Islands Player Handbook

Everything about how Islands works: from your first login over buying and building your own island to enemies, guardians, the player-driven economy and how payments on Solana keep your money safe.

What is Islands?

Islands is a top-down multiplayer building and adventure game on Solana. The world is one shared 500 × 500 tile ocean that every player sees live: islands, builds, heroes, guardians and enemies are simulated by an authoritative server and streamed to everyone in realtime.

You buy a piece of the ocean with USDC, raise it into your own island with multiple walkable elevation levels, gather resources, fight the enemy hordes that roam every island, hire guardians and trade with other players on a fully player-to-player market.

Connect & play

On the start screen you have two ways in:

Connect Wallet: Phantom, Solflare or Backpack. You sign one short message to prove the wallet is yours (no transaction, no cost). Your hero, name, inventory, XP and islands are tied to this wallet.
Set sail as guest: explore the whole world and watch other players without a wallet. Guests cannot buy land, build or trade.

With a valid session you get a Continue playing button. It only works while the wallet in your extension matches the session (see Wallet & session security). Only one session per wallet can be online at a time; connecting elsewhere disconnects the old session. You can log out any time via Settings → Log out.

Your hero

Your boat

Every player is a pawn hero in a wallet-bound color, with your name and a gold level badge above the head, visible to everyone. Your hero swings an axe to fight and harvest, levels up with stat points (see Levels & stats) and picks a unique name (2 to 16 characters) on first login.

Walk off any coast and your hero hops into a boat automatically and sails the ocean. Step back on land and the boat disappears. Guardians following you get their own boats. You can even fight from the water.

Controls

Action	Desktop	Mobile
Move	WASD / arrow keys, click to move, or hold the left mouse button to walk toward the cursor	Invisible joystick: touch anywhere and drag (360°), or tap to walk there
Attack / harvest	Click an enemy, tree or gold node to lock on. Your hero walks over and swings automatically. Or hold the attack button.	Tap a target to lock on, or hold the attack button (bottom center)
Camera	Mouse wheel zoom, drag to pan	Pinch to zoom, two-finger drag to pan
Map	Minimap top right (click = jump)	Map button in the HUD stack

Click another player to inspect their profile (level, kills, inventory). The HUD bottom right holds the Island, Hero, Market, Backpack and Settings panels.

Buying land

Open the Buy tool and drag a rectangle over free water. The selection shows live whether the area is available and what it costs:

1 tile = 1 USDC. A 10 × 10 island costs exactly 100 USDC.
Up to 5,000 tiles per purchase.
Keep at least 2 tiles of distance to islands owned by other players. Your own parcels can touch, so you can grow your island in stages.

Confirming opens your wallet with a single USDC transfer on Solana mainnet (see USDC payments for why you don't need any SOL). The purchase is atomic on the server: nobody can buy the same spot at the same time. Your island appears instantly for everyone, and you can name it in the island panel (2 to 24 characters).

Building

On your own land the Build mode unlocks a full editor palette:

Ground: six terrain colors plus sand, painted per tile with auto-tiling.
Elevation: stack multiple walkable levels with stone cliffs; stairs connect the levels (raised ground needs its cliff base on your own land).
Bridges: placeable on water only, walkable like land.
Nature & decorations: trees, bushes, rocks, props and buildings.

Some placements cost resources, and refund half when removed:

Placement	Cost	Removal refund
Tree	25 wood	12 wood
Gold node	50 gold	25 gold
Everything else	free	none

Save writes your build to the shared world so every player sees it. You can only ever build on tiles you own; everything is validated server-side.

Buildings

Buildings are pure decoration with collision (enemies and players walk around them). Place them to give your island character:

Resources

Three resources drive the economy. All are earned in the world and all are tradeable:

Harvesting on someone else's island is allowed. The island owner automatically earns a share (for example 1 wood per tree felled on their island). Higher Strength makes you chop and mine faster.

Offline yield

Island owners keep earning while away: activity on your islands accrues an offline share. On your next login the "While you were away" scroll shows what you collected, including market sales that happened while you were offline.

Player market

The market (HUD button) is fully player to player. Prices are set by players, not by the game:

Selling: list meat, gold or wood at your own price. The items go into escrow immediately (cancel any time to get them back). Up to 6 active listings per seller, max 10,000 items / $10,000 per listing.
Buying: pay the listed price in USDC with one wallet signature (see USDC payments). Items are delivered instantly; a listing can never be sold twice.
Proceeds are credited to the seller's USDC balance immediately, even while the seller is offline.

Boosts

Boost	Cost	Effect	Duration
Spawn Surge (island panel)	500 meat	+50% enemy spawn rate on your island, more loot for everyone fighting there	3 hours
Aggro Boost (hero panel)	25 meat	Enemies notice you from 50% further away, pull hordes faster	1 hour

Enemies & hordes

Enemies spawn 24/7 on every island. Bigger islands carry more of them, up to 20 at once. A horde is 4 to 7 different enemies that gather at a meeting point and patrol together. If one of them spots a player in aggro range, with a clear walkable line of sight, the whole horde hunts you until you break away (about 8 tiles). Cliffs, plateaus and water break line of sight, so use your terrain.

