So it ever was, when you get down to it, in video games.ĭespite the mundane façade, Islands is in fact playful, humorous tour. When you've clicked enough lights to finish the scene, it's on to the next one. In tactile terms, the extent of your interaction, beyond rotating the camera, is the option to click on light sources (lamps, laptops, televisions and so on) in order to produce interesting effects, unexpected animations, or pleasing snippets of audio. As you wheel around the scene, you gain new perspectives on the objects, which, like a surrealist study, can allow you to reflect on the familiar in an unfamiliar context. Each one is a dusky, tonal diorama, around which the camera can be rotated on a fixed circular path. There are ten scenes, visited in sequence. The presentation is as utilitarian as the subjects. This is a surrealist study of architecture's supporting cast in which you're forced to consider and prod, at length, at the places that nobody ever cares about, or thinks about, or notices. It's the hotel lobby, with its deep chairs and bowed pot-plants. It's the bus shelter, with its plastic seats, bathed in the white light of an advertising screen. It's the baggage carousel in the airport, with its melancholy conga of luggage. Islands, as its titular addendum 'Non-Places' insinuates, is a game about those non-descript patches of no-man's land through which we all pass en route to where we're going. A playful, often humorous tour of the modern world's transition spaces.

Download islands non places