Imagine owning land that doesn’t back onto anybody else, where you’re off the grid, and there’s no risk of anyone knocking on the door to sell you double glazing. Unfortunately, it comes at a price. If you’re in tune with the Earth, you’ll know it’s a bit of a mess – especially from the oceans, and that’s where Restore Your Island comes into play.
Wow – your own island. Still, it’s an absolute mess and, realistically, unrealistic. The sheer volume of rubbish on the island you begin with is ludicrous. It’s not insinuating that it’s made by one person, but it’s too much of a coincidence that it’s all landed here. Without it, though, you wouldn’t have a game.
Restore Your Island is very much in the House Flipper mould: you have to take out the trash. Unlike most people, you can’t pick up anything with your hands. That’d be silly. Instead, you have one of those claw things that old folks have and then manually transfer to a bin, then sell to a local boat (you never see the captain) to get some money. What will you do with the money on a deserted island? Buy more stuff. And pizza.
Picking up trash that’s the equivalent of a year’s worth of a small family takes a lot of effort, and as a result, it requires energy. When your energy is depleted, you can’t do anything else but sleep or buy pizza. Initially, I did the first, but would sleep for four days at a time to make an impact. Eventually, I took the hit and used my earnings to buy food to keep going.
As with any other simulator, the more you earn, the more you can upgrade, and in Restore Your Island, you can improve your bin capacity, your energy gauge, how many bins you own (woo hoo!), and a sifter. The sifter makes collecting large amounts easier, then you wiggle the mouse to take out the trash. Rinse and repeat, and that’s your game.
In addition to trash, there’s hidden treasure that gives you more pennies, and a purchasable radar helps you find anything hidden. As you progress through Restore Your Island, your earnings increase based on your upgrades, and then the option to manually sort the trash for bonuses. Once your island is clean, it’s not clear what to do next.
There’s a gauge on screen that shows the progress of your island, and when you’re bored, you can make a fuss of your dog, that’s your companion, plus a Tom Hanks reference. After wandering for a little while, it became clear that I didn’t need to fish, but buy fertiliser to restore the trees. Once that was done, it was time to wishlist: it was all over.
Restore Your Island is visually stunning. The water in the game is some of the most realistic I’ve seen, and encourage you to wack up the settings for your 4MB AGP graphics card. With minimal animations, it shouldn’t be taxing, but there were no other options to tweak, and my screenshots were a bit skewed while playing on an ultrawide. It’s quite mad at how engaged I was in cleaning a ridiculous pile of trash on such a small footprint, but do you know what? I’m looking forward to the full release from PaiBand.
