Sometimes it just makes sense to turn a linear game into an open world. Whether it’s Elden Ring or Breath of the Wild, many franchises have found that their core gameplay loop maps well to an open world iteration. Elden Ring spreads FromSoft’s punishing difficulty across the map, allowing players to “progress” at their own pace. In Breath of the Wild, the entire world becomes a dungeon, every hill and valley a puzzle. Playing both, it feels as if each franchise and its mechanics have been waiting to be spread across a vast map. It just feels right.
In contrast, Isles of Sea and Sky, an open-world Sokoban game, isn’t such an obvious fit, but just because something isn’t immediately obvious doesn’t mean it won’t work.
Released in late May, Cicada Games’ Isles of Sea and Sky embraces the aesthetic of Game Boy Color-era Zelda in a genre mashup that’s equal parts harmonious and dissonant. The game makes a great first impression; it evokes the feeling of playing Link’s Awakening DX (pre-remake), and you’d be forgiven for mistaking one of the beaches in Isles for one from Awakening. Moving from screen to screen is a nostalgic joy, and the Vocaloid-infused soundtrack gives the game even more personality. Which is a good thing, because open-world or not, this is still a Sokoban Sokoban game.
In Isles of Sea and Sky, you push blocks – so many standard blocks – into standard holes, which allows you to cross the hole and push more blocks in. You also push more than just blocks – like little rock guys (who are definitely not Gorons) that roll as far as they can in the direction you push them, smashing any boxes they come across, or little water guys that you can push downstream to expand a river. The puzzles start out easy, and the game slowly ramps up in difficulty, but eventually you get stuck, and when you do, you’ll find yourself faced with the contradictions of Isles’ mix of freedom and linearity.
Image: Cicada Games
Part of the fun of the Sokoban games is the underlying idea that no matter how frustrated you get with individual puzzles, you’ll always have what it takes to beat the level. Each stage is a simple matter of tackling it with what you’ve tried before and what you haven’t tried yet. You may find yourself stuck, but you’re not lacking what you need to achieve a solution.
Not so with Isles of Sea and Sky. Early on, you’re presented with puzzles that you can’t complete until you unlock new abilities. Many games include this kind of lock-and-lock design, where you must first unlock abilities before you can access certain areas, but this goes against the genre expectations of Sokoban titles. Going into Isles, players might reasonably expect that if they get stuck, they’ll have to keep trying different solutions. This mindset will get you through similar games like Baba Is You and A Monster’s Expedition. The solution is there; you just have to keep at it. In contrast, Isles often requires you to move on in order to travel to other parts of the game’s map or overworld, which means you’re expected to give up when you get frustrated.
At first, I was confused by this dynamic. How do I tell if I don’t understand the puzzle or if I lack the ability to solve it? When is my frustration an intended element of the solution, and when is it futile? Isles tries to mitigate this frustration by allowing players to rewind their actions incrementally or reset the entire puzzle at any time with the press of a button. But you can’t rewind the real-life time you spend playing the game. You can’t undo the minutes you spent banging your head against the wall, stubbornly trying to solve a problem you just can’t solve. Encountering this made me ask myself, why design a game in this way if you know players will get stuck like this?
That’s when it dawned on me: they know players get stuck like this.
To be honest, I can be a bit stubborn. I consider myself a creative problem solver, and my general approach is to stick with something until it’s finished. Sometimes this is a good trait (stubbornness, etc.), but sometimes it can be a problem (see my description of banging your head against a wall above). Traditional Sokoban games are designed with this type of player in mind: someone like me who will spend hours trying different things until something finally clicks. The people at Cicada Games clearly love the genre, and that’s evident by the number and variety of puzzles they’ve packed into Isles. But what they clearly hate is the feeling of being stuck with no recourse and being unable to move forward.
Islands of Sea and Sky asked me to take a step back, reevaluate, and move forward.
I won’t quote the meme, but I’ll quote the meme. Isles of Sea and Sky is here to tell you, “Just walk away. Just walk away!!!” What started as my frustration with the game turned into a bit of self-reflection as I stopped and wondered why I felt the need to stay frustrated when I could always just walk away, or, in the words of the preeminent philosopher of our generation, dasharez0ne, “Knock that brick!!!” Sure, there are areas that you can’t access without at least completing a certain number of puzzles, but in general, Isles allows you to completely forget about almost everything that’s too frustrating and find something to do. The challenge, at least in my case, was to allow myself to do so.
As I’ve argued, the Sokoban games are clearly ill-suited for open-world iteration. Their inherent linearity runs counter to a style of gaming best known for variety and, well, openness. The concentration it demands of the player feels quite different from the desirable distraction of asking, “What’s over that hill?”. In particular, Isles of Sea and Sky quickly creates dissonance between how you play a block-pushing puzzle game and how you play this block-pushing puzzle game. But dissonance can be resolved into consonance, harmony, and stability, and in the case of Isles, you’re driven not just by accepting limitations but by a tendency to liberate yourself.
For me, at first, it was hard to see moving on as a valid strategy because I was so used to overcoming mental obstacles, both in the Sokoban game and in life. But once I understood, I realized that this mindset extended beyond the game. Is stubbornness helpful or harmful here? Should I continue to get stuck in this emotion? Why do I think moving on means giving up?
Ultimately, I’m happy to have played a game that encourages such self-reflection. Isles of Sea and Sky asked me to take a step back, reevaluate, and move forward. Perhaps the same will happen for you.
Isles of Sea and Sky was released on May 22 for Windows PC. The game was reviewed using a code provided by Cicada Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. Additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.
