Title: Islantiles
Tagline: City Puzzler meets deep Deck Builder on beautiful, hand-crafted islands.
Platforms: Windows PC (Steam)
Developer: Thunderrock Innovations, a two-person indie team
Website: https://www.thunderrockinnovations.com
Steam Page: Wishlist on Steam
Press Contact: devs@islantiles.com
Short: Islantiles is a cozy but compulsive roguelike deckbuilder. Unlock powerful technology cards, shape your deck to craft game-breaking combos, and grow your settlements to glory in this ultra-satisfying roguelike!
Long: Islantiles borrows the high-level appeal of Balatro-style Systems: Simple rules that unfold into deep, combinatorial decision-making. But applies them to a spatial, city-building context rather than a purely abstract card game.
Where Balatro-likes focus on optimizing probabilistic outcomes within a closed ruleset, Islantiles translates that depth into a tile-based world where decisions have persistent, spatial consequences. This results in a core loop that is immediately readable but meaningfully more strategic, as players must balance short-term synergies with long-term city structure and progression. The outcome is a similarly “easy to learn, hard to master” experience, but with broader tactical scope and stronger systemic emergence.
“We love deep strategy, but we also wanted to create something calming - something you could play with a cup of tea,” says Daniel Espen, one of the two developers of Islantiles. “Every run teaches you something new, and there’s always a new synergy to explore.”
Thunderrock Innovations is a small indie game studio run by two passionate developers. With a focus on strategic depth and relaxing gameplay, Islantiles is their latest project, built from the ground up with care and creativity.