I’ve been on a roll here with all these farming and cosy life sims slash adventure games. Not that I’m complaining—I can take a good reflex test, but sometimes I just want to actually sit back and relax for a moment. And of the recent life simulations I’ve played these last six months, developer Seed Lab’s up ‘n coming title ‘Starsand Island‘ is shaping to be one of my favourites if not outright as casual and calming as can be. I’ve been playing an early build of it so far and of course, the game is ways away, but what I’ve seen will likely make Seed Labs’ first game my go-to life game for the foreseeable future.
And I’ve not really had one of those since ‘Rune Factory 3’ which was, lemme check these notes… About fifteen years ago. Wow, not cool.
Starsand Island starts off players being introduced to the titled landscape by an old friend named Solara, a young lady with a chipper spirit who’s happy to see a long-time friend return to their roots. Like so many of these life sim games, our playable character (which you can customise albeit in a limited fashion) is tired of city life and simply wants to take life one step at a time. And that they can do with a small little shack given to them that sits off the coast of a beach and town—Solara tells us a few things we should take care of as we settle in, like meeting the mentors of the various skills and occupations we can take on to improve ourselves, make monies, and furnish our homes.
Just like every other life sim on the market these days, Starsand Island’s main goals are for you to better yourself across a variety of skills over the course of the many days and seasons you’ll till and deforest the land, hunt, animal husbandry, make new friends and potentially meet your soulmate, so on and so forth. Honestly speaking, the scope of the game is quite ambitious the size of the map (there’s more than one major destination!), it all being in 3D, and the planned features that Seed Lab have in mind. But for now, the build I’ve been playing is a bit truncated from what the developers intend to ship later this year (and if you’re following the Kickstarter, they’ve got more planned thanks to them blasting through many of their stretch goals).
So, for these impressions, I was asked to check out the farming, animal husbandry, vehicles, and some other stuffs. There were a lot of systems I ran into as I wandered about the island, but as expected of a game far out from its late 2025 launch, they weren’t ready. I didn’t advance past the game’s first summer season and I wasn’t entirely keen to spend tens of hours only to lose it down the line—but lads, I was tempted to.
As I’ve mentioned, Starsand Island is a casual, slow-paced game. And I don’t mean that just by its vibrant and cutesy art style—our essentials are the most important and I’ve found that one of the more annoying trends life sims have been picking up on is adding wear ‘n tear to the very tools you need to use to do anything. Well, I’m happy to announce that Starsand Island does not feature breakable tools! I breathed a sigh of relief when I noticed this, which meant I could actually focus on clearing the Starsand locale of those hideous brown toothpicks and build my arsenal of materials. Seriously though, I’ve become so used to having to micromanage systems within systems that not having to constantly keep an eye on fixing my tools was a nice change of pace.
The only thing players have to realistically keep an eye on is their stamina bar. Certain actions will spend stamina, like tilling the fields or mining rocks. Run out of stamina and you’ll faint and spend a whole day’s worth of things you could’ve been doing with your life. Refilling your stamina bar is as simple as sitting down on your favourite chair and waiting for it to come up or by eating off the lay of the land (or cook, ideally).
Farming is a big stamina burner, but it’s a great way to make monies. Once you meet up with the old fart that’ll give you pointers on how to get your own farm going, you can take to the crafting table and make the tools you need to till. Any farming casual or fanatics knows the drill from this point on: create squares to plant seeds, water those spots, and make sure to keep a constant supply of fertiliser applied! The quality of your crops here determines how much monies you can make, and something I’ve noticed is how stingy the buyers can be with your produced crops. Mind, making money in this game isn’t difficult but you’ll need to put in the effort, especially if you want those rad-looking vehicles at the garage down the street. Running your own little animal farm can add to that income as well, and it mostly runs itself!
Something I noticed that Starsand Island does with the little bin outside your abode is that it gives you 50% less monies than if you were to go to a respective store’s cash till or person to sell your given goods. Anything you craft or collect from an animal or your farm is impacted this way, and my best guess as to why this is is to keep you from sticking to your plot for longer than you need to. I don’t mind this approach, but it’ll keep me from using the bin from selling my stuff for quite a while.
Now earlier on I mentioned that you’ll need to learn these skills through specific mentors you find throughout Starsand Island. There are specific named characters that you’ll find as you walk about and/or run into at specific events that crop up. You can tell they’re important thanks to their standout appearance and introductory cutscenes when you run into them and befriending them is your key to success as they’ll offer you the upgrades and equipment you need to optimise your workload and do more things. As their stories aren’t ready, I neglected to go beyond the basics of their questlines, but I enjoyed the varied personality and quirks each character exhibits and can’t wait to know more about them. And thankfully, you’ll never need to worry about where to find anyone as the map lets you easily track down anyone with a relationship meter to you.
I have to emphasise how much I enjoy this game’s leisurely pace. I didn’t feel compelled to get right to farming or earning monies—I simply walked the portion of the map that was available and said hello to everyone I met. The island is somewhat lively, with towns having plenty of non-playable characters walking around, talking to one another, painting and playing, etcetera. I took a few pictures of these happenings myself and framed them onto the walls of my house all the while messing around with the plot editing feature a bit. Then I fished a bit, got on my skateboard and crashed into a flight of stairs unceremoniously, picked up a few side quests to keep myself busy, and returned to my humble abode for a good night’s rest.
I tried not getting too attached to my save as the build I was playing was nowhere near ready for me to delve super deep into, but I’m sold on what I’ve played so far. It’s got a lovely visual flair with the right cosy vibes that doesn’t overload my teeny tiny brain and let me go at my own pace without any sense of urgency looming over my head. And even if I was done with one activity, I could easily jump into another and keep the pacing from falling apart. After this playthrough, I’m really looking forward to playing Starsand Island when it comes out on PC first and consoles down the line—as there is about 72 hours or so left on the Kickstarter by the time of this article’s posting, you should definitely pool your own bucks in my fine feathered reader. Help with the game’s development (especially for its eventual console launch) and get me some more content. I really want that floral stand. ◼
