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Are you looking for another farming sim you can play and relax with after a stressful day? Well, here we have a game that includes not just farming, fishing, adventuring, and all the other features of the farming sim genre, but also a special building mode where you can customize your home and field however you want to!
For a game that is still Early Access, I found Starsand Island very enjoyable and unique. The premise of the game is that you return to where you used to live (or visit a lot) during your childhood. Most of the characters know you from the past, and a few of them mention memories they have with you. The graphics are beautiful, and I was pleasantly surprised when we got a cutscene for each new character. The gameplay revolves around taking care of your new farm, such as taking care of crops, animals etc. I’ll go into more detail about each one, but the general atmosphere is very relaxed and cozy. I liked that pretty much everything gets explained, so you don’t have to worry too much about figuring out everything by yourself. I’d say what makes the game unique is definitely its focus on crafting. From the beginning, most of the items you want to use in the game need to be crafted at the Crafting Table. You unlock this from the beginning of the game and you get a tutorial on how to make everything.
General Impressions
Helpful Mechanics
If you’re not familiar with farming sims (such as Stardew Valley), you typically get a limited amount of space to hold items in your inventory. Since you can eventually get way more items than your inventory allows, you can craft chests that can hold extra items you want to store at home base. What I liked about this game is that you don’t always need to have Quest items on you to deliver them to characters, and they can come from your universal Inventory (i.e. your bag + all your chests). I really liked the mechanic, considering upgrading your bag always costs extortionate amounts of coins in games like these (I’m talking about you, Coral Island).
I enjoy the travelling as well. Pretty early in the game you can craft a Skateboard and Skates, which helps you move around a lot faster. You also unlock other methods of transport, for example, there are little stations everywhere around town where you can rent Scooters, and you can also rent bigger animals from the main ranch on the island (Pastelle’s ranch). There is actually this one bull that has blue flames coming out of it and I love travelling with it every time. I feel so metal.
Quests and Time Management
To explain how quests work in this game, you basically get requests every day on a bulletin board in town center. Each quest is ranked based on difficulty, so the less stars the quest shows, the easier it’s supposed to be to achieve. Most of the quests are either related to fetching a certain material from around the map, or crafting something specific. The lower priority quests are only available for I believe 2 days in game time, whereas the higher ones can last for a week or indefinitely.
Personally, I found getting new quests every day a bit overwhelming. Of course, you don’t have to do all of them, and also they repeat. What I didn’t like was that the board started getting quite advanced quests after one in game season, when I couldn’t really craft such high level materials yet.
The game is structured around 4 seasons. They each have about 28 days, and certain crops will only be available for specific seasons. The days themselves are relatively long so I’d say you have enough time in a day for quite a few activities. You will have a stamina bar that determines how many actions you can do in a day. Every time you do an action (e.g. fishing) it depletes your stamina. You can replenish your stamina by eating food, or sitting down. The more you level up, you can increase how quickly you can replenish stamina by sitting, by the way.
Coming back to the quests topic, it is possible that because I did a lot of the easy level ones very quickly, the system started giving me more difficult ones and it’s not actually related to the season changing, but yeah. You also get Quests related to which area you want to specialize in, which are Crafting, Ranching, Fishing, and Adventuring, as well as a mentor character for each profession that guides you through the challenges.
Crafting
I understand why they recommend you start with this and I really believe you should. Crafting is one of the most integral parts of the game. I personally found it really fun, mostly because I felt like gathering resources was a pretty casual experience and not especially grueling like in other games. This is one of the first mechanics you unlock as well. It’s all explained though, there is a character, Solara (your childhood friend) who acts as a tutorial. When you interact with the table, you get a list of objects you can craft. To increase the number of objects you can craft, you can find Blueprints through chests that are spread everywhere on the map, quest completion rewards, or you can buy them from the island crafting shop (Zerine’s shop) and the woodwork shop (Alex’s shop).
Farming
The steps of farming are quite simple. You have different tools for different purposes. First you need to use a Hoe to make the plot of land you want to plant your seeds on. Initially you can only do one square at a time, but the more you farm, you can evolve your farming skills and tools and then you can plant more seeds at a time. To upgrade your tools, you need to go back to the Crafting Table, but only if you have the Blueprints. In terms of planting, there is a gardening shop where you can buy seeds. They are seasonal so they can only be planted in the required season. You also get special seeds by completing certain quests or milestones. They can grow all year, and also don’t need to be replanted.
