Pico Islands

Only into the game a few hours. I did purchase the no ad version because I can see this being my new obsession as long as it continues to mature. Plus developers need income too! Some issues I am having… 1). the learning curve was pretty steep and I am still lost on some purposes the different icons represent. I.e. Forester lookups result in 404 page errors. 2) Needs a graphics setting to lower power use. Even plugged in cannot keep up with the drain. Playing on 2021 ipad with up to date ios sytem. 3). App loses my purchase records. I can recover them but it is annoying. 4) would like to see a map id of some kind and a way to play specific maps. Power drain is the most concerning to me, tbh. As I get deeper into the game I will update this review. Edit. Still playing. I tapped an option about 10 map limit and cannot undo it? Otherwise last update seemed to help with power drain. 2026 update: I keep coming back to play however no updates in a year. I have sent the game to multiple people who would like some updates as do I.

Even if this game were polished (which it is not), it would still not be worth the $13 unlock cost. I’m not averse to buying my games; in fact, I only play premium (not freemium) games. It just can’t compete with other games in its price range. If this game were offered for desktop systems, it would never sell at that price. I’ll leave it on my device, however, and occasionally launch it to see if the dev has come to his senses on the pricing of the ad-free version. Until then, it will sit in my “purgatory” folder where it belongs. Lastly, It seems likely that the price is intentionally prohibitive because the dev prefers ad revenue, which is unfortunate. I never play games with ads so he’s not making anything off of me and those like me.

This is an amazingly fun little game. Unfortunately people are right, the first Playthru is to try to learn how to play. There’s not a lot of descriptions just icons in here to figure out what they are what benefit you get. The other issue is that it cost $13 to Remove ads. Honestly I like this game enough that I would think $9.99 would’ve been fair. The 13 is asking for a little too much. That said it was written very well and is very fun. I would love to see an endgame at it.