Grim Island

Everything on Grim Island is a card: the coconut on the sand, the stone beside it, your own two hands. Stack them to see what they can do together, and the island opens up one discovery at a time. Each action costs time, and time is your most precious resource, so you must choose what action is worth the hours you have left.

Stack Cards on Cards

Stack a sharp stone on a fish to butcher it, a spear on the shallows to go fishing, your Hands on a palm tree to climb it. Every stack shows what the pair can do, or what tool you're missing. Learning the island means learning its combinations, and that the first one you find is not always the best.

Discover, Then Craft

Every new item and blueprint goes into your journal as you find it. Early blueprints are a sharp stone and a crude spear. Later ones take whole chains of work: dig clay, dry it into bricks, build a kiln, fire pots that hold a week of rain. Each step unlocks the next, and nothing is handed to you. Exploring turns up new ground too, from rocky shores and riverbanks to caves and swamps, each with its own resources.

Blueprints unlock as you discover their ingredients
Tools: sharp stone, crude spear, hand drill and many more
Fire from an ember, charcoal from a burnt-out fire, and so on
Do things to discover new things with which you can do more things.

Build a Camp That Works for You

Structures keep working after you leave them. A catchment fills with rain, a rack dries fronds and husks, a smoker preserves the morning's catch, a baited trap brings in fish while you work. A good camp buys back the time a bad day takes from you.

Water collection and storage
Cooking, smoking and preserving food
Drying, firing and processing materials
Shelter, rest and storage

Stay Alive

Keep an eye on thirst, hunger, nutrition, energy, sleep and stress. Then there are the ailments, from sunburn and heat stroke to hypothermia and food poisoning.

Eat raw fish and you could spend tomorrow sick. Climbing and chopping can hurt you, and a lionfish can do worse: venom, then maybe an infected wound. Infections kill. Charcoal settles a poisoned stomach, bandages close wounds, poultices fight venom and infection... as long as you can make them in time.

Watch the Sky

Weather from scorching sun to violent storms, and a full day-night cycle. Rain refills your water. Storms make everything harder. At night, the coconut crabs come out. They look menacing, but there are far worse things to worry about.