Amber Isle review: Can you run a DinoStore? You bet Jurassucan

There’s a lot of competition in the adorable, crafting, shop-management game space, and Amber Isle has made a valiant attempt at eking out its own area in the market. From the creative minds at Ambertail Games, this adventure is all about creating your own dinosaur, crafting and selling merchandise, and enticing paleofolk to set up residence on Amber Isle. The developers know what the cozy community wants in their games, and while there are some hot items on offer here, there are also a few duds.

You do have dinosaurs in your dinosaur tour, right?

Amber Isle wastes no time in setting up the premise of the experience. In every young dinosaur’s life, there comes a time where they must venture out on their own, hone their skills and passions, and choose their personal “saurname”.

After creating my own triceratops-variant dinosaur using the game’s adorable character creation screen (but, alas, no pink horns!), I was off on my own “paleoventure” to work out my role in this dinosaur life.

As luck would have it, the hot air balloon I was traveling in crash-landed on an island, directly into a store that I would eventually claim as my own. This island, once bustling with other dinosaurs, is nearly extinct. My journey of self-discovery and this island needing to be revitalized is simply the backdrop for what you will be doing in Amber Isle.

You are a shopkeeper, and your goal is to craft goods, sell goods, and make friends. With my shop, Tricera Treasures, created, I set my sights on being the best shop owner I could be and bringing this island back from its current fossilized state one craftable item at a time.

They're moving in herds, they do move in herds

In order to craft items in Amber Isle, you’ll need to earn Inspiration Points to unlock recipes. This currency is awarded for most of what you’ll be doing on the island, so there’s this sense that you’re always making progress, even when doing the simple things like opening your shop for the day.

Early on, this constant stream of rewards means you can focus on learning the ropes, like the in-depth crafting categories. With several to work through, there are a lot of wares you can stock in your store, all with adorable names. You won’t find a garden rake for sale, it’s a leaf tickler! This is where I started my own spreadsheet to track crafting items and the ingredients they needed, as Amber Isle doesn’t display this information to you when your shop is open.

In fact, I held off unlocking new recipes where possible. The sheer number of crafting recipes was just far too much for me. Over 370 recipes in a crafting game would usually be a boon, but in Amber Isle’s it’s not. The UI lacks a search function and the unconventional names of items make it extremely difficult to find what you need, especially when a quest requires a specific recipe.

When I wasn’t manning the shop, I was off exploring the region. As with most games, the available playspace starts off small, easing you in at a good pace. By working at the shop, earning money and Inspiration Points, you’ll be able to clean up the island, unlock new zones, and hopefully befriend other cute dinosaurs and convince them to move to the island. But they can’t live outside, so you’ll need to build their houses so they can become permanent customers, I mean, residents.

Once they become residents, you’ll need to work on those friendships, as Amber Isle uses a tipping system. A lot of the other mechanics in the game rely on this tipping system, from friendship levels to your store’s decorations, right down to the merchandise’s crafting ingredients. What’s more, these friends won’t just be buying goods, they’ll want to sell their own stuff to you using a haggling system.

It's all oohs and aahs and that’s how it always starts

The haggling system in Amber Isle is unfortunately where the game’s first bugs start to raise their heads. The residents would often try to sell me something for a price, I would accept that price, and they would then be angry at me for offering such a lowball. It was as if I had tried to undercut them, despite having accepted the price they pitched me.

I tried not to take it personally when they’d get cranky with me. I just want them to be my friend! But the shop bugs kept cropping up. Items would get stuck on my shop floor and payment animations would get stuck on-screen, all of which impact your shop’s decorations.

Your shop’s decoration is pretty important to its success, too, which makes this all the more frustrating. Some customers would come in, complain about my shop, and leave. I was trying my best, but Amber Isle wasn’t providing the mechanics I needed to style the shop correctly. At one point I needed to put a stack of plates in the shop as decoration, but I couldn’t put the plates on a table else they’d be classified as an item for sale. The end result is having to put them on the ground. And that just won’t do. Not cute, not classy, and not aesthetically pleasing at all.

Though bothersome, the shop customization gameplay loop had to take a backseat. I needed ingredients to craft my goods, which meant I needed to head out and explore the island. Which also meant hanging out in the meadow with my new mates.

They’re uh.. they’re flocking this way

While a lot of Amber Isle will take place in your store, there’s also the whole island to explore. There were so many little bits and pieces I could pick up and put in my pocket to craft with later on, as well as garbage to clean up, and park benches to restore to sit my spotty behind upon. The little collector goblin in me enjoyed getting out to poke around the environment, especially as I worked to unlock new areas.

However, the exploration is heavily impacted by the camera angle. The camera can’t be rotated, so the whole experience is locked in one perspective, which results in frequent clipping of the camera through the environment, completely blocking the view. This issue was made more problematic with poor controller support, necessitating I switch to keyboard and mouse.

Despite these camera and control woes, it was still enjoyable to explore the island, doubly so whenever I managed to open up a new area. At one point, I gained access to a place called Woodbury Forest, which let me bring in some new residents and construct homes for them. It gave me some flashbacks to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, except Amber Isle takes the characterisation of the residents to the next level.

I found myself having a bit of a giggle at some of their lines and genuinely wanted to work on their quests and level up our friendship. Not just for the extra tips but to also unlock more in-game content and shop customization. It’s all very wholesome and adorable. The mayor’s a tad surly though; I’m still working on winning him over.

Hold onto your butts

I wish I could say my Amber Isle UI woes stopped as soon as I set aside the controller for the keyboard and mouse. However, I experienced some pretty serious selection issues within my inventory, placing items, and the menu system. Oftentimes, the mouse just would not select the item in my inventory no matter where I clicked. The game stopped correctly registering where the mouse is supposed to be so I had to resort to using the arrow keys. As frustrating as these bugs and glitches were, I persevered, as I was still really engaged with the game.

Well there you have it, life, uh, finds a way

I was always going to pick up Amber Isle, so I was very happy to review it. Even though it has a few bugs related to the camera and UI, as well as some progression issues to be worked out, I know I'll be spending a lot more time in my shop crafting items to sell to my dinosaur customers. There’s a lot to like about Amber Isle and the team at Ambertail has tried its best to create a wholesome experience. All of these adorable dinos will be my friend before I’m through here, even the grumpy mayor.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Amber Isle is releasing on Steam on October 10, 2024 and on Nintendo Switch on November 21, 2024.

Loren Chandler

Contributing Editor

Loren Chandler comes from a land down under. She’s a lover of all things video games, tea, cats, reading, and craft related. If you checked in on what she’s playing at any given time, it’ll either be a survival-crafting game or one of the cute and cozy varieties.