Buildings and Locations: Reading the Map in Epstein Island Game

The map in Epstein Island Game: a thousand by a thousand meters

Epstein Island Game drops you onto a fictional island by helicopter, alone in Story Mode or with up to ten people in co-op. You play in the browser or as a desktop package, and the current state is the prototype at 0.12.0.

The map image is square, 1300 by 1300 pixels, and covers the range from minus five hundred to plus five hundred meters in each direction. Every pin comes from the same calculation: world coordinate plus five hundred, divided by ten, gives the percentage position on the image.

For orientation that means negative z sits north at the top, positive z south at the bottom, negative x west, positive x east. The dock sits at x 37.8 and z minus 262.2, so in the upper third, slightly right of center. Shelter Cave sits at 86.7 and minus 215.2, just under seventy meters southeast of it.

TipM opens the map, P the phone. Both show the same nine pins.

Nine marked locations, eight with a fixed coordinate

The pins on the phone are not decoration, quests, water, and sleeping spots all hang off them. The game tracks exactly nine of them, each with one line of description.

• The Dock: boats, water, and the start of your journey
• Shelter Cave: a protected spot for the first night
• the Village: the houses among the island paths
• Radio Workshop: tools and radio equipment on the trail
• Trail Camp: a rest stop among the island paths
• Coastal Research Station: instruments with a view of the sea
• Evacuation Point: supplies for leaving the island
• Lookout Point: this is where you can send a distress signal
• the Training Grounds: the targets out on the open clearing

Why four locations are only approximate

Four pins sit exactly where the data places them: the dock, Shelter Cave, the village, and the lookout point. Four more are only roughly placed. The game knows a search center for them and looks for an open spot up to 55.6 meters away from it. On the map that can shift things by up to 5.6 percentage points, which adds up to a real stretch of walking.

The ninth location has no coordinate in the source code at all. The training grounds only get generated at the start, on a path within reach of the dock. That is why they land somewhere different in every playthrough, and why they never appear on any pre-drawn map.

Two locations sit practically on top of each other: the lookout point at 247.4 and 29.5, the evacuation point at 244.4 and 31.1. Less than four meters apart. If you want to send the distress signal, the supplies for leaving the island sit right next to it, and the watch spot stands at the exact same place.

The north: Villa Koralle, four cabins, and the harbor house

Almost everything that looks like a settled place crowds the upper part of the map. Villa Koralle measures thirty three by twenty three meters in its bounding box, making it the largest building on the island; the data also marks it as the center of the village. Around it sit the West Wing, a short connecting passage, the twenty three meter main pool, the pool pergola, and an ornamental pool.

A bit to the southwest stand four cabins with their own names: Mango, Shell, Palm, and Sun. Shell and Palm sit so close together that their markers have to be stacked on top of each other on the website. Add to that the beach house, a perimeter wall, two shell mosaics, and a compass rose.

Right at the top, at z minus 397.5, stands the North House. At 11.11 meters, it is the tallest building in the dataset. The dock with the harbor house sits further southwest, at x 16.6 and z minus 269.8, and that is where every playthrough begins.

The middle: the helipad, Island Station, and the machinery

The helicopter sets you down on the helipad landing area, close to 55 by 45 meters in its bounding box and the largest single surface on the island. The Arrival Stairs, the Waiting House, and the Baggage Hall stand right next to it, with the actual helipad six meters further north.

South of it follows Island Station with its yard and annex, sitting almost exactly on the north south axis at x 0.5. After that the technical part of the island begins: the service hall at forty four by forty five meters, Maintenance One, Maintenance Two A and Two B, the large workshop yard, plus the North lean-to and three sheds.

The reverse osmosis plant, generator house, pump house, and water tanks all sit within about thirty meters of each other, with the fuel station less than fifty meters east of that. If you are hunting for machinery on the island, this is the corner.

At the geometric center, x 0.1 and z 5.1, sits the Sun Plaza, a disc twenty meters across. To its west spreads the tennis berm at forty eight by forty eight meters, and to its south stand the Central Cabin and a ruined slab with a tank. That last one rises 12.25 meters, taller than any residential building.

West and southeast: Lagoon House, Blue Pavilion, the boat ramp

The west coast is sparsely built up. The Lagoon House and West Pool sit around x minus 310, along with the West Pavilion, West Shed, a West outbuilding, and a twelve meter flagpole. The Northwest Point outbuilding marks the westernmost edge of construction at x minus 335.

Further down, between z 169 and 178, the Blue Pavilion, Garden Shed, Temple Terrace, and Temple Podium stand close together. The Blue Pavilion can be entered, stands a good ten meters tall, and is one of the few named structures outside the north.

The southeast belongs to the boat ramp, the East Cabin with its shed, the hillside chambers E-2, and another pole. The hillside chambers, at x 386 and z 278.7, are both the easternmost and southernmost structure at once. Between them and the villa up north sits nearly seven hundred meters as the crow flies.

Structures, types, and what you can actually walk into

The sixty three structures split across seventeen types. Eleven are houses, eight are pergolas, eight are slabs, six are low buildings, plus tanks, yards, open structures, poles, crates, tents, pools, and lawns. Stairs, an attic, a ramp, a disc, and a berm each appear exactly once.

Thirty three are marked as enterable, and the other thirty are set dressing: pools, poles, mosaics, tanks, fountains. Fifteen structures carry their own name from the game, and fourteen of those let you inside. The exception is the watch mast, an eight meter pole at the lookout point.

The homepage lays all the structures out as a still image over the map, rendered straight from above, and every named building gets its own marker with a mini 3D model pulled from the same file the game itself loads. Which quests send you to these locations is covered in Quests and Rewards.