Islanders

Islanders is a deceptively simple puzzle game where you build little cities to score points. More importantly, it's the absolutely perfect game for making beautiful picturesque villages you can fall asleep and dream about.

Perhaps because of this, though, it runs short on unpredictability after a few sessions, and becomes all about finesse rather than surprise. I'd be interested in a leaderboardless mode that (somehow) either made everything available from the off or gave me the option to restore a game from before the island I bungled, just to spare me from doing the same starting loops of minor buildings again and...

Islanders: Console Edition trims every bit of fat from the city-building genre, stripping it down to the core mechanic of plunking down buildings for points. While the controls are a bit fidgety, the chill gameplay and focused mechanics more than make up for it. Play for a few minutes or a few hours, either way, Islanders delivers.