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Distant Isles

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Distant Isles

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Sail the seas, captain your crew and seek out treasure and adventure! A turn-based roguelike and role-playing game, in Distant Isles you will explore procedural islands, find treasure, and fight all manner of creatures. Make sure you manage your resources wisely - danger awaits at every turn.

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Dev Blog #5 - Your Party

Apr 19

Devblog #5 – Your Party

Hello adventurers, welcome back for our fifth Devblog!

We’re halfway through April, and we’ve been busy focusing on our next content update for the free Playtest that is currently available.

We’ve made a number of balancing changes in line with feedback, and are hoping that a content drop and update will bring some more players to the playtest. The playtest is absolutely crucial to us ensuring Distant Isles can be the best game that it can – so if you’re reading this, please jump in and give us some feedback!

Party Members

This week I wanted to give you an insight into your party, which is a key part of gameplay.

As you visit and explore the Distant Isles, you’ll pick up party members along the way – hiring them from towns; finding them in the wilderness; or rescuing them from captivity.

You can have up to four members in your party, including your party leader that you will create at the start of the game.

Each party member will have unique traits and skills (see below for further detail), as well as a nationality from one of the four great seafaring nations of the world:

Bretan: A seafaring and industrious nation, Bretans can learn a vast array of skills and talents. Considered 'all-rounders', the people of this nation have no particular strengths or weaknesses.
Hispania: Known for their martial capabilities, the people of Hispania are honed in battle and combat. The people of this nation have increased increased combat stats (weapon accuracy, block and critical hit chances), but lower base resilience and 1 inventory slot.
Ming: The people of Ming are peaceful and skilled travellers who live off the land. The people of this nation have increased Sight and Geography, and can travel across Rough Terrain better; but lower health and combat stats.
Konga: A hardy folk hailing from the rich jungles of Konga, these people are strong and healthy. The people of this nation can navigate Jungle Terrain more easily, have increased health and 3 inventory slots; but lower base resilience.

As you travel throughout the Distant Isles, your parties will engage in banter, and come across random scenarios. We want you, as players, to form relationships with these party members to make your play memorable.

Traits

Maintaining a diverse and highly skilled party is crucial to your survival in the Distant Isles.

Each character has a number of stats that contribute overall to party statistics. For example, a party member with +2 Jungle Terrain will reduce the resilience cost of the party as it travels over Jungle Terrain.

In addition, each character can have two positive traits (or skills), and up to three negative traits.

These traits make each party member unique, and can either add bonus stats, or represent a new skill. For example, a party member with bargaining can negotiate a better price on items when trading.

These traits can also influence the party member’s reaction to certain scenarios. For example, you might find that you’ll need to drink alcohol regularly to appease an alcoholic in your party, or you might also find that they keep a secret stash of alcohol on them…

This combination of stats, positive traits, and negative traits will help to make each party member feel unique and memorable.

Wrap Up

Thanks again for reading this month’s Devblog. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store in the next content update for the free Playtest.

Just a reminder to Wishlist and Follow on Steam if you want to see more!

Huzzah!

Elliot

Distant Isles

Dev Blog #4 - More Sailing and Ship Equipment

Mar 15

Devblog #4 – Sailing and Ship Equipment

Hello adventurers, welcome back for our fourth Devblog!

It’s now halfway through March and 2026 is off to a cracking start. We gave you a bit of a taste of sailing last month, but we wanted to show it off in more depth now.

Just a reminder that the free Playtest that is still available over on Itch.io. Feel free to check it out if you want to give us some super helpful feedback.

We’re planning on doing an update in the coming month with more content and balancing based on feedback to date.

Sailing

As we highlighted last time, Sailing is fundamental to Distant Isles. You’ll have access to a range of ships, that you can use to sail the seas, engage with traders, or fight pirates and enemy crews.

Fundamental to sailing is the ‘Wind’ mechanic, represented by the wind vane in the top right of the screen.

Sailing with the wind means you will move more quickly, and lose less resilience. However, sailing against the wind will make you slow and consume more resilience. You can see this in the first screenshot above - the wind is blowing South (as shown by the red arrows)

This gives you some tactical options for approaching your enemies. Want to chase down that enemy Xebec? Try approaching perpendicular to make the most of the current wind direction.

Different types of ships will have different features as well. Some ships might only use Oars, meaning they won’t be impacted by wind. Other ships will be fast, at the cost of being weak. You’ll have options to tweak this further with…

Ship Equipment

That’s right, Ship Equipment. Ship equipment and the loadout of your ship will be critical to your survival on the seas.

Ships will can have up to three equipment slots – the Forecastle, Midship and Quarterdeck. Only the best ships will have access to all three slots.

Equipping cannons in particular slots will change which direction you can fire. Want to use your cannons as you chase down enemy ships? Equip your cannon in the Forecastle slot. Want to unleash broadsides? Equip them in the Midship slot.

Wrap Up

Thanks for reading this month’s Devblog. We can’t wait to show you what else we have in store for you.

Just a reminder to Wishlist and Follow on Steam if you want to see more!

Cheerio

Distant Isles

Dev Blog #3 - Sailing, Update on Playtest

Feb 7

Devblog #3 – Sailing, Update on Playtest

Hello again adventurers and Huzzah!

Welcome back to another Distant Isles Devblog.

Today I wanted to focus on two things – I wanted to introduce Sailing, which I’ve been hard at work implementing over the past few months. I also wanted to provide an update https://worldform.itch.io/distant-isles-playtest.

Sailing

This is the first footage we’ve released of our sailing mechanic in Distant Isles!

Sailing is fundamental to Distant Isles (it wouldn’t be loosely based on the Age of Discovery if there wasn’t sailing…)

Using a range of ships, you’ll be able to sail from island to island, searching for adventure and treasure, and encountering dangerous scenarios.

Sailing takes place on the ‘overworld’ map. While it looks bare currently, we’re planning on having Ports, Pirates, Privateers and Traders, and all manner of encounters to bring the sea to life.

As on land, sailing will use Resilience. I plan on implementing a wind and weather system to make the travel more dynamic and challenging, and equipment loadouts to assist in sailing (or fighting enemy ships).

That’s all for now, but I hope it gives you a taste of what we have in store for sailing in the coming months.

Update on Playtest

As I mentioned in the previous Devblog, we’ve released a Playtest for Distant Isles over on Itch.io. It will give you a good understanding of how the game works while exploring islands, and its core mechanics.

This is a callout for more playtesters! We really need your help to make the game better!

I’ve implemented a number of quality-of-life updates so far to make the experience better.

Feedback so far has been that the game is challenging and difficult. This sort of critical feedback is extremely helpful – we need to know if it’s currently not enjoyable, too challenging, or simply not fun.

Sign off

Thanks for reading todays Devblog, and I hope you’re having a great start to 2026. Stay safe, and please keep tuned for further detail and updates.

Cheerio

Elliot

Distant Isles

controller support planned?

Interesting game!

Gizmo

Dec 29, 2025 @ 6:11am

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