Developer Seed Lab is making something rather special, and you’ve likely already gotten a whiff of it from the Steam Next Fest demo that’s currently running, the first Impressions article I put together some months back, and/or the Xbox Tokyo Gameshow Showcase last month. ‘Starsand Island’ is its name and it’s shaping up to be a really relaxing sandbox-styled life simulation game—and I’ve come back to it for another go, this time getting my hands on a more recent build of the game to test out more of the features that have been implemented and in a way, see how far along the game has come since I tested that really, really early build.
The cool thing about getting to play games this early is watching them evolve into a complete product, with swathes of content often seeing complete makeovers. Starsand Island is no different here—and I would’ve kept playing for quite a while (I’ve racked up a good twenty hours just doing the first season of the game!), but in the fairness of time I decided to wrap up nearly 25 in-game days in and talk about some of the mechanics I’ve got to muck about with. That and, well, the build I was playing was understandably still a work-in-progress, and I ran into a few snags here and there as I spent more time.
But I think it’s a testament to how enjoyable the fundamentals of Starsand Island are, that I managed to play two indie adventure’s worth of time into a game that’s still months out from release.
To briefly recap, Starsand Island has players take control of their own avatar as they return back to the aptly name isles after living on the mainland for an indescript number of moons. Your grandfather of yore has left behind his humble flat, and the people you once grew up with are now older, wiser, and hyper focused on their one-and-only shticks. This being a sandbox life simulation title, it’s up to you how you want to live! Build out that old man’s place, farm, craft, meet with the natives or speak to the tourists. I’ll primarily be covering some of the skills you’ll be taking up to improve yourself and your surroundings. There’s a lot more in store for you when you eventually visit Starsand Island, but I’m not at liberty to cover all that at the moment.
Starsand Island is fully explorable from the onset. Once you’ve gotten through the very brief tutorial with the kind and capable Solara, the game leaves you to your devices. Your only “fail state” is if you decide to forgo sleeping and force your character to stay past their bedtime. So of course, the first thing I decided to look into was crafting and farming—because those are the building blocks of every good life simulation. You farm for money and you craft to build more things that can make you dosh or a little prettier. So, in order for me to learn a bit of farming, I had to meet up with Graminova—a young man captivated by seeds, plants, and all that good stuff.
It seems this bloke is here to replace the older gentleman you’d have gathered your farming skills from in my last play session, which was a little surprising to me. Not that I mind and I’m sure players will appreciate another bachelor option. No, what actually caught me off-guard was seeing Zerine once again, the Crafting Mentor, whose original appearance was that of an e-girl streamer, I guess because she’s the technology wizard. Well, she’s got a fairly massive glow up, as you can see below. And, well, oh dear, I think I may be in…
(Seed Labs)
I digress. Our mentors will give us the basic certificates in order for us to get started on farming and crafting. From then on, I spent a few hours getting the hang of farming. You till the fields with your trusty hoe, water the soil, and place seeds within. Certain seeds only grow during certain seasons, and some plants will require you to grow them on structures rather than soil. Plants typically grow within an in-game day’s time (which runs at the speed of one hour of game time per real-life minute), but weeds that pop up will hinder growth time. So, keeping an eye on your growing organisms is essential to keep good timing.
Now it can become rather tedious to monitor your gardens just for these pesky weeds, and so this is where the “animal husbandry” skill comes in. Taught by a young farmhand by Pastelle, she’ll give you the tools to get started on getting your very own bunnies. These bunnies keep the weeds at bay on their own while breeding amongst themselves and producing goods you can sell or make more equipment out of. As you level up your farming, you’ll want to level up your husbandry skills to support more animal types that stop pests that impact your higher-level crops. And in order to build the infrastructure necessary to get those cute chickens and sheep and whatnot, you’ll have to upgrade your crafting skill. Upgrading your crafting expertise nets you a cool skateboard, which speeds up how fast you can get from one point to another. So on and so forth.
I’ve not included the other skills into this little diagram, but everything you can raise in this game impacts each other in a nice and easy way. And Starsand Island also does a great job pointing you in the right direction as it shows you what resources can be gathered from where or what when you hover over ingredients or tools that you’re missing. This feedback loop was my primary driver as I also interacted with the bits of overworld mechanics such as requests and certain other areas of the game that I really wish I could talk about.
Oh, and before I forget, you can rent vehicles now. Or at least, I don’t remember being able to previously. Bikes and mopeds are strewn about in the overworld, and you can rent them for a couple of hours for a bit of dosh. Very useful when going from mentor to sales, but they are a tad clumsy in this version of the game. Watching a fairly expensive bike be completed halted by a few millimetres of clearance on a bridge is an amusing if not a mildly infuriating moment.
There is one observation with the game I want to talk about and it’s actually the regarding the approach, or lack thereof, of world and character-driven story development. Being a life sim and all, Starsand Island’s characters aren’t entirely social. Sure, they’ll say hello and hold friendly conversations, but outside of special cutscenes I’ve never had a town native or a tourist stop by to say hello or to offer advice. If anyone has something to say or if there’s a special event going on, the only way you’ll find out is by receiving mail. In fact, the game’s a little too accommodating with how you progress in opening up the island and unlocking other functions.
About a couple days into the game, I was wondering if I was doing something wrong. I had too much freedom than I knew what to do with and, sans a few letters beckoning me to stop by a skill mentor’s home, I wasn’t having that connection to the community that I look for when I play a game like this. It didn’t help that all the shoppes in Starsand have their registers sitting out there, allowing you to sell and buy without ever having to actually interact with their owners.
Of course, we’re still ways off from the game’s official launch and I definitely won’t be making judgments on this observation just yet—the game’s nowhere near ready, after all. I am looking forward to seeing how Seed Lab implements character interactions, not just between the player but the actors’ environment as well. That was a big pitch of theirs in the game’s Kickstarter a few months back, so I expect good things are cooking up in development.
I wouldn’t spend twenty hours playing a game I didn’t like. Matter of fact, after typing this, I’m going to hop right into Starsand Island and keep playing until the developers yank the game out of my library again (I wouldn’t like that!). What keeps me coming back are those aforementioned systems that work in tandem and the laid-back nature of the game. I don’t need to reach the highest farming level, nor do I need to become an expert crafter so soon—that’s my decision to make and the game respects that! So long as the full game can fill in the empty space between all that life settling in stuff is where I can say that Starsand Island is brewing up to be something magical. ■
There’s a day or so left, but you can give Starsand Island a whirl yourself right now as part of the Steam Next Fest event. Check it out right here!
