Mining and building a settlement
Rock the Islands is a cozy idle arcade game with grind elements. You explore mysterious islands, mine ore and gems, and sell your loot to traders for coins. Coins buy everything: upgrades, a new pickaxe, and access to unexplored lands. You also rescue dwellers from goblin captivity. Freed dwellers can work at your base mining resources, or travel with you to protect you and mine alongside you. Upgrading your pickaxe, unlocking skills, and improving your armor all matter, and your dwellers can be upgraded too so they earn more and survive longer.
Playing together with friends
You can play alone or team up with up to 5 players. A group shares responsibilities and splits gathered resources toward a common goal, which makes mining faster than going it alone. Goblins raid your settlement using ships and boats to land reinforcements, so your group needs to stop them from reaching your territory before they rob you. Minigames hosted by strangers add variety: you can challenge bosses or take on waves of enemies on an arena for rewards.
Before you start
The game is free-to-play. Chips let you spin a roulette for new skills, and you can earn chips for free by completing daily quests, though each spin puts them at risk. The developers describe this as their first game, focused on learning the Steam platform and gathering feedback, with patches planned to improve the experience. Expect a casual, colorful top-down adventure with a colony sim and sandbox feel rather than a demanding survival game.