Puzzle-platformer Minute Of Islands sort of feels like a fairytale. Like a lot of stories for kids, the narration is simple, almost sing-song and poetic in tone. It tells the story of Mo, a self-taught engineer who lives mostly underground, tending to the bio-mechanical engines operated by four giants - brothers, in fact. The brothers hand-crank the machines to filter and purify the air, which would otherwise become filled with poisonous fungal spores.
When the engines break down one day, Mo must brave the surface, checking on her family and growing increasingly paranoid and bitter at her unappreciated sacrifice as she breathes in the spores. But the actual events, and the things you see as you jump and climb around the archipelago Mo lives on, present a jarring contrast to the narration. The narrator points out a dead whale. She does not describe the way the whales intenstines are spilling onto the beach, the bones of its spine are exposed, or how its eyes have been eaten by mangy, one-legged seagulls.