Tranquil Isle Is a Completely Relaxed Town-Building Game

In Tranquil Isle Classic mode, once you hit a milestone tier, you are given new buildings and items to place on the island or access to additional landmasses in this town-building simulation. After hitting each one, a pop-up will offer a choice. So, as an easy example that isn’t any sort of spoiler, the first option in the tutorial comes up after placing the 10-point Town Center.  Since you hit the 10-point milestone after that, it offers you a choice between three base five-point Houses and two base 14-point foragers or three houses and one 20-point farm. Once a choice is made, the next milestone becomes 35 points, and you need to use the Town Center you have and the new buildings you picked to reach that tier. 

However, those points are just a starter example. Bonuses kick in based on placement due to buffs. Likewise, placing multiple types of certain types of buildings near each other can decrease points. This affects new and old placements, so you need to constantly be aware of what you have, what you’re doing, and how you want to shift things around. Each building has a sphere of influence around it, which is shown when you first place it. Also, when you place any building, UI will show noting how the score of it and buildings near where it might go change based on the buffs and debuffs. This means even at the outset, you need to sort of determine where you’d want commercial, residential, and industrial spaces. You can only delete a building when you’re in Sandbox mode, so you need to really be cautious.

However, there’s also a bit of a no stress option. Reaching score milestones isn’t difficult. As long as you play around with the choices, it’s pretty easy to reach them no matter which building reward you pick. Sandbox mode is also always an option. If you’re in a Classic run and having trouble hitting some milestones, you can choose to save that island you’re working on one and reopen it in Sandbox. That way you can continue development just for fun. It really helped emphasize the idea that Tranquil Isle is indeed tranquil, and you can opt out of the more strict demands of the town-building game at any time.

I do wish that, visually, there was a bit more to Tranquil Isle. There are only a handful of themes, and the additional options for building designs typically only do something minor like offer a few different roof colors. Since the optimal way to play is zoomed out, it’s difficult to tell a difference. If you do zoom in, you can see little people and animals wandering around, which is fine, but it isn’t as graphically impressive or offer a style as unique as some similar simulations. Because of the design direction and general gameplay, I sort of felt like while I had a good time, I wasn’t as memorable as some similar town-building games I played.

Tranquil Isle is enjoyable and can be a leisurely way to relax while developing an island. It’s a low-key town-building game for sure. However, while I enjoyed myself and it runs fine, this sim doesn’t really stand out. It might not be as memorable and eye-catching as other titles in the genre, which I think will keep it from becoming a “classic.”

Tranquil Isle is available for PCs.