As the Loot Level Chill resident cosy game lover, life sims are a special genre to me. There’s something innately soothing about an entire genre of low stakes games where your only goals are to exist and thrive in an idyllic setting, usually taking care of some sort of business or enterprise bequeathed to you by a dying relative. Starsand Island feels like a “Now That’s What I Call Music” style compilation of all the genres’ best bits wrapped up in a package that feels surprisingly high quality considering the Early Access status.
As with most of these games there’s a relatively flimsy set up that exists purely to highlight your characters’ desire to escape the hustle and bustle of city life and find something a little more laidback. To be perfectly honest, after a dozen hours with Starsand Island I’ve already forgotten why I’m here in the first place, although it’s hard to care too much. Either way, you’re back on the island after 10 years away, ready to take over your family’s old plot of land, reconnect with old friends and make some new ones.
Shortly after arriving you’re introduced to the five main career paths in the game: farming, animal husbandry, angling, crafting and exploration. It’s a very freeform system, similar to something like Fantasy Life but far less regimented: you’re able to tackle each of these paths individually or meet all the vocation masters early on and dabble in each career path at once.
I started with crafting, as the game recommended it, but quickly found myself branching out into the others. The quest system is fairly simple, teaching you the ropes of each career and doling out blueprints and materials at a steady clip, but there are certain points where you’ll need to wait a short time to progress, which I found to be natural jumping off points for me to dive into other career paths.
There’s nothing particularly surprising here: crafting has you learning the basics of creating furniture for your home or tools that’ll let you refine or transform materials. It blends nicely with the exploration career which involves frequent visits to the Moonlit Forest: the obligatory mining/combat zone. Here you’ll be trekking deeper and deeper into the forest, finding rare materials to bring back to your home and taking down foes with a slingshot and a host of homemade ammunition. While I enjoyed crafting, I was less keen on exploration and preferred to spend my time outside of the Moonlit Forest.
Fishing and farming are both easily accessible but also have some depth to keep you interested. Once you’ve learnt the basics of using a fishing rod you’ll be able to set out to sea and explore different aquatic regions. It also unlocks requests from people for specific items, giving you an opportunity to sell things you’ve found or made for a higher than normal price. Making money was something I struggled with during my time on Starsand Island, and I was never quite sure what the most efficient way of earning cash was, so I jumped at the chance to make a bit of extra money from the stuff I was already making through my other careers.
Farming was one of my favourite activities: it takes a system we’re all familiar with now and streamlines it without losing any depth. You’ve got the usual actions of tilling the soil and watering your crops but you also need to keep an eye on the quality of your soil: weeds can crop up on any unoccupied squares and if left unchecked they’ll revert your tilled soil to its default state.
Fertilisers also seem more instantly rewarding than in many other games, and using them means you’re not left waiting 3 in-game days for your potatoes to finish growing. By putting high quality fertiliser on them you’re able to slash their growing time, even making them appear immediately at times. It means if you’re growing something for a specific quest you can fasttrack those crops to help keep your flow going.
So far, so life sim. They’re good systems, but they don’t feel particularly unique to Starsand Island and I definitely found myself gravitating towards crafting and farming. What sets the game apart from others in the genre though is all the stuff around your career paths. And there’s a lot of it.
Customisation is a huge focus in the game, and they give you so many tools to make your little slice of island life feel bespoke to you. As mentioned, the game gives out blueprints like candy, but head into town and you’ll find dozens and dozens of others you can buy. There’s everything from new tools and decorative items to furniture for inside or outside your home. One really neat touch is that you can use the in-game photo mode to snap pictures around the island and then put them in photoframes in your house, making your decor unique to you.
With enough money you can even buy “layouts”, which essentially act as the floorplan and aesthetic for your home. You can instantly turn your quaint little farm shack into an angular modern complex, a cute cottagecore home or a number of other options. The game’s generous with vouchers too, giving you ways to make new layouts, blueprints or vehicles more affordable.
Did I mention the vehicles? Starsand Island is surprisingly big and you won’t want to be running everywhere on foot. From skateboards to motorcycles, there are a bunch of ways to get around and while buying your own vehicle might cost a fortune you can easily craft or rent them too. My preferred method of transport was rollerblades as I could keep them in my hotbar, but for longer journeys you’re better off renting a scooter or even a sporty motorbike. Controls can be a bit janky (you essentially control them as you would yourself while walking) but they make getting around a fair bit quicker.
Those are the main things you’ll be doing but wandering around the island will quickly reveal more. Whether it’s completing jobs on the bulletin board, hunting for treasure chests, befriending animals or even playing guitar, I really don’t think you’ll be short of things to do in your time on the island.
There’s also a colourful cast of characters for you to befriend or romance in Starsand Island. The first hour of the game left me rolling my eyes as I was introduced to yet another conventionally attractive anime girl, and even now I’m yet to see that much diversity in the types of characters you meet. They’re all either sugary sweet or a bit dark and brooding, and the main ones immediately feel like they’re designed to romance.
Conversations are a bit lacking too, although I like that they’ll sometimes reference gifts you gave them previously too, which was a nice touch. Gift-giving isn’t a one-way street either: I often found myself striking up a conversation only to be given a little treat from my island pals which isn’t something I’ve seen outside of Animal Crossing.
Again, as much as I enjoyed all the “stuff” in Starsand Island (and there’s a lot of it), I think it was the overall quality of the presentation that I think elevated it. It’s a beautiful game, and on an OLED screen with HDR on it almost took my retinas out with how bright and vibrant everything is. Blue skies and green farmlands pop out at you, with lighting changing throughout the day to convey the time. It feels more akin to a big RPG rather than a cosy life sim, but it’s an aesthetic that fits the game perfectly.
As well as being gorgeous, the island itself is wonderfully crafted. It feels big for this type of game, big enough to need a vehicle to traverse it, but cute and condensed at the same time. Walk 30 seconds from your home in any direction and you’ll find something different: a beachfront highway or flooded farmlands, or even a miniature city packed with shops, tourists and other little details to marvel at.
I really loved just wandering around the island and taking photos, which I then took back to decorate my home. The city area was my personal favourite as it felt so authentic, with scooter rental bays outside stores or bikes leaned up against railings helping make it feel lived in.
As an early access title there are obviously a few rough edges. Performance was generally really solid, although in the city centre it could get a bit ropey. I had a couple of quests trigger but then the characters involved in them disappeared so I had to wait for them to come back. The controls also take some getting used to.
There are a lot of inputs and button combinations to learn, and while it helps having key shortcuts in the HUD, it’s still easy to get your thumbs tangled. Crafting a new piece of equipment, for example, involves about four separate inputs and two menus before you can start placing it on your land. Again, it’s not a dealbreaker but it just doesn’t feel quite as streamlined as it could have been.
Still, minor gripes aside, I thoroughly enjoyed my time on Starsand Island. It really feels like an “everything” life sim, with enough in there to keep you invested all the way through the early access period as they no doubt refine existing systems and add more. What sets it apart though is the presentation, and the island itself really is the star of the show. Whether you want to get stuck into farm life or just strap your skates on for a little jaunt around the city, it’s a game that all fans of the genre will love.
