During my, uh, “travels” through my mighty backlog of Steam games, I happened upon one called Heaven Island. It is a game like no other. Wait, no, that’s a lie. It’s actually got a lot in common with Proteus. And I didn’t really care for Proteus. Also, I’m not entirely sure what the actual title of the game is. On the bundle page I redeemed it from, it’s called Paradise Island. In the Steam library, it’s called Heaven Island. I don’t think the game proper ever references its title, so maybe it goes both ways? *wink*
Moving on, Paraven Island is the walkingest walking simulator that ever simulated. That’s almost literally all there is to it. Just bumbling around an island, looking at the trees and random structures scattered about. You can also pick up apples and seashells to earn achievements.
The game’s gimmick is that it’s an MMO, in the most basic sense. There’s no actual player interaction, though, and every player is represented by a ball of shimmering light instead of the more typical humanoid avatar. The online portion seems like a vestigial limb that probably should have just withered off long ago.
I suppose there’s another gimmick, which is that Heavadise Island is VR compatible. I did not play it in VR mode, as I have no VR device. I don’t think that this really affected my experience, because… the game isn’t really VR friendly.
See, the entire conceit of VR is that it’s more immersive than anything else. In this game, however, there is pop-in like crazy (that may very well be my PC’s fault), and you can simply walk through a lot of solid objects. These are not overly immersive traits. Also, there’s nothing to do but wander! Collecting apples only goes so far.
As one more little thing to do, there are a number books scattered about the island. They all contain short messages telling you to appreciate the game for what it is, couched in feel-good adages like “If you are depressed, you’re living in the past. If you are content, you’re living in the present.” I stopped looking at them after a while because if I had rolled my eyes one more time, they would’ve popped right out of their sockets.
Overall, there’s really nothing to Paradise Heaven. It’s a nice little beach to boot around on, but I can’t help but feel like I’d get a lot more out of, you know, actually being on that island. And not in the VR sense. It’s a perfect representation of a secluded little spot that I’d love to go to get away from the world for a while, but the lack of interactivity with anything makes the pretend version feel more hollow than anything. I can only watch digital fish swim in circles for so long.