. Maybe I need to update something?
Here is where I show my total lech of tech skills...I just have it installed in the itch app and am hitting launch in the app? Is there another way to play it? It launches in whatever itch's game launch thing is?
I've played this game an unhealthy amount. Absolutely love it!
The random cards will every now and then give me two cards of the same composition though, like for instance 2 waves both to be placed somewhere in column 3. I'd love an update that addresses that.
Speaking of the waves, I also think the way they're scored could perhaps be a little more interesting. The only way to get more mileage out of them is from houses, but other than that the scoring on them is somewhat flat.
Holy Heck 28 point for mountains! I somehow got this without even trying for a big tree and mountain thing. Plus I did it with a church that does nothing! This game is so satisfying.
I love this game so much! A friend asked me what a roll-and-write is and why they were fun and my response was "Here, play this game called Tiny Islands". It's clever and satisfying, and it even makes cute little maps at the end! It's surprisingly deep, too-- I was amazed when I realized the amount of thought I could put into just one choice, and it always feels good when you shape your island thinking about beach or boat placements and it pays off!
I'll echo some of the sentiments below: I'd buy this on the Android store, and I'd love the ability to seed the run. Often what happens is I show somebody the game, we both play the daily, and they're like "That was fun, can we play again?", and it'd be cool to be able to play on the same seed as my friend.
Though I would also like a setting to be dealt more cards? Maybe a toggle for number of cards dealt? I find that the game ends before I get to suffer for my choices early game.
Fantastic game, been playing it quite a lot over the past week + and still am not tired of it.
Really appreciate the balance on the pieces and the scoring interaction means most high scoring boards generally strike a good balance of the 6 pieces which makes the game thematically satisfying no matter how long you play it.
The RNG nature of the game is surprisingly manageable given what you'd think on first look. There's numerous optimizations and tricks to build better boards and score well. Most of the really noticeable variance is in just a few cards that are more finicky: forests & mountain adjacency (any forests not adjacent to mountains are a big drain on points) and waves only having one way to contribute more than 2 points (house adjacency).
A bit beyond the scope of this great game, but one thing that can be really satisfying for games like this is a score mode that averages multiple runs together. It can give a little something more to work towards that doesn't rely quite so much on hitting great draws eventually.
There's 5 church cards in the deck, 54 cards in the deck. As two of the cards start face down, it's possible you'll see 3, 4 or 5 of them during play. I haven't worked out the odds for each of these events occurring.
Gotta say, that I really like this game! Nice and "laidback", good for getting my thoughts out of other things, when I get to focus on this for a few rounds.
I've read the comments below a bit. And (sorry if I spam here a little) I don't agree that boats are the weakest pieces. They are mostly a great alternative pick for me. Also, in my opinion waves are the weakest. They are rather difficult to handle and they are always set to 2 points only (which is why I like to set them next to islands for house bonuses)
I think there should be an option wether I want to make a third island or not. Because most of my games are made with 2 filled islands and a third 1x1 small empty island or I use the third island to cover a forced misplacement. And the only effect that a forced third island has is an unlikely scenario in which this third island takes away like maximum 2 points of boats. (again, this was my experience)
Other than that I totally like this game! Im playing it daily now haha.. I tried it once and it got me immediatly.
In this instance you could still draw an islands inside an island to make a lake, something that's not explained in the rules. It is however possible to make it hang in a manner similar to this.
loving this. the perfect little game. i'd like the ability to enter seeds manually so that me+friends can compete on the same shuffles, and i'd buy this for 5$+ if you released it for android.
Having a lot of fun with this. Would like to compete blindly in the daily shuffle against friends in different time zones. Can you explain at what time it changes?
LOVE THIS! I got my boyfriend to start playing too and now we can't stop competing with the daily shuffle.
I'm so amazed at the design of this game!
And on-boarding was so easy too!
And the polish! Damn! I love the little details like the animations in each pixel piece, the fact that the end-game colorizes land vs. sea things differently to help you, and the accessibility of the help function plus the tool-tips.
Gwah. Having just developed a mobile game myself and struggled so much with affordances & on-boarding, it's amazing to see this game pulls it off so easily.
