The Isle
" Immersive action-adventure survival with realistic dinosaurs and permadeath, but steep learning curve "
The Isle Review
The Isle offers a unique dinosaur survival experience with impressive graphics and immersive sound design, creating a realistic ambiance that many players find captivating. The game features a variety of dinosaur species, each with distinct gameplay mechanics, encouraging different playstyles such as stealth, pack hunting, or ambush tactics. However, the game is currently hampered by a steep learning curve and a lack of tutorials, making it difficult for new players to grasp core mechanics without external resources.
Players frequently report issues with server population due to an overly large map and low player density, which leads to sparse in-game interactions and long periods of aimless wandering. The stamina system and food scarcity, especially for carnivores, add to the difficulty and sometimes frustration. Moreover, bugs, optimization problems, and rampant cheating further detract from the experience. The development pace is slow, and communication from developers is often criticized, leaving many feeling the game is unfinished and unpolished.
Highlights
Players praise the game's realistic dinosaur animations, detailed graphics, and immersive sound design that create a convincing prehistoric atmosphere. The diversity of dinosaur species and their unique behaviors add depth to gameplay, making each experience distinct. Fans appreciate the survival challenge and the thrill of hunting or evading predators, with some comparing it favorably to other survival games but with dinosaurs. The game's unforgiving nature and permadeath mechanics are seen as adding meaningful tension and finality to gameplay, appealing to dedicated fans of the genre.
Criticisms
Common criticisms include the game's steep learning curve with no in-game tutorials, making it unfriendly to new players. The large map size combined with low player counts results in empty servers and limited player interaction. The stamina system, especially for flying dinosaurs, is seen as overly punishing. Food scarcity and unbalanced gameplay favor herbivores, diminishing carnivore viability. Technical issues such as bugs, crashes, lag, and poor optimization are widespread. Cheating and hacking are rampant, with inadequate developer response. Slow development progress and poor communication from the dev team frustrate the community, leading many to hesitate recommending the game.
Pros
- • Realistic dinosaur animations enhance immersion and gameplay variety.
- • High-quality graphics and sound design create a convincing prehistoric world.
- • Diverse dinosaur species offer unique playstyles and survival strategies.
- • Permadeath mechanics add tension and meaningful consequences.
- • Dedicated community provides external resources and support.
- • Unforgiving survival elements appeal to hardcore players.
- • Large maps allow for exploration and strategic play.
Cons
- • No in-game tutorial makes learning curve steep and frustrating.
- • Large maps with low player density lead to empty servers.
- • Stamina system, especially for flyers, is overly restrictive.
- • Food scarcity impacts gameplay balance and enjoyment.
- • Game suffers from frequent bugs, crashes, and optimization issues.
- • Rampant cheating and hacking with poor developer enforcement.
- • Slow development progress and lack of meaningful updates.
Rating Criteria
About This Game
The Isle: A World Designed to Kill You
The Isle is intended to be a gritty, open-world survival horror game. Explore vast landscapes of dense forest and open plains, traverse treacherous mountains and wade through dark swamps where horrors lurk. Hidden within are ruins that hold insight as to what came before. Through it all, keep in mind there is only one goal: survive.
There is little in the way of hand holding or ulterior precepts to alter play styles or purpose. It's kill or be killed. In the end, the only one you can trust is yourself. Over the course of development the islands and their inhabitants will radically change, ever-evolving as players themselves learn how to flourish and thrive. Your mistakes will be punished. Expect no survivors.
Massive Prehistoric Multiplayer
Become the beast within. When joining The Isle, you can play as one of dozens of unique creatures, from tiny darting herbivores like Dryosaurus to blood-thirsty giants such as T. Rex or Allosaurus (with many more still to come!) As a dinosaur, you'll be the epitome of majestic, cunning and ferocious. Use your natural abilities and senses to stay off the menu and grow into a stronger, more capable creature.
Engage with a living prehistoric ecosystem as you become either predator or prey on servers featuring up to 100+ players, all of them as hungry and dangerous as you. Form packs/herds, create nests, defend your offspring, hunt, and claim territory. A single mistake can spell your demise.
Survival or Sandbox?
The Isle's core game mode is Survival, a tense and difficult experience where you need to grow fast or die young. Dinosaurs in Survival mode progress through several life stages, starting out small and vulnerable. Use your scent ability, night vision and wits to survive long enough to grow, becoming more powerful and unlock new abilities such as nesting. Because of the time needed to develop a full character life cycle, not every creature is or will be playable in Survival, though more will be added in future updates.
However, sometimes you don't want to struggle to survive, or you don't have the time to go through a dinosaur's whole life story. And that's okay. For players who want a less intense experience, Sandbox mode lets you play an expanded roster of dinosaurs (and soon humans!). You can jump right in as an adult super predator or a peaceful giant, with no major penalties or consequences from dying. We won't judge.
A Global Community Story
The Isle features a narrative told strictly through the environment, achievable only through immense cooperation among players. Are you stranded? Can you just leave? What is AE? How did the dinosaurs get here? What is the distant call that pierces the night?
It will take the entire community to answer these mysteries and unravel the purpose to their being on The Isle, and each discovery will directly affect the future of the game's storyline.
Future Development Goals
We realize that there is a long road ahead, and a lot of work to be done to turn this into the game we want it to be. Throughout development, we will be adding a lot more to The Isle and incorporating user feedback in how we evolve the experience. Some of our planned features include:
- Playable aquatic and aerial creatures
- Even more playable dinosaurs with complete life cycles
- Two new playable factions: modern humans & the indigenous
- Evolve into advanced "strain" versions of certain dinosaurs
- Realistic dinosaur AI that uses complex behaviours
- Additional world biome types such as thick jungles
- Dynamic aerial drop-in spawn system
- Global in-game world quest
- Localization of all in-game menus & text
- Better accessibility & customization options
- Steam Achievements, Trading Cards, Emotes
- Mod support using Steam Workshop
All that and more are on our radar going forward. We started with a plan of just a mere handful of playable carnivores, but based on player demand we expanded our scope, increased that number greatly and introduced herbivorous dinosaurs as well. Listening to our community has been instrumental in guiding our process and helped to correct our mistakes, and we hope that together we can transform The Isle into the ultimate dinosaur game.
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Experience fierce open world survival gameplay as you attempt to stay alive on an unforgiving island inhabited by dinosaurs! Hunt. Grow. Survive.