Mo can variously examine, pick up and manipulate what she sees, depending on the context, as well as converse with those few who are left to listen.

Hotspots are marked by blinking white starbursts accompanied by an on-screen prompt describing what a button-press will let you do. The game is not a platformer per se, but it’s platformer-adjacent as such, though both keyboard and gamepad controls are supported, the latter provides a much smoother experience. You guide Mo along a two-dimensional plane, moving left and right with the joystick or arrow keys and jumping or boosting yourself onto ledges with a dedicated button. This means Mo will have to travel from island to island, using the Omni Switch to repair the machines and rouse the giants from their stupor if she’s to have a hope of keeping her loved ones safe. If she can’t get the system back online soon, the brothers will die, leaving the islands forever defenseless against the fungal spread and forcing her family to either abandon their ancestral home or perish. Mo is thus the only thing standing between her home and oblivion.Īs the game opens, Mo wakes one morning to discover that the machinery has suffered a catastrophic system-wide failure overnight, leaving the giant siblings in a catatonic state and allowing the fungal bloom to creep back over the islands. It’s a responsibility that Mo takes deadly seriously, as the ancient machines are constantly breaking down and requiring her attention. Mo found and awakened these brothers when the blight first arrived, and in return they selected her as their apprentice, granting her a magical tool called the Omni Switch that allows her to use, manipulate and repair their technology. Those who remain survive through the efforts of four subterranean giants, who operate complex air-purifying machinery that keeps the fungus at bay. The danger is such that all except Mo and her family evacuated the islands long ago to find a safer haven. The fungus is merciless, eating up everything it touches and gradually consuming all life in its path. Players take on the role of Mo, a girl who lives in an archipelago that’s constantly under threat from an airborne fungal blight. It’s a beautiful, moving game, one that’s not just about a Chosen One but about the weight that idea itself exerts upon the world, and every discrete element of its design works in service to that theme. I say “until recently” because Minute of Islands had me re-examining the entire notion from directions I’d never considered.

Personally, it’s a subject that’s never much interested me, and my belief until recently was that the idea had basically been played out. As a plot device it’s driven such modern epoch-defining blockbusters as Star Wars, The Matrix and the Harry Potter series-not to mention their legions of imitators-and as with anything ubiquitous, it’s become more difficult over the years to make new interpretations feel fresh. There are few conceits so well worn in western fiction as that of the “Chosen One:” an individual selected by a higher power to combat some great evil and bring the world back from the brink of annihilation.

Minute of islands narrator