it was SO good??? the narration was my favorite part besides the visuals!! i had a huge brainrot after completing it!! a huge game.
9/10

I don't think I've ever cried so much at the end of a game before. The emotional story line and the gorgeous art style pulled me in and am so glad it did. This is a game to remember.

This is a beautiful game, well written game. It's not a challenging game, but one more focused on story and atmosphere. However, if you currently can't be patient I would have to tell you to wait to play this game. The movement is not very fast, and sometimes you have to back a fair amount through places you've already explored, so I got very frustrated and impatient during these sections, even though the world I traveled across was beautiful and interesting. I felt like the designers were truly making me resonate with the feelings of Mo. It was so annoying.

Also if you are in it for the axolotl-otter I'm gonna warn you and say it's presence in this game just barely makes mascot character level

Beautiful game. A little repetitive at times, but I enjoyed it a lot.

Good game, the art work, soundtrack and story are well executed, just keep in mind that the gameplay feels more like an interactive narration than anything else, i am completely ok with that, as it makes for a relaxing and laid back experience, if you expect a platformer full of action, challenging puzzles and complex mechanics.. this is not it.

pretty cool little game :) very pretty and at times heavy on graphics resources, but cool!
quite slow paced and very easy difficulty once you get used to the mechanics (which is quite quick), so if thats not your jam, i wouldnt recommend it
i like the story tho! not sure if i like the ending (just felt a little rushed), but overall quite fun :)
quite short so idk if its worth the money, but its more of an art piece than a game

Amazing Art and a well told story. It's very much worth your time if you want to experience something shorter and more deliberate than most games.
But be aware that this completely fails on the side of the gameplay and is extremely clunky.

Ok I have a lot to say so I'm gonna break it down and there will be like a tldr at the end

Game Play
The game play was simple. Mainly the emphasis was light exploration as you visited all the different islands in the archipelago searching for the next air purifier to turn back on or the next giant to wake up. One thing that maybe does feel a little tedious are the hallucination phases Mo has when she enters areas with particularly high spore count. They just feel kind of annoying to go through, but maybe that's personal opinion. They do have some really clever platforming though and that was a big plus for me.

Art Style
What the game mechanics lack in complexity, it made up for greatly in art style and atmosphere which enhanced the experience an incredible amount. The grotesque, mechanical-organic technology and the contrast with the incredibly vibrant (and destructive) fungal blooms was *chefs kiss* and it completely immersed me in the word of minute of islands. The surrealist art style of the hallucination phase was also just brilliant, and only added to the immersion.

Pacing
This is where I start to have issues with the game. For one, the story writes itself as something that should proceed with some haste. The giants are suffocating, the spores are taking over, we should be moving with relative consistency... and yet... there's so many times when the game grinds you to a screeching halt with useless "cut scenes" that merely sweep the island, and narrative pauses that cut off your movement capability for the narrator to simply read your inner thoughts on the situation. Many of these moments could either be completely cut from the game, or done in conjunction with the character moving to their next location. For example, there's always like a 45 sec cut scene of the character leaving the island, which is nothing but the boat pulling out of the dock for an egregious amount of time. We've already seen this scene in reverse when Mo first makes her appearance on the island, and it's much more impactful then because we're arriving at a new place and taking in our surroundings. We don't need to hold focus on her leave of the island because again, it grinds the pace to a halt to watch our protagonist linger on a scene that neither adds to our understanding of our surroundings nor does it advance the story or game in any meaningful way. I took so much issue with how many times the game would shoot its own story in the foot by forcing the player to stop when the story was continuously pushing this sensation of urgency. It contradicted itself and made me increasingly impatient with the narrative they were trying to lay down.

Story

***THERE WILL BE SPOILERS*** ( I marked when they start )

The story of minute of islands really is what kept me coming back to this game despite certain frustrations. They really write Mo's struggle and her trauma very well and in a way that was super relatable and empathetic. As someone who was diagnosed with PTSD, seeing it depicted so accurately in this game was really important to me and quite touching to feel understood by the people that made this game. (spoilers start here) My one major complaint was the ending. The story was so masterfully set up for the vast majority of the game. I understood Mo so completely as a character, and empathized with all her actions regardless of how futile they were. And then we reach the climax. The fourth giant is dead, and probably has been for a long time, Mo is devastated, her failure to save him comes crashing down on her, and she falls into the sea, washing up on a small island to mourn by herself. And then?? The thing that brings her out of her depression ??? is the axolotl dog that has contributed absolutely nothing to Mo's character growth? He's just been in the background as a cute thing and legit (to my knowledge) meant nothing to Mo. And he's the one that aids her at her lowest point? It made no sense and was deeply unsatisfying after such a brilliant build up to this point. What would have maybe made more sense is if the spirit of the old giant visited her in one of those hallucination scenes to comfort her (especially because there was something akin to a giant's grave already on that island), or even the spirits of those totems she brought to the cemetery, of whom we never actually get to learn the identity of (to my current knowledge). Both of these options would have made way more sense to Mo's established relationships and the story as a whole. And the fact that the dog-not dog was catalyst for acceptance just really dampened the authenticity of her moment of character growth. Afterwards, Mo places the omni switch on the grave and goes to relinquish Safan of his duties and then just??? Jumps on the arc that was the antithesis to her pride, her control, and her self-identified purpose and the game is just???? Over???? It was hard to accept. I would have much rather this acceptance period have been longer, as you back travel to the rest of the giants letting them go one by one, and finally, you yourself as the player choosing to get on that boat. It would have completed her phase of grief and acceptance much better than just abruptly cutting to her being on the boat she previously so despised and I don't know, I guess it was frustrating to watch such an important part of the stages of grief be so quickly skipped over when the whole story seems to revolve around Mo's grief and trauma.

Conclusion
I have a lot of frustrations with minute of islands, maybe because the topic hits close to home, but it doesn't mean I recommend others don't play it. There's a lot of really well made aspects of this game that kept me coming back to play more and more, and was the reason I played through to the very end. If the premise interests you, it still deserves your unbiased play through, because (and I can't say this enough) it's a beautiful game about important things. It's far from perfect, for all the reasons mentioned above, but I believe, it's still worth your time.

Not really much to it.. Walking sim with very simple puzzles and a lot of frustrating uskippable cutscenes.

Well, I say... some game this is! It has been quite a while since I last played something nearly as impressive.