Amber Isle Review - A Colossal Close Hit

Who knew that the answer to ultimate relaxation was building a shop and rebuilding an island entirely made up of cute dinosaurs? Amber Isle lets you do just that, combining adorable aesthetics with island restoration that takes the edge off after a long day.

Amber Isle is, at its core, a management game. Players fall in control of an island shop, where they soon learn that they can revive the island by being successful and breathing life into the abandoned areas. More dinosaurs can be invited to stay as areas are fixed up, and a touching story brings the island together by the end.

There’s a lot to love about Amber Isle – the shop simulation, dinosaur designs, and overall decorating were wonderful. However, there are bugs at every corner that slows things down, and not in a good way. 

Shop Simulation Done As Cozy As Possible

Amber Isle does a few things incredibly well, and the shop simulation aspect is one of them. Players mostly craft all the items they sell with materials gathered by cleaning up and exploring the island areas.

This crafting system was a lot simpler than in many other games. Gathering materials for each item was straightforward and easy to do. For those who aren’t a fan of complex crafting systems, like myself, this is a good thing. It’s much more relaxing and calm compared to other, similar games, such as Animal Crossing: New Horizons or Cozy Grove. 

Even the shop itself was much more relaxing to run than other shop simulation games. Most of the time, dinos will buy the item outright or bring it up to the counter to haggle. 

Haggling is what you make of it. By giving dinos the price they want, or at least a lower price than you’re asking, friendship with them is raised significantly. By trying to get a better deal for yourself, the shop’s level will rise more. 

When players aren’t haggling, they can clean the shop or turn on various appliances to raise the aesthetics of the shop (though this isn’t available until later on). Occasionally, a dino will break something that has to be addressed. 

The only problem with the shop is that it can be buggy. There were several times when I was trying to accept a haggle price set by a dino and they would act like I was charging them much higher than they were asking. This led to several mad dinosaurs. 

Additionally, trying to interact with the front counter can be difficult. The interact icon is hard to land perfectly on at times, especially if there’s any sort of furniture near the front counter, even in areas that you wouldn’t expect to impact you. I ended up just not using the entire wall that the counter is closest to as a way to avoid the worst of the problems. 

I found ways around these problems, but it was a bit annoying to do so consistently.

Dino Designs Take the Stage in Amber Isle

The dinosaurs in Amber Isle had distinct personalities and stories. I was impressed by this level of detail, with some dinos being related to each other and others having development as the story progresses. 

Getting to know these dinos is a key part of Amber Isle. It’s also really well incorporated into the story. While they are all side quests, players will inevitably complete them as they progress. This kept Amber Isle fresh and cohesive on top of the great characters.

Plus, the dinosaur designs were incredibly fun. While creating your own character is its own adventure, meeting the other dinosaurs was part of the fun. Their designs matched their personalities well, even down to the tiniest details. 

Decorating and Reviving Amber Isle is Free and Fun

Recruiting these adorable dinos means making the areas around Amber Isle as attractive as possible. Decorating and redesigning these areas is vital, and it feels less like a chore and more like an honor. 

Designing is simple and intuitive, and it just costs money to do (which is a much less complex system than having to craft every individual item). The decorations themselves are cute, and it’s satisfying to walk around and see what you’ve created. There are so many ways to really tailor each area and make it exactly what you want. 

Ironically, this became the highlight of my playthrough. I had a lot of fun creating little areas. Designing can sometimes feel overwhelming or pointless, even for the most style-savvy players. However, its purpose and the ease of decorating make the feature a highlight instead of something stressful. 

Paleo Problems Abound

Unfortunately, there were several problems in Amber Isle that can make the game feel frustrating. For example, there were consistently spaces in my inventory or in the shop that I couldn’t interact with. So if I needed to choose a specific item to move or to give to a customer, I literally couldn’t. 

Occasionally, I could get around this by automatically sorting my bag. This would force items to move and hopefully land somewhere I could interact. The problematic spots were different every time. 

Additionally, I struggled to find dinos sometimes. They’d show on the overworld map but be hidden by an object. In particular, one small dinosaur was almost always stuck under a pile of dirt and impossible to see. 

Smaller problems, such as a lack of explanation about how to use several systems in the game and UI issues, brought Amber Isle down quite a bit. Some players may be less bothered by these, but it’s enough to make the game confusing. 

A note on the game's Discord did explain that the build I had been playing was old, and it had been updated and was available to check out. This was after the review was written, and after checking the new build out, there were still several problems. Some bugs had been fixed while others still made it into the game, and new bugs cropped up that I'd never experienced before. 

Overall, Amber Isle Falls Just Short

Unfortunately, these problems make it so that Amber Isle struggles to feel like a good, solid game. It has several amazing components, but the bugs and issues are so abundant that it’s frustrating at best. 

However, for players who don’t mind navigating around bugs for cute, relaxing dinosaur fun, Amber Isle is a solid pick. 

Amber Isle was reviewed on PC with a copy provided by the publisher over the course of 22 hours of gameplay - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.