Really clean use of procedural generation too! The daily shuffle is amazing, it introduces a competitive edge by keeping randomness constant.
Dude. I could go on forever about how much I love the play and the design of this game >_>
It took me one play through to figure out how islands worked, but I think thats okay. A single play through is fast so I don't feel punished. One thing i kept forgetting is "Near" vs "Far", but the "?" let me keep tabbing back to it. I tend to avoid boats, not sure if its because I haven't found a way to utilize them well. It seems hard to use since islands (combined with churches and houses) have so much more potential and versatility.
But gwad damn i love this.z
I'd love to volunteer to do art for this game if you're interested <3
I'll echo the commentary that the boats are the weakest pieces for now. Because their region is randomized, they inevitably end up too close to an island to be worth anything. I think they could really benefit from a point boost for being near waves, or a scaling score system like the person below suggested. Everything else is great!
Another comment, now that I've spent an afternoon enthralled: beaches seem *insanely* profitable right now, and I feel like they should be tweaked. It's very easy to get a safe three points per beach by drawing fiddly borders for your islands, and unlike most other high-value pieces (houses, mountains), their value doesn't rely on placing any other kind of piece, which makes them less interesting as something to plan your strategy around. While I like them conceptually, maybe giving them the wave restriction (no being near/sharing same row or column as another beach) would be good?
I'd like to throw out two possible scoring tweaks that might make the game even more interesting. The first is incremental scoring for boats. Right now, it never seems like there's a value play to be made with boats. Instead of 1 point per square, consider 1 point for one square, 3 points for two, 6 points for three, etc.
The other suggestion is to create some bonus for placing a wave next to a beach. I feel like it's aesthetically pleasing to put waves next to beaches, so maybe toss us an extra point when we do that?
I like the changes to Tree and Church scoring, even though it's thrown off my strategy (had moved towards Trees and Mountains as more valuable than most houses and churches). New scoring is a lot more fair, although my scores have definitely deflated while I adjust.
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This is very addictive. I'm hoping it will also be available as a print and play game someday, so that I can play it away from my computer as well! I love roll/flip & write games.
Lovely game, all the scoring feels intuitive, except for one tile: the beach. I've accidently put beaches on land far to often. Feel like beaches should work the other way around, being put on land, and gaining +1 per side touching the sea. Would encourage the player to put them in peninsulas, instead of having beaches in the middle of an island.
I've only played the game a few times and it's a fun concept. Just in the process of trying to nail some form of strategy. I notice I am starting to fall into a tendency to prepare for boats and beaches. What do y'all think of boats? Worth the concern or should they just be an afterthought?
Boats fall into the "nice if it happens" category for me, you can plan a bit for them because it's not really that hard to do, but I tend to focus on making each individual island compat and have good coastal points and space for forests/mountains
Yeah from what I'm seeing in the screenshots, plump forest/mountain combos most reliably get hefty scores. I'll see if I can get boats to work in the next few goes, if not I'll just abandon them cus they seem wishy washy.
Today was quite boat friendly turns out haha. But any more than 2 boats seems hopeful. Unless the islands are real tiny or a single island with lakes. Keen to try a truly ocean heavy build next, waterworld style!
This game no longer loads properly for me, not sure what happened? It loads the Unity screen and the load bar gets about 90% full then stops. Besides that...one of my favorite games I played in 2020. SO fun, perfect level of strategy, I hope to play it again once I figure out what's wrong!
Thanks for letting me know. I just tried it, didn't work the first few times, but then eventually did. Let me know if it's working for you.
hey thanks for responding! Still the same issue, tried starting it several times but it gets stuck on that loading screen. I tried it on my old PC and was having this issue for a while, and now I'm on a new PC and have the same issue. Maybe I need to update something?
That's frustrating. I'm not sure what could be causing it. Which browser are you using? Have you tried using different browsers?
Here is where I show my total lech of tech skills...I just have it installed in the itch app and am hitting launch in the app? Is there another way to play it? It launches in whatever itch's game launch thing is?
