There’s always something a little worrying about starting a sequel to a game you loved. There’s a chance that part two will either ruin the original’s greatness with unsuccessful new additions, or hew so closely to what came before that it hardly feels like a sequel at all. Sometimes, the best option is to just do what worked the first time with a few new bells and whistles, and trust that what you already had didn’t need to be improved upon much.
That’s the case with Islanders: New Shores. The original Islanders is a city-building puzzle game with a chill vibe and a brutal scoring system that challenges you to build a series of perfect, pretty islands one building at a time. That’s exactly what New Shores is, too, with a few new smart improvements.
