After the release of Fantasy Life i last month, life sims are on the minds of many gamers. I find the genre a bit hit or miss though, and unfortunately fell off this megahit pretty quickly. Not one to give up on a life of farming and fishing though, I quickly moved onto the next game. Luma Island was the game in question, with a brand new pirate update and promise of plenty of crafting content for me and potentially even some friends. Would this be the life sim for me? Only a whole lot of farming and gathering would help answer that question.
Like any good crafting focused game, you start by creating a character. There are plenty of outfits and body options you can use to customise your slightly Roblox-esque avatar, and then you’ll be thrown into the action. The operative word here being thrown, because there’s very little waffle to deal with in Luma Island. This is a life sim that knows you want to get into the field and start planting berries, so it lets you do just that. There is a little bit of story about some mysterious ruins and a town full of people to meet at your leisure, but you won’t be stuck in lengthy chats in the opening hours here.
There’s just the right amount of guidance given when you begin your Luma Island journey, with you being taught how to use all your tools to get the materials you need. You’ll make a few different crafting tables, get a selection of basic tools, and then use them one by one to gather wood, rock and other familiar items. The wheel is not reinvented here, but it’s a loop that will feel cosy and compelling before you know it.
After learning the basics of collecting bits and bobs you’ll be introduced to farming, which will again feel familiar to pretty much everybody. You’ll need to prepare the ground, plant seeds, and do some watering, weeding and fertilising to get the crops you need. What surprised me about this loop though was quite how hands on it is, expecting you to run around your fields constantly to deal with sprouting pests while supplying more water to your crops.
With the bare essentials of Luma Island covered, you’ll be given the chance to choose a profession. These can be changed later, and all give you a quest line to work through to earn more money through the medium of crafting. I started out as a brewer, and needed to grow crops for my delicious drinks and then make the bottles to put them in. As fun as the different themes are, you’ll soon discover that all of the professions function fairly similarly just with different materials to gather. You don’t even use any of the items you create, just sell them for cash and continue the cycle forever.
That being said though, as you progress you will need to explore further afield to find the plants and ore you need for the next mission. This means exploring various caves, which are full of enemies. If you’d rather have the full cosy experience you can remove the angry spiders and skeletons by lowering the difficulty, but otherwise you’ll need to get your whip out and deal with these pests. There’s not a lot of complexity to this though, you just need to swing your whip until everything around you is dead. You can’t even take damage, and instead will drop items from your inventory when hit. This does at least ensure that combat isn’t frustrating, and doesn’t ruin the joy of exploring the vast environments of Luma Island.
Now if you’ve been playing Luma Island for a while you’re probably familiar with all of this farming and fighting, and want to hear about the pirate update. Especially for a free update there’s a lot added here, like the new eighth profession of Shipwright. There’s also a pirate den to explore full of undead seafarers who will let you play various nautical minigames. This area adds a whole lot of charm to the game, which is only made more delightful thanks to the scurvy theming we all know and love.
Luma Island sometimes feels like a bit of a no-nonsense life sim, but it’s also got some charming little features. One of my favourites of these are the titular Lumas, which are creatures you’ll hatch and pet to gather energy needed for crafting. Even these adorable critters mainly exist just to continue the grind, but at least they’re nice to look at.
Above all else there are just lots of smaller features that make Luma Island easy to sink many hours into. The fact you can play in co-op is probably the most important of these, but there are also helpful elements like that your inventory never gets full or the fact there’s no stamina or energy to worry about. The little frustrations of other games in this genre are entirely absent here, and make the whole experience much more friction free.
Despite all the positives Luma Island has, it’s still got a fair amount of issues worth mentioning. The biggest of these is that there’s no real sense of ownership over the farm you create or even your character, as there’s essentially nothing you can customise as you progress. The caravan you sleep in can’t be decorated, and there aren’t new outfits or accessories to buy either. It’s hard to get excited about making higher value juices when there’s nothing cool to buy as a reward.
Luma Island is a compelling life sim, but one with some issues. I loved exploring the world and gathering the materials I needed to complete missions, but it doesn’t take long to realise this whole process isn’t that rewarding. Still if you’re looking for a low friction take on the genre that doesn’t waffle on for too long, then you’ll likely enjoy your new life as an islander.