It should be playable just in browser, no need to download or use the app. https://dr-d-king.itch.io/tiny-islands Hope that works for you.
Working fine for me off the bat, today at least.
The snow is a nice touch, but was it intended to rise upwards?
Happy holidays!
Well... that's unexpected. Will see what I can do.
This should totally be a board game, like Railroad Ink. I would buy it instantly!
I've played this game an unhealthy amount. Absolutely love it!
The random cards will every now and then give me two cards of the same composition though, like for instance 2 waves both to be placed somewhere in column 3. I'd love an update that addresses that.
Speaking of the waves, I also think the way they're scored could perhaps be a little more interesting. The only way to get more mileage out of them is from houses, but other than that the scoring on them is somewhat flat.
Great!
Have you thought about porting this to mobile?
I literally just wanted to ask that. But this game is 1 year old so...
I'm slowly reworking the game to upgrade it a bit, not sure how long it's going to take but I'm hoping to get it out there in different formats.
Very exciting news! A discord I'm on has been comparing dailies daily for months now!
That's really nice to hear, glad you're enjoying it.
A board game ???
If I can find a publisher to work with and a suitable deal, I'd like that.
#MyTinyIslands Not much but it's honest work.
Holy Heck 28 point for mountains! I somehow got this without even trying for a big tree and mountain thing. Plus I did it with a church that does nothing! This game is so satisfying.
These are some very nice tiny islands
i was proud of my 46 😂 😅
For some reason all of my best scores have the 1 square island lol
Todays score
How did you do that 1 tile beach lake?
Edit: I found out, you just draw in island in an island.
my isle:
I just played this for the first time and really enjoyed it. However, I lost 25 points and I have no idea why. :)
I figured out the scoring and didn't lose any points on my second try. This is a great game and very addicting! Thanks for sharing.
I really Love this game! honestly one of the best games I found here. Here's my best score on a random.
Man, what a cool game.
I love this game so much! A friend asked me what a roll-and-write is and why they were fun and my response was "Here, play this game called Tiny Islands". It's clever and satisfying, and it even makes cute little maps at the end! It's surprisingly deep, too-- I was amazed when I realized the amount of thought I could put into just one choice, and it always feels good when you shape your island thinking about beach or boat placements and it pays off!
I'll echo some of the sentiments below: I'd buy this on the Android store, and I'd love the ability to seed the run. Often what happens is I show somebody the game, we both play the daily, and they're like "That was fun, can we play again?", and it'd be cool to be able to play on the same seed as my friend.
Great game. Simple and yet solid.
II really like this game! Super chill.
Though I would also like a setting to be dealt more cards? Maybe a toggle for number of cards dealt? I find that the game ends before I get to suffer for my choices early game.
Fantastic game, been playing it quite a lot over the past week + and still am not tired of it.
Really appreciate the balance on the pieces and the scoring interaction means most high scoring boards generally strike a good balance of the 6 pieces which makes the game thematically satisfying no matter how long you play it.
The RNG nature of the game is surprisingly manageable given what you'd think on first look. There's numerous optimizations and tricks to build better boards and score well. Most of the really noticeable variance is in just a few cards that are more finicky: forests & mountain adjacency (any forests not adjacent to mountains are a big drain on points) and waves only having one way to contribute more than 2 points (house adjacency).
A bit beyond the scope of this great game, but one thing that can be really satisfying for games like this is a score mode that averages multiple runs together. It can give a little something more to work towards that doesn't rely quite so much on hitting great draws eventually.
Fantastic game. Am I correct in my belief that there is a 26/27 chance that you get dealt 5 chapels, and a 1/27 chance that you get dealt 4 chapels?
There's 5 church cards in the deck, 54 cards in the deck. As two of the cards start face down, it's possible you'll see 3, 4 or 5 of them during play. I haven't worked out the odds for each of these events occurring.
Gotta say, that I really like this game! Nice and "laidback", good for getting my thoughts out of other things, when I get to focus on this for a few rounds.
