I went hands-on with my most-anticipated upcoming open world game, and it didn't disappoint

Islands of Insight is like meditation. It's like a sauna followed by a steam room after a gym workout. It's like snuggling up by the fire on a cold and dark day, listening to ASMR while drinking hot chocolate and getting a foot massage. It's also infuriating. Pure brain-bursting, head-scratching, feet-stomping, temper-flaring, mood-shifting, controller-throwing exasperation. Until… hang on… I see! You stand here and look there and, et voila, you've solved a puzzle and all is right in the world again. 

Granted, I've only spent a couple of hours roaming Islands of Insight's gorgeous shared open-world puzzle playground, but I've loved every second of it. It was my favorite thing to come out of this year's Summer Game Fest 2023 (after a hands-off demonstration, no less), and now, having gone hands-on with its open playtest – running from today through Thursday, September 21 via Steam – I'm absolutely buzzing to see more.

Riddle me this

Set on an aerial sprawl of luscious floating islands, filled with fauna and exotic-looking flowers, Islands of Insight is beautiful. Underpinned by a slow-paced orchestral soundtrack, your job is to snake your way around its multi-leveled biomes at your own pace in first or third person view, solve increasingly difficult puzzles in a variety of different styles, and progress to the next open-ended platform in turn. 

Logic Grids, for example, see you shifting around colored bricks against set criteria (all black squares must touch; certain configurations are forbidden); whereas Armillary Rings are environmental conundrums that involve positioning yourself at an angle where your line of sight can see directly through a consecutive number of rings. Hidden Gates are exactly that: concealed archways that are uncovered once walked through, and Tile Puzzles see you matching different shapes and colors in X-in-a-row fashion, in a manner akin to old-school Columns and Tetris. As you meander deeper into Islands of Insight's world, you'll uncover many more – some variations on all of the above, others entirely new.

Through all of this, developer Lunarch Studios leverages a framework of systems to keep things interesting. Each completed puzzle grants you Sparks, which can be used to unlock upgrades – such as, say, Metroidvania-esque mid-air double-jumps – and cosmetics to change the appearance of your avatar. In order to progress to the next gated zone in turn, you'll often be required to collect a set number of 'Mirabilis' –  magical cube-shaped totems designed to "awake new lands" and help you "gain access to secret enclaves." 

My favorite series of head-scratchers involved the aforementioned Logic Grids, when I was tasked with solving 11 consecutive set-pieces in order to gain my wings. I'll speak to the latter in a moment, but this 11-tier challenge caused me equal parts joy and pain like few other puzzle games I've ever played. In its most perplexing moments, I wanted to quit outright. But in its flashes of success, I felt like an absolute big-brained genius. The most intriguing strait of this run was when said Logic Grids introduced numbers – whereby, in something sort-of similar to Minesweeper, I had to match black and white squares around number blocks, without them touching. 

It's likely easier to illustrate this in picture form. Here's one more involved puzzle:

And here's one I must have spent 20 minutes banging my head against, until it finally clicked into place:

All told, what makes these instances of frustration worth it are, of course, those eureka moments that you propel you onto the next. And with such a stunning, peaceful and thoughtful world tying everything together, losing yourself to Islands of Insight feels inevitable. While primarily a single-player game, the game's full release promises to let you see other players on their journeys as you go, with the aim of "offering a sense of camaraderie and belonging inside the game without being intrusive to your solo journey". 

If you fancy any of that, you should check out the Islands of Insight open playtest – where you can provide feedback to help shape the game's development from here on.

Oh yeah, wings. After successfully completing that 11-stage Logic Grid challenge I was granted my wings – meaning I could float between stages at will without relying on magic spring boards. That's when things really opened up, and introduced a new layer of wonder to what was already a pretty wonderful experience. Islands of Insight boasts a vague "coming soon" release date as it stands, but I'll certainly be keeping a close eye from now until launch whenever that may be. 

Check out its open playtest between now and September 21. 

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