KILL
In addition to the standard 16 puzzles, there is, or rather was a bonus puzzle regarding the Hovel where a heathen mother (occasionally a heathen father!) carrying a baby resides in the hovel from the start of the game.
To solve it you need three mothers to convert them after spooking any other heathens guarding the area, they start out at age twenty like every other convert and you get a bonus baby with your bonus puzzle.
Now here's the kicker, this puzzle and the heathen parent just don't exist in 'modern' copies of the game, it's only available in older versions (which I remember playing) and seems to be lost to time on my end, since even in the 'non-official' downloads of the game I got to try and and find this puzzle it's completely absent. The only place I can seem to find it is in the games' image assets, where the sprites still make an appearance. It doesn't seem to be available in the mobile version either according to fan forums.
While I wish I could get my hands on a version that contains this puzzle, it's nice knowing that I
didn't just hallucinate this thing.
...and it you have a copy with this puzzle, please email me!
The fifth and in my point of view the last entry of the mainline series is a complicated subject when it comes to my opinions, I think it’s very experimental in its’ design; it brings in the God Power system, which admittedly isn’t my favorite but is an interesting and fairly fleshed out mechanic. I do quite like the idea of “enemy” villagers, I think it’s a very cool premise and gives a purpose to the mechanics. It’s a little messy for it to be a favorite but it works!
Plus I’m pretty sure every human being on this iteration of Isola has been diagnosed with severe ADHD since none of them like to focus on what I tell them to and go out for walks on the river every two seconds in addition to the ‘Rascal’, AKA a yellow-masked heathen child who interrupts every villager and requires EARTHQUAKE POWER WHICH REQUIRES 800 ENERGY to convert.
I will say this game provokes the most emotion out of me and that emotion is anger.
Also, the occasional chance that the lore makes me sad like the time what was the converted Heathen Master Scientist comforting the Heathen Master Farmer and being the only scientist available to direct the aqueduct repair, I thought it was cute since they canonically know each other, Heathen Masters and the Chief being the closest to actual characters in the game.
Farmer/Scientist/Doctor Heathen Master polycule is canon in my save.
Visually, I do think the game lost some of its bite; the layout is sparser than the others and compared to its’ predecessors nothing really seems to be intentionally placed, considering the game directly before it having such an intertwined and visually intentional design despite being a quarter smaller, there’s nothing to really do with the added space. While you have the choice to place buildings farther out there’s no reason at all to do that since they don’t serve any non-meta purpose like population or increasing the energy cap.
Another good example is the dye pots that appear after you’ve built the clothing hut, instead of them spawning near the actual building, they’re perfectly lined up at the sides of the hardcoded farmlands, it’s not like it’s to get it closer to the pools since the villagers go to the easternmost side of the map to dump the dye anyway. Making the pots part of the actual clothing hut structure (like the cloth bolts in The Tree of Life) could have incentivized you to strategically build the structure farther away from the map center, or they could have made it so that the pots were spread across the map like the lab equipment in The Secret City.
Or they could have just made it look better? Why are they lined up like this??
Also, you can’t do anything with the laboratory except convert someone! There’s no cauldron for potions or a pot for cooking, I don’t know why it lacks functionality in this game, the lack of interactivity really stands out to me, I understand to a degree why, to avoid useless features on top of a new system but I feel that it should have been developed a little more before release especially since a lot of the Powers can take out your entire energy bar and the game has half the resources of the previous game.