Kills drop meat (sometimes gold) and grant XP scaled by the enemy's toughness. Enemies never damage your island or builds. They hunt heroes and guardians.

**Spear Goblin** HP 5 · 25 XP Reliable melee fighter with a long pointy spear. The backbone of most hordes.

**Torch Goblin** HP 8 · 40 XP Slow but vicious. His torch hits harder than anything else on land, keep your distance.

**Hex Shaman** HP 6 · 30 XP Casts an area spell from up to 6 tiles away. The spell lands where you stood when he cast it, so keep moving and it misses.

**Gnoll** HP 7 · 35 XP Throws bones from up to 5 tiles. Like the shaman, his throws can be dodged by strafing.

**Pig Rider** HP 10 · 50 XP The toughest and fastest land enemy. Charges in and stabs with his spear at very close range.

**Thief** HP 4 · 20 XP Fragile but the fastest runner in the game. Hard to escape once he locks on.

**Gnome** HP 3 · 15 XP The weakest enemy. Easy XP and meat for fresh heroes.

**Paddle Shark** HP 6 · 30 XP Prowls the open water instead of joining land hordes. Watch out while sailing.

Levels & stats

XP comes from enemy kills (scaled by toughness), felled trees (10 XP) and mined gold nodes (30 XP). Max level is 100. Every quarter of the XP bar earns 1 stat point (4 per level) to spend freely in the hero panel:

Stat	Effect per point	Cap
Strength	+1% damage (also chops and mines faster)	100
Vitality	+1 max HP (base 10)	100
Agility	+1% movement speed	100

Your level shows as a gold badge next to your name, visible to everyone.

Death & healing

Healing: the heart button heals +25% max HP for 5 meat (1 second cooldown).
Death: you lose a random 0 to 10% of your current level's XP span. You never drop below the level threshold. Respawn with a click; leveling up also fully heals you.

Hiring guardians

Guardians are NPC fighters that belong to you, not to an island. Hire them in the hero panel, no island required:

Warrior 50 meat · 30 gold · 10 wood Melee tank in your hero's colors. 45 HP and steady swings hold the line while you kite.

Archer 30 meat · 15 gold · 20 wood Ranged damage dealer. 22.5 HP, shoots homing arrows up to 5 tiles that hit on impact.

Monk 300 meat · 30 gold · 10 wood Healer. Every 5 seconds he heals the most wounded ally nearby (you included) for 40% of their max HP, up to 94% at level 10.

Guardians can be named (2 to 16 characters). The name shows above their head for you.

Companions vs. island guards

Companions follow your hero in formation, even across water, each in their own boat. Your companion slots grow with your level: 2 plus 1 per 15 levels (max 5). Companions pause safely while you are offline. Kills by your companions grant you 25% of the enemy's XP, as long as you are actively playing (moved or fought in the last 90 seconds).
Island guards are stationed on one of your islands and patrol 24/7, even while you are offline. The guard cap scales with island size, from 2 up to 10. Recall them to your side any time.

Guardians can be attacked by enemies. If one falls, revive costs 50 meat (fully healed). You can also heal a wounded guardian for 5 meat (+25% HP) in the hero panel.

Feeding & leveling guardians

Feed a guardian resources to raise its level, up to level 10. Each feeding costs the hire price × current level (so warrior level 3 → 4 costs 150 meat, 90 gold, 30 wood) and grants per level:

+25% of base HP (the HP gain is healed immediately)
+15% of base damage
Monks heal 6 percentage points more per level (40% → 94% at level 10)

USDC payments

Land purchases and market buys are real USDC payments on Solana mainnet, built on the open x402 payment standard:

You confirm a purchase and the server answers with an exact payment request.
Your wallet shows one USDC transfer with the exact amount and purpose. Nothing moves without your signature.
The payment facilitator covers the Solana network fee. You only need USDC, no SOL.
The server verifies and settles the transfer on-chain, then delivers instantly (your parcel or the items). Every payment is recorded with its on-chain signature.

The game checks your USDC balance first, so there is no wallet popup for hopeless buys.
Prices are always computed server-side; the client cannot manipulate them.
A market listing is locked before any money moves. Two buyers can never both pay.

Wallet & session security

Logging in means signing a message, never a transaction. It costs nothing and cannot move funds.
Continue playing only works when the wallet in your extension is exactly the session wallet. If you switch accounts, the old session is dropped immediately and you reconnect with the new wallet. Nobody can build on land that is not theirs.
Switching or disconnecting the wallet in your extension logs you out instantly, even mid-game.
Only one session per wallet is online at a time.
All ownership and money logic runs server-side: land writes are owner-checked, prices are server-computed, and payments settle on-chain before anything is delivered.
You can end your session any time via Settings → Log out.