There’s a lot to be said about the value of casual gaming. The freedom to escape from the daily grind and mindlessly kick back with a game that lets you explore, experience a story, and raise incredibly adorable baby animals on your own little farm. Starsand Island, developed and published by Seed Lab, offers all of that and more in a wholesome slice-of-life simulator coming to Xbox and PC later this year.
I had the opportunity to go hands-on with Starsand Island via a playable Steam demo, and it didn’t take long before I was hooked on this quaint little island’s story. Like most of these life sims, Starsand Island kicks off with a story about returning to your family’s roots, and you find yourself creating a character who will inherit a small farm on the coast.
You can choose from a small variety of character customizations, including hair and clothing. The options available were quite limited, but we are only dealing with a preview. At least later on in the game, more clothing options open up, but I would give all the cozy games in the world for just one developer to remember that curly hair exists. And no, space buns don’t count as ‘curly’.
Once your character is created, they’ll meet up with a former childhood friend named Solara, who will serve as your guide through the tutorial phase.
You’ll learn quickly that stamina can limit how much you accomplish in a day, and how to effectively build and repair things around your little coastal homestead to help get it back in tip-top shape. Solara also helps us learn how to use our phone for must-have mobile apps that make homesteading and exploring easier than ever.
The phone is actually one of my favorite elements of Starsand Island. That sounds silly, but I play an insane amount of these cozy and wholesome farming simulators. It's by far my favorite genre, but so often they just ignore the existence of modern technology, typically to justify why players must start with substandard tools.
Your character having a phone in hand makes it easy to track quests and relationships with the locals. Don’t worry, though. Modern features like the phone don’t take away from the cozy vibes. Tools in Starsand Island are still created via a family heirloom of a crafting table that looks conspicuously like a tree stump, after all.
Starsand Island does have a unique gameplay mechanic beyond just the phone, and while farming and building up your homestead on the beach are the hook, the real meat and potatoes of gameplay come from the job and mentor systems.
Interacting with the locals of Starsand Island gives the player the chance to become an apprentice in a variety of jobs, from which the player can glean useful items and skills to help progress on the farm.
However, nothing is designed to be overbearing or difficult. Fishing, for example, is as simple as setting up on the side of one of the Island's ponds or beaches and casting a simple pole out when you see the shadows of fish below the water's surface. It only takes a single button press to reel in the hook and your fresh catch. Starsand Island taps into the casual, non-stressful side of the life-sim genre.
You'll want to be careful not to make your farm too cozy because you will need to leave it to acquire goods and progress. Unlike a lot of farming simulators, Starsand Island isn’t content to let you spend day and night toiling the soil. Exploration is a key element, so much so that the team has even implemented vehicles, a feature rarely found in these kinds of games.
From skateboards to mopeds and actual automobiles, there’s plenty of variety for how to traverse the island. Selling items via the bin outside your farm will only net you a fraction of what they’re worth. However, if you saddle up a friendly piggy, you can giddy up all the way to town and sell your wares to interested parties for much more coin.
An already ambitious project with a sprawling, customizable island awash in a Studio Ghibli-esque color palette and anime art style that pulls from all the best gameplay mechanics from titles like Stardew Valley and My Time at Sandrock, Starsand Island has even more to offer its players in the future.
Because the game has already hit its Kickstarter goal twice over, Islanders can look forward to the game having a brand-new theme park, expanded character customization, and even customization options for a houseboat.
Players can look forward to hitting the beach on Starsand Island when it launches in Winter 2025 on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam.
