Restore Your Island is the perfect name because that’s exactly what this game is about. You’re on a small island in the middle of the sea, and it’s absolutely littered with refuse and trash. Your job is to clean up and restore your island. See? Aptly named.
I’m fairly weak to this kind of game. I really love a slower-paced setting that allows me to gradually see a difference and upgrade my tools to get the job done. I will say, however, that picking up trash is really the sole point of the game. The full game may have a bigger, overarching goal, but in the demo, it was simply down to clean up.
You’ll pick up garbage with a grabber tool and pop things in the trash. At that point, you can sell the bin of trash for money that you can use to upgrade several things. You’ll be able to buy more bins that offer greater return, more capacity to hold things, a bigger stamina bar for your energy, a sifter to help tackle large areas of land, fertilizer to restore trees, and a radar to find treasure.
At first, you’ll have to buy food from the shop in order to replenish your energy. Alternatively, you could rest in the small hut on your island, but it won’t restore your bar fully. Here’s where fertilizer really comes in clutch. You can use the bags on the palm trees dotted around the island, and in doing so, they’ll spawn food every day in the form of coconuts and bananas.
Having this source around helps to keep your stamina a bit more manageable because picking up trash will eat away at your bar, especially if you’re using the sifter. Even though it’s a heavier drain, the sifter is invaluable and easily becomes the only acceptable way to pick things up, especially when you can throw things away directly from the sifter instead of chucking them individually in the trash bin.
Later, you’ll be able to unlock the radar, which has three modes to show you where garbage is, where trees that need to be fertilized are, and where the treasure is. Obviously, if you want to upgrade things faster, you’re donning the metaphorical pirate hat and setting a course for treasure hunting.
Watch the trailer for Restore Your Island!
From there, you’re going to rinse and repeat the steps to clean up the island and upgrade your items. Eventually, you’ll find a key that you can use on a treasure chest behind your home. The only thing in there is a funny gag visual to spice up your campfire area. Otherwise, you’re on the hunt for some pliers to help free a wrapped-up turtle.
As you clean more of the island, a meter to the side will fill up, and it has different symbols that represent goals. For instance, the first symbol was a fish, and when I surpassed that, I got a cute little cutscene that showed life returning to the ocean. …It was a shark, so maybe I wouldn’t have worked toward that, but you can’t climb into the ocean anyway, so I’m sure it’s fine. Probably.
And, that’s the game. You rinse, repeat, and thrive. This is a very slow-paced game that’s more methodical than anything else. You can listen to a tiny radio or do what I did and just enjoy the ambient sounds of the ocean or the rain when it rolls through.
This isn’t the type of game you’re going to pick up if you’re looking for something deeper. It’s all very surface-level, and sometimes, that’s exactly what you need. I don’t know what happens when you restore your island fully; that may be the end of gameplay, or you may go off to another island. Either way, there are definitely several hours ahead of you to fully restore your island.
If Restore Your Island seems like something you’d be interested in, definitely try the demo that is out now. If you like what you see, go ahead and wishlist it since that really helps the developer out. While you’re here, go ahead and check out a few of the other demos we’ve covered here: Nekogumi and A Storied Life: Tabitha.
