1. Looking at the Game Boy-esque standard color schemes in the promotional screenshots, I just figured this would be some kind of twisted action game. I thought this even after reading the description where it explains The Shrouded Isle is a management sim. I am definitely smart enough that it's worth your time to keep reading.
2. So, yeah, the first thing anyone is gonna notice is this looks like some crazy hi-res version of handheld gaming in 1989. The artwork actually has a hand-drawn flare rather than the pixel-art but the palate is unmistakable. The sickly green color and callback to a simpler era of gaming fit w/ the twisted, backward mindset of the cultists depicted in-game.
3. The cult, in this case, is attempting to resurrect Cthulhu. Cthulhu is called by some other name in-game but, let's face it, Cthulhu is the gold standard of evil Lovecraft-style gods. You can call it something else but we still know it's Cthulhu.
4. You serve as cult leader and your job is the ensure the titular island's population stays pure so the resurrection goes well. Doing this looks surprisingly similar to getting a bunch of sliding bars to stay in the right place. You must evaluate the capabilities of your various cultists, enlist their help when appropriate and then kill them one by one. This is a game. It's fun!
5. The setup here is rather simple but trying to describe it is giving me a headaches. You have a bunch of people who have to do stuff. Using them or choosing not to use them makes other people either happy or unhappy and it all gets convoluted pretty quick. Still, the complexity is such that it's not hard to keep track of everything, only to find the best reaction to each situation.
6. The Shrouded Isle comes by default w/ a little DLC pack that has an extra wrinkle where people get sick and you can send them to a sanitarium, which has its own ups and downs. The game w/ this content seems to be considered the definitive version by the devs and what I am covering here.
7. Each playthrough is rather short start to finish. You essentially play twenty turns altogether, each of which takes maybe a couple minutes once you get gameplay down. The majority of playtime for most people will be spent failing and retrying.
8. There is some light storytelling elements mixed in but most of these will be skipped over after a few times through. The Shrouded Isle manages to maintain it's uneasy atmosphere regardless. This is partly due to its graphical style but the sound deserves a lot of credit as well. The music is haunting--it reminds me quite a bit of the reverbed-out music in Diablo--and the sound effects are fairly sparse. There is a stillness that is every now and then shattered by a sharp snap or crash and this somehow remained effective at keeping me off balance even after hearing the same thing many times.
9. It also helps that the game never lets you fall into a pattern and you are never on completely stable footing after the first few rounds and maybe the last few if you're lucky.
10. My main complaint about The Shrouded Isle's mechanics is it almost never favors bold action. W/ only very rare exceptions, attempting to do something drastic will blow up in your face. There are no strokes of genius to get you out of tough situations. You start out on good footing and are managing your decline from there on out. It is more about not making mistakes--and a lot of luck--than it is building an effective system.
11. I played through this many times and never once did I get to a situation where I heroically scraped through a turn by the skin of my teeth and then found myself able to regain more stable footing. The way it goes is: heroically scrape by by the skin of your teeth, game over on your next turn anyway.
12. If I had some kind of solution to this problem I'd offer it up now but, honestly, if I was the kind of person to come up w/ some kind of solution to this problem, I'd probably be spending more time designing games and less time writing list-based game reviews. Just saying. It's a great game, just not perfect and I can offer no suggestion on how to make it better.
13. What impresses me most about The Shrouded Isle is just how well the elements all come together. The graphics, sound and gameplay fit together as seamlessly as they do in any game I can think of. The experience is invloving when you start playing and as you struggle to figure out how to get through the mid-game. Putting together the final pieces is satisfying and relieving all at once. This strives to be more of a high-concept vignette than an endlessly playable sim and is definitely worth sinking a few nights into for those looking to move some sliders around under a truly unique pretense.
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