The crops have a sort of water meter. The more you water them and fill the meter, the longer they stay watered. Other farming sims usually have some kind of automated watering item, such as sprinklers. I haven’t managed to get sprinklers yet (not sure if they exist), and upgrading the Water Can only increases the carry water capacity. The highest level has infinite water supplies (or at least that’s what the description says), but I would definitely say there is a downside if there isn’t an automated system, considering the scale at which you can farm. The prices of crops are pretty good, at least I think so. You can use fertilizers for reduced time and also to increase crop quality. One aspect I liked is that you can use the fertilizer at any point during the process and not just when the seeds are planted.
Ranching
The system for animals is interesting. First of all, they are absolutely ADORABLE. Also, they are useful!
To get animals on your farm, you first need to craft hutches for them to live in. You can find rabbits and chicks on your farm when you clean up grass and pick them up. But you will typically have to buy animals from Pastelle’s ranch. You get certain items from animals, which you can use to craft other materials or simply sell them. Not only that, but different animals help around the farm in different ways. For example, bunnies clean weeds, or chickens capture bugs which disturb your crops.
There is also a breeding system which helps you create combinations of different kinds of species (i.e. Rabbit + Dango Rabbit = Lop-eared Rabbit).
Fishing
The fishing system was pretty similar to other games in this style, but I would say simplified. When you choose to use the fishing rod shadows of fish will approach and bite. If you click again once they bite, you will get a tension meter on the rod.
You don’t have to fight the fish too much, which I found nice. Again, just doesn’t feel so grueling. Also, something that I found useful was that once you catch a fish for the first time, you get the exact details of when and where you can find them. I think other games might do that too, but I felt like the details were quite explicit and helpful in this case, especially if you get a fish related to a fetch quest.
Adventuring
I personally found the adventuring system refreshing. We always get close combat weapons in these games, but having archery for once was fun. Kinda reminded me of Genshin a little. The enemies are engaging enough, but not too difficult to take down. There is limited amount of arrows you can use and it can be a bit long-winded to get resources and craft the arrows. The upside is that there is a lot of ore you can pick up every day, so one run of mining can get you a decent amount of ore.
Design
I really think the look of the game is beautiful. Just feels really cozy. Making my character look cute is definitely a big part of why I found the game enjoyable. I am aware it’s not a priority for everyone, but if you like that aspect in games, I think this one is pretty good at that. Which, speaking of, brings me to the topic of clothes and other such accessories. If you’re not particularly fond of the initial options, worry not! You unlock a bunch of other options as you continue playing. You can either buy outfits from Lunette’s shop, or craft them yourself.
Characters and Events
On the island, there are quite a lot of characters which you can befriend by talking to them, completing quests for them, or offering gifts. Some of them are romanceable, and after getting 5 hearts relationship with them, you can live together. Each heart gives you different perks, such as taking pictures together, helping you with requests etc.
For this particular aspect, I have mixed feelings. I think each character has a lot of potential to be interesting, and I don’t know if I agree with the reviews saying the characters are bland. Yes, it’s true that I believe we need more content, such as Character Events where we learn more about them, Dates etc., but I am tempted to believe they are part of the plan. For example, you get hearts even for characters that are non romanceable, that seemingly have no purpose at the moment (except maybe to give you a random item each time but…).
Why I’m saying this is because of characters such as Delphin or Aurelius, who mention certain family members that for some reason or another, have changed their actions or ‘plot’ (i.e. Delphin mentions how his aunt taught him a lot about how aquatic animals need to be protected). So, yeah, as someone who mainly enjoys these games for the characters, I’m really hoping they expand on this more, as there will be an update for April which is supposed to include improving the romance system. They’ve already added quite a lot of new dialogue for characters that wasn’t there when I initially got the game on release. I also saw that quite a few people were displeased with the lack of diversity as well, and honestly, I have the same opinion. It’s a pretty big issue in a lot of games, but who knows, maybe we’ll get some new characters added.
In terms of events, I only managed to do the Summer one at the moment. Not sure if there are any others released yet, but I found it really engaging. Usually, in festivals like this you get some event games and that’s about it, but this time I felt like our character is very much included in the preparation and I really enjoyed that. We get quests from characters to help prepare, new dialogue, and rewards, as well as relationship points. And not only that, but the event games were fun, and I especially loved the festival scene where you get to play on stage with the band, followed by an animated cutscene.
Conclusion
Honestly, I really enjoyed it. The experience was pleasant and fun, and as I mentioned before, I felt like the game does a good job of helping you out as much as possible. My main concern is the character plots and story progression, which seems to be a work in progress. There are also quite a few bugs at the moment, but the development team updates the game every day and I’ve seen progressive improvements.
Starsand Island
