Isles of Sea & Sky Mechanics

Tiles, Blocks, and Li’l Guys

1. Wooden Block
2. Pit
   1. Walk over it and die.
   2. Basic Block fills Pit and makes it walkable.
3. Covered Pit
   1. Walk over it once for free.
   2. Basic Block breaks the cover and fills it.
4. Spikes
   1. Kills you when you walk on it.
5. Bell / Bell Block
   1. All Bell Blocks of a certain color disappear when you ring their matching color of Bell.
6. Metal Block
   1. Can’t fill Pits; falls in.
7. Pillar/Button
   1. Pillars are Up, or Down.
   2. Pillars and Buttons have a Color.
   3. Up Pillars block movement.
   4. Buttons toggle all Up pillars of the same color to Down, and vice versa.
   5. Mix and match pillar colors and states. One puzzle could have 1 Red Up, 1 Red Down, 2 Blue Down, 1 Blue Up.
8. Crystals
   1. Block your path.
   2. Squish them with a Metal Block to make Crystal Ground, walkable.
9. Crystal Ground
   1. Walkable. When you pass over, it grows a Crystal.
10. Golem
    1. Rolls in a line when you push it. Falls into Pit, however it will hop over if it’s got a rolling head start.
11. Water slide
    1. Directional. Pushes you, or any block, in a direction. Blocks get pushed 1 additional tile.
    2. A Metal Block will squish other blocks if pushed onto them.
    3. The player will die if pushed directly into a wall.
12. Water Block
    1. Becomes a Water Slide if moved next to the outflow side of an existing water slide.
    2. Fills Pit by becoming water.
    3. Floats on a water-filled Pit.
13. Water tiles
    1. Wood Blocks float in it, making stepstones.
    2. Water Blocks float ON it, pushable across it.
14. Mimic
    1. When next to any object, you can push it into it to duplicate the object (irreversible).
15. Portal in/out
    1. Does what it says.
16. Hot Tile
    1. Walking on it gives you 1 Heat.
    2. Walking onto any non-Hot tile removes all Heat.
    3. You die at 4 Heat without armor.
    4. Blocks work similarly: pushing them on Hot Tiles gives them Heat, so you have to push them onto cold tiles along the way to move them far.
17. Fire Block
    1. Doesn’t fill pits.
    2. DOES create walkable platforms over lava.
    3. Ignites at 3 Heat.
    4. When ignited, it burns a fuse for 5 turns and then explodes.
    5. Explosion kills/destroys any adjacent (NESW) players or non-Fire/Metal blocks.
    6. Explosion also pushes other Fire Blocks 1 tile and makes them immediately explode.
    7. Chainable explosions.
18. Lava/Lava Platform
    1. Lava obviously just kills you.
    2. Walkable twice, then decomposes into lava.
19. Chungus Oni Block
    1. 2x2 big boi.
    2. Immobile.
    3. Destructible by adjacent Explosion.
    4. Stackable.
20. Sprite
    1. Faces a particular direction (NESW).
    2. Juggles 3 fireballs. When pushed, it turns to look in that direction, then shoots a fireball in a line, which ignites Fire Blocks, or gives 1 Heat to a Wood Block (which burns up at 4 Heat).
    3. If it catches another Sprite’s fireball, it lobs it in the direction it’s already facing (without turning).
    4. Fireballs push some things too, eg Wood Blocks.
21. Ice
    1. Step on Ice to slip in that direction until stopped by a wall or non-Ice tile.
22. Cloud
    1. When pushed, Clouds slip in a row until they hit a wall.
    2. Clouds leave Snow behind, which makes a trail on top of walkable Ice. When you step on Snow, it goes away.
23. The Cape
    1. Unlocked by putting all the Albatross Eggs into their Nests.
    2. You can now jump in a straight line over Pits.
    3. Most of the puzzles in the game become trivial at this point.
    4. You might also become upset that you wasted so much time on other levels trying to figure out how to fill that last Pit. (I know I did.)
    5. You can’t round corners - corner Pits make you hit the wall and fall in.
    6. Also you can’t jump over lava or spikes for some reason. Just Pits.
24. Gust Devil
    1. Wind elemental - easily the most complicated elemental.
    2. Has a “Facing” direction, like Sprites.
    3. Push it
       1. If it hits a wall, stop.
       2. If it moves to any non-block non-elemental space, you can order it to move exactly 4 times.
          1. If it hits a block or elemental after a move, it blows it up to 2 spaces in the direction of the move. (It can be only 1 space if there is an entity or wall 2 tiles away.)
             1. Golems will then Roll.
             2. Sprites will shoot their fireball.
             3. If the blown entity was also a Gust Devil, you can THEN move the SECOND Gust Devil. Go to step 1.
          2. If the blown entity hits an IMMEDIATELY ADJACENT wall, rock, or block, it is destroyed (some blocks beat other blocks though, eg Metal > Wood).
    4. Slide into it on Ice
       1. It blows you ONE tile in its Facing direction.
    5. Jump into it using the Cape
       1. Works like Sliding into it.
25. Shadow Blocks
    1. When you are far away, they are smoke.
    2. When you are nearby (3 tiles), they solidify into a block of pure shadow.
    3. Destructible by Sprite Fireballs.
    4. Most elementals are instantly killed by the smoke.
26. Demon Twins
    1. A summoning circle has 1 or more siblings.
    2. When you step on one circle, all other circles spawn a Demon Twin, which takes steps opposite to yours.
    3. Demon Twins can walk through smoke and push things and ring bells, but not collect stars.

