Be prepared to enter new levels of zen in calming puzzle game Nurikabe World

Megan Bidmead, 30 January 2025

Nurikabe World is one of the most relaxing puzzle games I've ever tried. I found myself calmly clicking my way through it, entering a zen-like state of chill I wasn't expecting. I always prepare myself for at least a little frustration when I dive into a puzzle game, particularly as the levels ramp up in difficulty, but this never stopped being a joy to play., which is a brilliant and surprising bonus.

Nurikabe World is based on a puzzle (called, unsurprisingly, Nurikabe, named after a spirit from Japanese folklore that blocks roads to frustrate the journeys of travellers). The aim is to create islands on a landscape overlaid with a grid, with a connecting river flowing between them. Each island has to be a specific size. Islands have to be separate, although they can touch diagonally. Clicking each square on the grid will swap the tile from land to water, allowing you to carve out individual islands of the right number.

There are other rules involved. For example, you can't create pools, which appear if you have a 2x2 square of water tiles; this is the rule that caught me out as I tried it. You must also ensure that the water connects, so you can't create separate tiles of water disconnected from the others. There must always be water flowing between each island. Each level has a checklist, allowing you to see which rules you have achieved, and which you have broken. When the rules are all ticked off, you can move on to the next level.

The levels get progressively harder, with far bigger grids to solve, and trickier islands to place. The larger the grid, the harder it is to keep the water flowing between each island while stopping pools from forming, but it never really gets frustrating. And in campaign mode at least, you'll sometimes be given a one-word hint (like 'Separate' or 'Dots'), to give you a vague idea of what the final grid is supposed to look like. That's the only hint you'll get, though, so there may be moments where you have to just calmly click and hope that you eventually figure it out.

But Nurikabi World - no matter how difficult it gets - never stops being relaxing. It just feels so easy to flip tiles between land and water, and there's a deep sense of satisfaction when the island blooms into life. Between the calming act of the game itself, to the soothing soundtrack and the gently floating leaves in Fall levels, for instance, this game is thoughtfully designed to destress. Even the UI is designed to be simple and easy to navigate. So if you've had an infuriating day at the office, this could be just the thing you need to leave it behind.

There's a lot to work through here, too. The Campaigns - Intro, Tour, Variation, and Advance - have many levels to slowly and thoughtfully click your way through, and you'll learn new rules and skills as you go. The difficulty does ramp up, but it's not a sharp learning curve by any means; as you go along, following the basic rules becomes intuitive, almost second nature, which means you can work out the harder puzzles with a bit of patience.

You also have daily puzzles, giving you a reason to briefly check in each day, with three puzzles (Easy, Medium, and Hard). There's also an infinite mode. As the levels are procedurally generated in infinite mode, you can (in theory) work through an endless number of puzzles, presumably entering an enviable level of meditative chill in the process. Blissful.

Interestingly, there's another element at play here, which is the Level/Campaign Builder. Players can create their own levels, having full control over the size of the grid, the season, the difficulty, and so on. If you have the head for creating puzzles, this is a simple but useful level editor you can enjoy. This means you can create levels for other users. You can play user levels by typing in a code. It would be lovely to have a gallery of user levels, so you can browse and choose them easily, but hopefully, this will come in future updates.

This could be my next 'check in daily' puzzle game; it's just soothing enough to keep clicking back. Hopefully, as the game grows, it will be easier to enjoy community-created levels. In the meantime, I'll keep popping back to check-in. It's just enough to stretch your brain while helping you zone out for a few minutes, although I expect a few minutes will become much longer as you start to get into the groove. This is a brilliant puzzle game I'm looking forward to playing more of.