Islanders

At the start of each session, players are presented with a small procedurally generated island. There are several styles of islands; some have terrain that restricts the placement of certain buildings. The player is given a choice between two building packs to start with, each of which provides a limited number of buildings according to a theme, such as forestry, farming, or fishing. When selected from the inventory, a building displays a translucent sphere around it, which indicates the distance at which it will earn points from existing buildings and natural features, such as trees. The size of this scoring sphere varies between building types.

Buildings gain points from being placed near relevant structures, but lose points for incompatible ones. A circus, for example, gains points for being placed near houses, but loses points for being near mansions. As potential points are shown in preview before placement, the player can move the building around the island to determine the best location before setting the building down permanently. Buildings can be rotated to fit into position, but once placed, cannot be removed or built over, so careful placement and forward planning are important to maximize the score.

Grizzly Games is composed of Paul Schnepf, Friedemann Allmenröder, and Jonas Tyroller, who met during the Bachelor of Arts in Game Design program at HTW Berlin. Schnepf and Allmenröder first worked together on a second-year project, a short experimental game called ROM. Later in their second year, they worked with another student, Shahriar Shahrabi, to develop minimalist wingsuit flight simulator Superflight, founding Grizzly Games as a means to release it. Shahrabi left after the release of Superflight. During their third year, Tyroller joined Grizzly Games and development began on Islanders.

The development of Islanders began with a three-week process of researching, prototyping, and refining several concepts. The team was inspired by their mutual childhood interest in city-building games like Anno, The Settlers, and SimCity, which they enjoyed but found complicated. Seeking to provide a streamlined experience focused solely on building, the team decided to move forward with the concept that became Islanders. The game had a short development cycle of seven months: four months of major development time, and another three months of refinement and preparation before release.

Critical reception of Islanders was largely positive. It received an aggregate score of 82/100 on Metacritic, a review aggregator site that compiles reviews from mainstream publications and assigns a weighted average score out of 100. Reviewers praised the game's intentionally simple mechanics, as well as its minimalist, low-poly visual aesthetic and relaxing soundtrack. The game was commercially successful as well: in April 2019, it was one of the top twenty highest-selling new releases on Steam.

In July 2019, Hayden Dingman of PC World called it one of their favorite indie games of the year to that point. That month, the staff at Rock, Paper, Shotgun also placed it on their list of the year's best games so far. Luke Plunkett of Kotaku placed the game on his list of the top 10 games of 2019. Paul Tamayo, also of Kotaku, named it one of the most relaxing games of 2019.

Some critics have drawn comparisons between Islanders and later minimalist building games. Following the console release of Islanders, many compared it to Dorfromantik, a tile-based city-building game released in 2021. Several reviews for Townscaper, a low poly city-builder released in 2021, explicitly compared it to Islanders.

Writing in 2022, Geoffrey Bunting of Eurogamer linked the rising popularity of games like Islanders with the COVID-19 pandemic. During the early stages of the pandemic, many countries initiated lockdowns as a pandemic control measure. Bunting argues that during these periods, people had increased free time and needed distraction from stress, and turned to relaxing minimalist games as a solution.