"It is, I promise, very addictive!" That's the word from John 'Bucky' Buckley, head of communications and publishing at Pocketpair, on the studio's latest publishing project. And after spending a few minutes with the free Steam demo, it's hard to argue.
The game is Clicky Islands, developed by Polish two-person studio Karrot Games. Pocketpair, the team behind Palworld (which hit 1.0 with 72 new Pals and a full story rework just two weeks ago), is stepping into the publisher role here, and the fit makes a lot of sense.
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What Clicky Islands actually is
The pitch is deceptively simple: build a town on an island, click your way through early resource loops, then watch your civilization gradually become self-sustaining through automation. Think Factorio's production chain satisfaction, wrapped in a pixelated, approachable aesthetic that doesn't demand a 40-page wiki before you can enjoy it.
The genre blend is genuinely unusual. Most town builders ask you to manage and wait. Most clicker games ask you to tap and scale. Clicky Islands threads them together, where the clicking drives early progress and the automation takes over as your settlement grows. That transition from manual grind to autonomous operation is exactly the kind of feedback loop that makes games like Factorio and its neighbors so hard to put down.
The Pocketpair publishing angle
Pocketpair has been quietly building out its publishing arm alongside its own development work. Clicky Islands is the latest project to come through that pipeline, and Buckley's enthusiasm on social media signals the studio is genuinely invested in the game's success, not just lending its name to a distribution deal.
Here's the thing: Pocketpair knows automation loops. Palworld's entire Pal base system is built around watching creatures work autonomously so you don't have to. That design instinct aligns neatly with what Karrot Games is doing in Clicky Islands, even if the genres sit in different places.
First impressions from the demo
The demo gets you moving fast. There's no extended tutorial corridor or menu-heavy onboarding. You're clicking, placing, watching things happen, and the early feedback is immediate. That pace matters a lot for a clicker hybrid, where the first five minutes either hook you or lose you entirely.
What most players miss in early demos like this is how the automation layer changes the feel of the game entirely once it kicks in. The clicker mechanics stop feeling like busywork and start feeling like setup. You're not grinding for resources, you're building toward the moment you no longer need to.
The pixelated art style keeps the whole thing light and readable, which is a smart call for a game where you'll be scanning production chains at a glance.
Why this matters for Palworld fans
Pocketpair's player base skews toward exactly the kind of gamer who enjoys watching systems run. If you've spent time optimizing your Pal base or digging into Palworld's best breeding combinations to build efficient production setups, Clicky Islands is targeting the same part of your brain.
The full release is slated for sometime this year. In the meantime, the Steam demo is free, short enough to fit into a lunch break, and long enough to tell you whether the loop clicks for you. Check our gaming guides for more coverage as Clicky Islands moves toward its full launch.
