Len's Island Preview

It often feels like so much of what we play these days relies on us running away to a peaceful island to carve out a new life, whilst building and farming our way to happiness. That opening is likely to give you a taste of the upcoming experience. Relaxed gameplay, entwined with a splattering of combat. Len’s Island follows a similar tone, allowing players a chilled out experience whilst offering a little more edge for those who enjoy the thrill.

After spending a couple of hours with Len’s Island, it was clear to see the game saw itself as more than just a farming game with other bits tacked on. There’s been a focus here to develop each of the games core areas into fully fleshed out experiences. In my time with Len’s Island, I was able to experience the game’s farming, crafting, building and dungeoning. Unlike most survival games, it does feel like a game where those core mechanics are key to the experience, rather than just tacked on extras.

I would feel unjust describing Len’s Island as someone crashing Minecraft and Stardew Valley together. Whilst that is a fair explanation, those two genres do entwine here rather than simply existing in the same area. There’s an emphasis on making sure all areas of the game not only work independently, but link well together too.

Len’s Island has been in development for around two years now, having initially been backed on Kickstarter. Over that time, the game has developed far beyond the initial vision Flow Studio had for the game. For instance, the original plan to have the game be a circular, flat island has been completely overhauled. Playing through the demo of Len’s Island shows that is no longer the case, with the world map being separated into different islands. Your starting location acts as a building platform for you, and travelling outside of that island will introduce new towns, which allows the players to purchase a varied assortment of items.

You’ll notice the game's dungeons are broken up in the same way too, with each area being a smaller piece of an entire puzzle. Of course it isn’t as straightforward as hopping between each area of the puzzle. Combat will be the first thing to note, with enemies spawning to prevent players reaching deeper into these dingy caves. Once reaching the end, you’ll note that you often encounter further blockades to progress, usually in the guise of building some kind of structure. There will be a lot of resource gathering to travel around the game’s world - both on land and underground.

Which brings us to crafting and building. Crafting doesn’t stray too far from the trusted systems we’ve come to know. Pick up resources, craft a tool, create better resources. Len’s Island does shine in its home-building aspect. Likely caused by a combination of a simple building system and the layout of the game world, Len’s Island will have you feeling like Christopher Wren in no time. What helps is the game's art design, meaning everything you build seems to suit the game's aesthetic. Often, my creations in these kinds of games look like an abstract artist's dream world, but very rarely does your hard work feel out of place.

Len’s Island releases in October 2021 and has already shown it has a tremendous base launch itself from when it finally arrives. A sense of intrigue still shrouds the games narrative, with the mystery of Len’s Island set to unravel in the games full release.