“They’re like a completionist mechanic, but they also have intrinsic value to round up the story and help you understand what Mo is going through in each specific island,” explains Anhut. It’s interesting traversing these environments and interacting with objects that don’t just trigger descriptions, but are pointedly memories, of which there are many to find. What’s also different is that, while most hero journeys often involve discovering new places, these islands are actually places that Mo has visited before her home sits on one of the larger central islands, where most of her people also live. Exactly where these giants are now, and why Mo is the sole character capable of wielding the Omni Switch, are both secrets Anhut is keen to keep to himself.

More specifically, the Omni Switch is essential for fixing machines that have been keeping the spores away all this time, and which were built by a race of giants who’ve all but vanished from the surface. Mo’s equivalent of the Master Sword, then, is the Omni Switch, which has the appearance of a magic wand but, as the name implies, functions as an all-purpose tool for solving puzzles. “And this is what the game explores with our protagonist, Mo, who finds that it’s not as easy as just drawing a sword from a stone, and being the chosen one.”ĭespite the sword-wielding Arthurian allusions, however, Mo is actually a mechanic, which is quite apt given the general mentality among the archipelago’s populace, where even the most beat-up things are cherished, and objects are constantly being reused and fixed up rather than discarded. “This trope of video games – putting all the pressure of saving the world on your shoulders – is normal in everyday life for a lot of people, even if they don’t realise it,” says Anhut. Naturally, it’s up to a young hero to save the day: it’s a popular trope Anhut admits they’re piggybacking on, but also deconstructing. The story’s set on an archipelago consisting of seven islands, where an unknown calamity strikes at the start, releasing a mysterious cloud of poisonous spores. The detailed, handmade visuals certainly look incredible, and Anhut stresses that the team refrained from reusing assets as much as possible – which is pretty impressive, given there’s a considerable amount of them across a narrative adventure designed to be completed in a few hours. And we think that this translation process makes it more accessible, and more endearing.” We think that the language this offers us, whether in character design or environmental design, is a stylisation that players can translate for themselves. “And we think it allows us to connect to the character better than doing something where we risk going into the uncanny valley with photorealism. “(Gaedke) basically insisted on making something that doesn’t look like a game,” says Anhut. Driven primarily by the team’s art director, Tim Gaedke, Minute of Islands’ art style is influenced by French and Belgian comics such as The Adventures of Tintin, which have a similar tradition of merging adult storytelling with stylised characters and environments.

Minute of islands artist