Farm and life sim Starsand Island is immediately striking thanks to its anime-inspired art style, and gorgeous art design. After a successful crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, it’s available now via Early Access on Steam, with a full launch due later this year.
The trailers and cinematics promise a story-rich game with memorable characters. Unfortunately, meaningful character interaction and an overarching story are the biggest missing elements in Early Access. Thankfully, the core gameplay is solid, and there’s a lot of potential in this lovely life sim.
Read on for our Early Access Review of Starsand Island!
Workapedia
In Starsand Island, the customizable player character returns to their childhood home to reconnect with friends, and with nature. The island is absolutely gorgeous, with ample room for my homestead and farmland, an adorable yet modern town, a huge beach and docks area, and a highway that encircles it all.
In lieu of a main story, I progress through five professions and quest chains: fishing, farming, ranching, exploring, and crafting, though I never have to actually swap between them. Instead, each is an active quest line that I can tackle simultaneously, ensuring I’m always working toward several goals at a time.
The crafting and inventory menus are very attractive
Plus, the quests provide a nice tutorial for learning how to farm and harvest crops, how to process fish (or store them in an aquarium), and how to gather ore and explore the Moonlit Forest.
Farming and fishing are pretty standard, but I do like that crops clearly tell me how much water they need, and the exact time until harvest (pro-tip, upgrade that watering can ASAP). Automatically sorting all same-stacked items into chests is also a hugely welcome quality of life feature.
Oh, and inventory space is actually quite generous in Starsand Island, including easy-to-build (and find) storage chests, and an easy method for expanding my inventory.
Ranching is fun and rewarding
Ranching requires a bit more care and attention to get the most out of my animals, including brushing and petting them, in addition to keeping their pens stocked with the best food.
The ranch animals help my farmland by clearing weeds and eating bugs, while I find all the ore I need for crafting while exploring in the Moonlit Forest. Too much ore, if I’m being honest. The Forest throws a hilarious amount of resources at me, and pretty soon my upgraded hammer is blasting several ore and rock piles at once with each mighty swing.
Combat is a let-down, to the point where I wonder why it was even included. Early game enemies are extremely few, and relegated to the separate exploration zone of Moonlit Forest. The Forest is the only place to find most kinds of ore and precious resources needed for crafting. But for an entire profession named exploration, it’s a painfully linear zone with minimal puzzles.
Combat is very basic
Still, I appreciate the quality-of-life features, such as including rest tents, worktables, and fast-travel points throughout each area.
Making money is easy thanks to the non-stop profession quests. I’ve never sold much in the way of crops or juice thanks to the consistent quest rewards.
Plus, Starsand Island features an almost mobile game-like reward system. Every little thing I do increases my Star Note level, and/or earns a new sticker in the Islandpedia, all of which grants blueprints, items, and Starsand currency. Starsand currency is used like skill points to increase certain abilities, reduce crafting time, and generally make me better at using my tools.
Starsand Residents
Where the game falters is what I thought would be its greatest strength: storytelling and NPC relationships.
Admittedly, after over 10 hours of play I have yet to progress past 2-hearts with anyone. But other than a lovely opening cutscene when you first meet each character (which includes voice acting!), there’s not much available other than grinding away at giving them daily gifts, which are total guess work.
Stella runs the pet store, and is also a popstar?
Ranking up the relationship unlocks perks with that NPC, including photo ops, access to their private room (which features a treasure chest), and even moving in together. But even a simple hangout option would go a long way! It doesn’t help that the writing is rather dull. Anyone expecting RPG-like party members to go along with these fun anime designs will be disappointed.
There’s also no voice acting outside of the initial meet and greet, which is fine, but I would’ve loved to see more meaningful cutscenes and events. Couldn’t the NPCs in charge of each profession make it a bigger deal when I progress to the next tier, for example?
NPC quests are limited to the random item requests at the billboard outside the Community Center, which is a solid money-making venture for the right materials.
At least the main professions also frequently use different NPCs, or I fear I’d never run into them. Starsand Island is a large place, but the extremely low population often feels like a ghost town.
The island is pretty, but empty
I’m also disheartened at the lack of an overarching quest or goal, such as Stardew Valley’s Community Center. Most life sims have a goal of restoring the town and gathering new NPCs. But in Starsand Island, all the NPCs are already here, everything is built up and lovely, and the only thing left is to level up my professions and expand my homestead. As a consequence, my presence doesn’t feel all that impactful.
I’m also not much of a builder or designer. Thankfully the build mode tools are intuitive and robust, with grid lines on the ground, and lots of options for shaping and moving walls, adding windows and textures, and more. Of course, I’m limited by my resources, which currently leaves my expanded house with only half a roof!
Layouts also exist, and appear to automatically build my dream house in different styles, including modern, rustic, and classic, but I’ll need to collect all the necessary materials and furniture items first.
Ran out of stone – the roof will have to wait!
Despite some complaints, I’m having a lot of fun with Starsand Island. The core five professions are fun to level up and build greater creations, especially ranching and crafting. Moving around the world remains drop-dead gorgeous, and I’m excited about expanding my travel options beyond my handy roller skates, as well as gradually expanding my homestead. The game is fully playable and enjoyable in Early Access, though I constantly encountered annoying screen tearing when turning the camera.
If meaningful storytelling and character interactions can be added before the 1.0 release later this year, Starsand Island could become another genre classic.
Starsand Island is currently available via Steam Early Access. It’s due to fully launch later this year, including co-op multiplayer.
