When you've clicked enough lights to finish the scene, it's on to the next one. In tactile terms, the extent of your interaction, beyond rotating the camera, is the option to click on light sources (lamps, laptops, televisions and so on) in order to produce interesting effects, unexpected animations, or pleasing snippets of audio. As you wheel around the scene, you gain new perspectives on the objects, which, like a surrealist study, can allow you to reflect on the familiar in an unfamiliar context.

Each one is a dusky, tonal diorama, around which the camera can be rotated on a fixed circular path. There are ten scenes, visited in sequence. The presentation is as utilitarian as the subjects. This is a surrealist study of architecture's supporting cast in which you're forced to consider and prod, at length, at the places that nobody ever cares about, or thinks about, or notices. It's the hotel lobby, with its deep chairs and bowed pot-plants. It's the bus shelter, with its plastic seats, bathed in the white light of an advertising screen. It's the baggage carousel in the airport, with its melancholy conga of luggage. Islands, as its titular addendum 'Non-Places' insinuates, is a game about those non-descript patches of no-man's land through which we all pass en route to where we're going. It’s always pretty clear what you’re supposed to do, and the game’s general ethos is: “Here, let me show you some cool stuff.A playful, often humorous tour of the modern world's transition spaces. “Islands” isn’t trying to stymie you or psych you out with puzzles. While “Myst” was a technical marvel when it was first released, I found it too opaque and frustrating. The most immediate influence I detected was “Myst,” a classic and/or infamous game that also involved fairly static scenes, hunting for the right place to click, and so on. The clicks and whirs and other noises from the transformations as they occur are all quite satisfying. Sometimes the ambient noise is cars in the distance, sometimes it’s conversation. The sound is really, really well done - “Islands” recommends headphones, and you should in fact wear them. The palettes are stark, and there’s a gauzy fog. Each setting has a detached-from-the-rest-of-the-universe feel to it. When you click, or click enough, the scene will transform in surprising ways - not to give too much away, but maybe gears and levers will reveal themselves or a seemingly inanimate object will become lifelike.

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