It can be a little irritating but is dissolvable by whirling around and going tap-crazy.

Often you might tap light sources with no outcome, only to find that you were supposed to be nudging a door open. Islands: Non-Places achieves this same effect but in a visual way, and all those transient places you take for granted begin to lose all connection with reality.Īs far as mechanical interaction goes, there aren’t even set rules for that. If you repeat a word over and over it will lose all meaning through repetition you cast off any associations you had with that word, dissolving its connection to reality through mantra. It wasn’t long after playing through for the first time that I tarried at the traffic crossing outside my flat, transfixed by the obscenity of the glowing bollard that erupted from the earth in surreal protest.

It’s an experience it’s interactive it may not be winnable, but you will have won something by the end of your time spent with it – you will be changed. Speaking of things we are conditioned to avoid: let’s avoid entirely the snooze-inducing debate as to whether or not what you’ll be doing in Islands is playing a game. Lacquered in the stark tranquillity of sodium lighting, evocative of all those little moments lurking at the periphery of our memories – the forgotten waiting rooms, the traffic islands, the walkways – Islands: Non-Places brings these to the fore, and in focusing on them, teases out depths that we are conditioned to avoid.

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