I've read the comments below a bit. And (sorry if I spam here a little) I don't agree that boats are the weakest pieces. They are mostly a great alternative pick for me. Also, in my opinion waves are the weakest. They are rather difficult to handle and they are always set to 2 points only (which is why I like to set them next to islands for house bonuses)
I think there should be an option wether I want to make a third island or not. Because most of my games are made with 2 filled islands and a third 1x1 small empty island or I use the third island to cover a forced misplacement. And the only effect that a forced third island has is an unlikely scenario in which this third island takes away like maximum 2 points of boats. (again, this was my experience)
Other than that I totally like this game! Im playing it daily now haha.. I tried it once and it got me immediatly.
Thanks for your feedback, I'll give it some thought.
I even managed to make it impossible to complete the game. ( though it was definitly my fault).
In this instance you could still draw an islands inside an island to make a lake, something that's not explained in the rules. It is however possible to make it hang in a manner similar to this.
loving this. the perfect little game. i'd like the ability to enter seeds manually so that me+friends can compete on the same shuffles, and i'd buy this for 5$+ if you released it for android.
thank you for making this amazing game.
A great suggestion for the future, will keep it in mind.
Having a lot of fun with this. Would like to compete blindly in the daily shuffle against friends in different time zones. Can you explain at what time it changes?
It will match their computers clock, so as long as you play on the same 'date' in your respective timezone you should be able to compare your scores.
Never seen anything like this game!
Super addictive!
What's considered a good score? I got 52.
The scores that I usually see are between 40 and 60, however some to go up to 80ish. You can look at other scores here: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23mytinyislands&src=recent_search_click&f=live
Very nice little game!
Great game!
at first i playd thinking i was drawing out the water
This is a really neat concept. If there was sound and music, it would be superb.
LOVE THIS! I got my boyfriend to start playing too and now we can't stop competing with the daily shuffle.
I'm so amazed at the design of this game!
And on-boarding was so easy too!
And the polish! Damn! I love the little details like the animations in each pixel piece, the fact that the end-game colorizes land vs. sea things differently to help you, and the accessibility of the help function plus the tool-tips.
Gwah. Having just developed a mobile game myself and struggled so much with affordances & on-boarding, it's amazing to see this game pulls it off so easily.
Really clean use of procedural generation too! The daily shuffle is amazing, it introduces a competitive edge by keeping randomness constant.
Dude. I could go on forever about how much I love the play and the design of this game >_>
It took me one play through to figure out how islands worked, but I think thats okay. A single play through is fast so I don't feel punished. One thing i kept forgetting is "Near" vs "Far", but the "?" let me keep tabbing back to it. I tend to avoid boats, not sure if its because I haven't found a way to utilize them well. It seems hard to use since islands (combined with churches and houses) have so much more potential and versatility.
But gwad damn i love this.z
I'd love to volunteer to do art for this game if you're interested <3
This is super entertaining and charming!
I'll echo the commentary that the boats are the weakest pieces for now. Because their region is randomized, they inevitably end up too close to an island to be worth anything. I think they could really benefit from a point boost for being near waves, or a scaling score system like the person below suggested. Everything else is great!
Another comment, now that I've spent an afternoon enthralled: beaches seem *insanely* profitable right now, and I feel like they should be tweaked. It's very easy to get a safe three points per beach by drawing fiddly borders for your islands, and unlike most other high-value pieces (houses, mountains), their value doesn't rely on placing any other kind of piece, which makes them less interesting as something to plan your strategy around. While I like them conceptually, maybe giving them the wave restriction (no being near/sharing same row or column as another beach) would be good?
Love this game, I play it every day!
I'd like to throw out two possible scoring tweaks that might make the game even more interesting. The first is incremental scoring for boats. Right now, it never seems like there's a value play to be made with boats. Instead of 1 point per square, consider 1 point for one square, 3 points for two, 6 points for three, etc.
The other suggestion is to create some bonus for placing a wave next to a beach. I feel like it's aesthetically pleasing to put waves next to beaches, so maybe toss us an extra point when we do that?
Again, love this game!
I like the changes to Tree and Church scoring, even though it's thrown off my strategy (had moved towards Trees and Mountains as more valuable than most houses and churches). New scoring is a lot more fair, although my scores have definitely deflated while I adjust.