Gating mechanics

1. Arrow blocks
   1. Must be pushed from behind, disappearing forever.
   2. Used to gate puzzle sections, so that you do the same puzzle in many different ways.
   3. Also used to gate island/overworld progress.
2. Keys / Locks
   1. A Lock is openable with any Key.
   2. They come in 1, 3, 6 Key varieties.
3. Star blocks
   1. X Stars to pop.
   2. Stars are given for most puzzles.
   3. Only used to gate overworld/island progress.
4. Color blocks / Lil Guys
   1. Each island has unbreakable Color Blocks and dormant Guys on it at first.
   2. Do the God Puzzle to make them breakable and awake the Guys.
5. God puzzles
   1. Each island has a God Room with a hard puzzle in it.
   2. Doing the puzzle and getting the Key will make all Color Blocks breakable when pushed, and awaken all Guys on the island (Golem/Mimic/etc), which usually means you can solve all of the puzzles.
   3. However, you have to solve the God Puzzle first without any Guys.
   4. The God Puzzle can then be re-solved for bonuses.
6. Gems
   1. Each God also asks you to collect a certain number of “gems” from puzzles on its island in order to … what? You don’t need them for anything other than probably story completion AFAICT.
   2. Gems are usually separate solutions from Stars or Keys within the same puzzle.
7. Mud
   1. Mud is a block that you can dig through once you have Claws.
   2. Works like Ice - you dig through a row of Muds until you hit a wall or a non-Mud.
   3. Unlike Ice which is a tile, Mud is a block.
   4. When you dig through Mud, you switch places with it. You can use this to move it onto switches, make new paths, etc.
8. Deep Water / Tide Switches
   1. Tidal Island has switches that make it high or low tide, covering parts with water.
   2. You can’t swim in water without the Flippers.
   3. Not really used in any puzzles except to lock out bonus solutions.
9. Fire spouts / Really long runs of Hot Tiles
   1. Instantly give you 4 Heat, which kills you unless you have Volcanic Armor (6 Heat capacity).
   2. Again, more of a lock-out mechanic.
10. Impossible pit sequences
    1. Jump over them with the Cape after spending hours attempting the puzzle the hard way.

Meta-puzzles

1. Songs
   1. Each island has several hidden “note tiles” in funny places.
   2. Step on all of them to reveal all 6 song notes.
   3. Find the Titan’s Instrument.
   4. Solve the instrument puzzle to be able to play it.
   5. Play the right notes (you have a guide shown and infinite tries) to get 3 stars.
2. Arrow Movers
   1. One island has 8 hidden “direction tiles”.
   2. Solve a puzzle and step on it to show a direction in spot 1,2,3, or 4, for either the Day or the Night Arrow Mover block.
   3. Find the Day or Night room and move the block in the right sequence to unlock the Day or Night half of the Disc, which gives you stars.
3. Secret walls / slopes / ladders
   1. Tiny environmental details that you can walk into to reveal new paths.
   2. Really hate these.
4. Eye of Horus tiles?
   1. Dunno what these do.
5. Quantum Blocks
   1. Each corner of the main island has 4 identical chests on it, and 4 differently marked unique slots.
   2. Moving a chest into a slot moves it there in each of the corners. (Moving it otherwise doesn’t interfere with e.g. terrain in different locations; it’s just when slotted that it counts.)
   3. Find the Quantum Door to see which chests are in which slots.
   4. Inevitably discover that you have them in the wrong places.
   5. Go and move them to the right places.
   6. Return to the Door.
   7. Open it and continue on your merry way.
   8. Get the Claw.
6. Dragonflies
   1. A dragonfly sits on a rock.
   2. When disturbed, it flies in a direction (NESW) to an adjacent section of the island.
   3. Then it does it 2 more times.
   4. There are 3 dragonflies of different colors.
   5. Find the Dragonfly Puzzle and move the colored blocks FIRST to the starting positions, THEN along the route the dragonflies took.
   6. Get the Flippers.
7. Oni Statues
   1. There are 6.
   2. Find their duplicates hidden throughout the island.
   3. Arrange them on the puzzle in accordance with their coordinates.
   4. Then, discover that there is an extra one.
   5. Spend an hour or two trying to find it.
   6. Give up.
   7. Look up a guide.
   8. Oh, it’s EXTRA.
   9. Dump it in the ocean.
   10. Get some stars.
8. Eggs
   1. Albatross eggs are hidden throughout the mountain. Find them all and put them in their correct nests.
   2. Get a blue key, then the Cape.