| Developer | Sokpop Collective |
| Release date | August 15, 2018 |
| Genres | Strategy Video Game |
| Platforms | Microsoft Windows, and Mac operating systems |
Simmiland is an island simulation and deck-builder game. You run a simulation of an island of humans and use the cards in your hand to help them develop as a society. You earn points by fulfilling the wishes of your people and at the end of each game, you can spend these points on building up your deck.
You use the cards to do everything from planting trees and edible plants, to terraforming the landscape. The people on your island will respond to
what you do by building homes, domesticating animals and getting themselves killed by cacti. There are many different biomes to create on your tiny islands. You do this by using the weather-based cards to affect the temperature and humidity of an area, or by striking your island with a small natural disaster.
I’m sorry little guy, but if you want some mountains I need to cause an earthquake or two. Placing cards in different biomes will give different results so there’s a lot of experimenting to make sure your little humans have everything they need. By nature of the game’s design as a deck builder, you’re not going to get too far on your first few go’s.
This really takes the pressure off when you’re learning. The goal is to do a little bit better each
time whether that’s by getting access to more technologies, working out how on earth you managed to get the tropical biome that one time, or preventing your humans from becoming
completely evil so they don’t murder everything on sight. When done well, pixel art can be a fun and charming style to present a game in, and I think that Simmiland uses it effectively.
It’s cute, generally well designed, and gives the game a nice retro feel. Some of the icons are a little tricky to interpret but overall it’s a very effective visual style. The music and sound design complement this well, keeping the old 8-bit vibes going without the music being too in your face about it. I feel like there are three stages of playing Simmiland. The first is confusion as you have no idea what the result of any card will be and a lot of information is being thrown at you. This stage is pretty short and by your second game, you will be in the fun, experimental phase.
I found this so enjoyable as I learned more with each iteration and built up my cards. However, eventually, you will reach the final stage of frustration. To reach the end of the game you need to do very specific things in a specific way and working out what the game’s designers intended is very irritating. I’m sure these choices seemed logical to them but I would never have worked them out without looking up the solutions on the wiki.
I also find myself increasingly frustrated by the random element of drawing cards into your hand. There is no real way to strategize as you could find yourself drawing the same tree card over and over when you really need something, anything else. As such, I would recommend you to play this game.
