Recent reviews by Argo

TL;DR: Fun Puzzle game, it is not multiplayer. Server issues will likely cause you to lose puzzle progress and your patience. Runs poorly. I am in awe that this game is allowed to be listed for purchase in this state. If I wasn't being ask to play by a friend, I would have refunded. I would advise you not to buy this game until (if) the Offline Patch hits, and if you want to play expecting a multiplayer puzzle game, you are being misled. Also, game is likely abandoned so all issues mentioned probably will be there forever.

It is listed as an MMO, there is zero reason to interact with another person. Every puzzle, At least that I have seen so far, is designed to be a single player interacting with it.

There is a chat box, but it only tells you a player has completed a puzzle somewhere in the wold. You can not chat in the game. You communicate exclusively with an emote wheel of a handful of emotes, one of which is a request for help. How do you help someone with a puzzle that you can not see, nor can you effectively communicate with the person needing help? Stupid.

Since the game is aspiring to be an MMO, that means it is ONLINE only. This game with 130 peak people playing it over the last 30 days has catastrophic server issues. In the time I have played, I have disconnected regularly from servers, multiple times an hour.

If you do want to play with a friend, you are relying on luck to get into the same server as them. The friends list is cosmetic and you can not invite people to play through it, so unless your friend is on the same server as you, standing in front of you, you can not party.

Couple this with the server disconnects, the annoying effort it of repeatedly relaunching the game and crossing your fingers, just to play with a friend is frankly laughable how they have the unbridled gall to even mention MMO in the same breath as Islands of Insight.

Islands of Insight lists there is over 10,000 puzzles. I'n my handful of hours played I have already seen repeated puzzles, by that I mean exact duplicate logic puzzles with the same answer. Not sure how they got the metric of 10,000 puzzles, it certainly does not mean unique puzzles, and there is obviously a significant amount of padding in that claimed amount. I suspect the amount of "Find the hidden object" puzzles inflates this figure.

In a Reddit post, linking to a now deleted tweet, it is said the Devs are looking for new work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/puzzlevideogames/comments/1bn92bk/islands_of_insight_didnt_sell_enough_the/

So I expect the game to be in an abandoned state. I suspect offline mode is going to also bring the shutdown of the servers for the online MMO that struggles to be online, and is also not really multiplayer.

Graphically the game is nice, but the performance and optimisation is poor, which, coupled with the above comment, will not be changing I suspect. For context I have a 5800x and 3070 and struggle to keep 60fps(1440p).

Weirdly, I am not a "puzzle person", but I have found most of the puzzles engaging. The gameplay is good in that regard, but it in no way makes up for the enormous problems the game has.

Overall, it is a good puzzle game build on a broken foundation of poor optimisation, broken servers, and pointless online features which are not going to be fixed.

If this was an offline or LAN game, it would have been a banger. The tagged on MMO features literally killed the game.

Democracy has won the day

This game murdered every ounce of excitement I had for Elder Scrolls 6. Such potential squandered by dated and lacklustre game design.

Bethesda is stuck in the past, which is ironically where I wish I could go and talk myself out of my purchase.

NOT WORTH AS F2P, VERY RESTICTED :)

Season 7 battle pass is horrendously drawn out grind fest to force people to purchase Battle Pass levels if they do not want to live inside the game. Do not financially support this game.

review for event. Game is OK.

This game peaks in the tutorial.

Fun game! A bit on the short side but thoroughly enjoyable with puzzles challenging enough to make you and a team mate think. Definitely a recommend while the buy one get a copy free deal is available.

Thought this was going to be one of those games I buy, play for a bit, and then never touch again when newer major releases come out.

Turns out, I have played this game more than almost any other game I have bought since.

Update:

Still a great game!

Just don't play on official servers. Most negative reviews are from people having bad times on official servers.