Mad Island begins with a cruise hitting a rock and ends your vacation plans right there. After setting sail with four friends, you wash up on an unfamiliar island and meet the other protagonist. Finding your missing companions and escaping gives this survival game its central objective, but a branching story leaves room to question whether leaving is your only option.
Getting anywhere means building a life among the wreckage of those plans. You craft equipment, gather resources, grow food, explore ruins, and fight the island’s inhabitants and monsters. The story opens with the female protagonist; once on the island, you can switch between the two leads at any time.
From Shipwreck to Workshop
More than 10 workbench types let you make weapons, shields, protective gear, clothing, food, and seasonal decorations. Their recipes also include torture devices, cages, and sex toys.
Farming, excavation, gathering, and fishing feed into that routine. Sowing vegetables supplies ingredients for new dishes, while the fish you can catch vary by location. Battles, excavation, and gathering also earn levels, so working the island’s resources contributes to character growth as well as your supplies.
Company Comes With Complications
The island’s native inhabitants follow a day-and-night routine, spending daylight outside and sleeping in their homes at night. You can capture and enslave them, assigning them logging, excavation, or farming work. This makes forced labor part of the resource systems, while additional controls let you permit or restrict their sexual activity.
Other characters tell you how they reached the island. Stunning enemies can let you tame them as allies, with stronger companions helping on later expeditions.
Go Deeper, Bring Better Weapons
Caves and ruins have multiple levels, with stronger bosses and powerful weapons farther down. Traps add another hazard to those descents, giving your crafted gear and recruited allies a purpose beyond maintaining a settlement.
Leveling increases stats such as attack power and running speed, while skill progression opens new abilities. Combat, gathering, and excavation all contribute experience.
Customization With a Dark Edge
You can customize both your own appearance and that of friendly NPCs, including dressing characters in crafted clothing. Body alteration extends to devices that remove limbs, placing customization alongside the game’s more violent systems. Adult content also reaches into crafting and the management of captive inhabitants.
Content note: Mad Island includes nudity, sexual content, sex without consent, torture, mutilation, and excessive violence. Its content warning states that all characters are 20 or older.
An Island Still in Early Access
EmadePlus developed and published Mad Island. It entered Early Access on May 23, 2024, for Windows and supports Steam Family Sharing. The regular US price was $19.99 when checked.
More Screenshots
Images: © EmadePlus
