Excellent Nurikabe implementation with a 300-level campaign, randomly-generated puzzles at 6 different difficulty levels, daily easy/medium/hard puzzles, and a level editor.

The time taken at review was the time I took to finish all achievements (except for one achievement which requires you to wait for daily puzzles).

According to Japanese folklore, Nurikabe is "an invisible wall that blocks roads and delays foot travel". Over the years it has been referenced multiple times in pop culture such as in the whomps of the Super Mario series, but in terms of puzzle games there was not much of a connection until from publisher Nikoli came up a new variant in the grid binary determination genre that features other classics like picross and minesweeper. Let's dive into this one then.

Nurikabe as a game is based on a grid where one has to color a cell black or white depending on whether it comprises water or land. As such, each puzzle asks the player to recognize what "islands" form in the solution according to certain rules that come from different numbers already placed on the board. Each of them show the number of cells that comprise an island and neighbouring land cells by the horizontal and vertical axis belong to the same island. Considering as well that each of them must include one and only one numbered cell, that there must be one "sea" meaning that all black cells must be connected, and that it can't contain any pools (2x2 squares of black tiles) you can quickly get an idea of how complex the game can appear to newcomers.

However, despite what it looks like as well as additional ones that the game adds in to spice up the formula, the learning curve in the game is so smooth that after a few tries of practice you'll start to solve one after another in no time. Each section of the campaign is designed in a way that it focuses on what you’ve learned so far or in different strategies to approach them. For example, if a number 1 is placed on the board you can already tell that all of its neighbours have to be black cells and connected in some way; or since the neighbouring cells depend on the vertical and horizontal axis, two land diagonal cells can belong to different islands, and so on.

Furthermore, since by the rules this kind of puzzle game is enhanced by a thought provoking environment, the presentation takes the island concept quite literally and shows water and islands with Japanese architecture and vegetation as you complete each island and in different seasons. And in terms of sounds the soundtrack is composed by soft piano and biwa tunes here and there with a synthesizer depending on the season in question. Needless to say, this is certainly a tea time or a podcast game depending on your preferences, that is.

To sum up, but not before mentioning that aside from the campaign there are daily puzzles, a level generator with different difficulty settings and user made levels to check out, this is definitely one to check out if you’re into similar games from the genre or a casual player looking for something to pass the time.