Starsand Island

I would not recommend this game as it is for right now. It could use a lot of work in terms of filling out the plot, what is the conflict, and the driving motivator to keep playing. So far there isn't much running forward besides nostalgia. The game however is beautiful, and I can tell a lot of love and care went into designing the graphics. From how my character puts on their pajamas to go to sleep, to how they talk to any stray animal I get to pet, That is another thing I find interesting, my character has their own dialogue. I'm not a silent player and it's SO refreshing. I also found it so surprising and so cute that I went fishing on my farm and spawned a stray cat. That hooked me, that was awesome. That could have also been used as some sort of quest initiation for the pet shop. There was potential for some fun story there, the island has strays that Stella wants to help and by doing some things in certain locations you can spawn some unique pets to befriend with their own requirements to have them follow you back to her shop some of which may not even have anything to do with how you spawned them. Make a mongoose that wants eggs, for example. The more pets she gets, the more funding she needs. Build up your farm to attract more tourists so she can keep providing for the furry friends! This is a very pretty game and has a lot of potential to be better. But for right now, there isn't anymore than how it looks for me to want to recommend it to someone. Having a farm building simulator is good but having it with no purpose other than to just design a farm doesn’t make it a good game. Quite honestly, I think what would be perfect for it, is having to design your farm to progress a sort of plotline. The fact that I am able to come up with these ideas just goes to show how much potential this game has to be better. I’m still gonna play it though.

First 10 hours I was enjoying the game, is cute, I like the character customization, being able to skate and a generally addicting chill time for a farming game then I started getting crashes and also 1 bluescreen from a memory leak will also leave my list of nitpicks here: - forced toggle sprint is really annoying - is very easy to just walk outside of and fall out of the map - you can steal some things but not others? - the vehicle system is super disappointing. I just want a faster skateboard, the other options are meh especially the hoverboard that gets stuck and forces you off of it constantly - blocking off interacting with some things when it's late in the day - your screen getting an ugly dark filter around it at night - interacting with certain things, especially animals and animal related things, is clunky af i've also read from other reviews that this game uses AI in it and potentially has spyware so more reason for me to leave this review negative for now

Had to leave a good review. The people complaining about AI genuinely have 0 clue what they are talking about. The only AI that was used was a third party tool the company added to generate furniture, put your pitchforks down I'm not done, it was only included to be used as a community tool not to design official assets in the game. That's all it was, an AI tool they tried to give the community to add in their own unofficial ai generated assets and this tool was the only AI related thing in the games files. Other than that the team admitted to using AI to brainstorm ideas but non of those AI generated items were ever placed into the game. Any other claims about AI are purely speculation and there is 0 evidence that AI was used to actually create a single asset. This goes to show how moronic some people are, they see AI and instead of reading a little bit further before opening their mouths they instantly swarm a game to bash it. To reiterate NO AI ASSETS ARE PRESENT IN THE GAME ONLY A THIRD PARTY TOOL INTENDED FOR COMMUNITY USE. If you believe AI was used to create assets then it's simply your opinion, there is no evidence of any scripts, character models, items, or anything being ai generated. Understanding how AI was actually used is vital and knowing it wasn't used to actually make anything currently in the game is also important, but a lot of recent steam reviews seem to be arguing in bad faith. Also once the team announced they were going to be giving this AI tool to the community for use and experienced a negative response they removed it altogether so there is actually nothing in the game related to AI, not even that third party tool. It is nice to see thought that we live in an age that even when the devs do what the community wants the community still whines. Now that I can talk about the actual game, Starsand Island can be hit or miss for some people. It all comes down to your preference in a cozy game, do you want a big story, overarching plots, incredibly deep characters with long backstories? Go somewhere else. Do you want a cozy game that is more of a sandbox where you can do what you want at your own pace with few restrictions, where you just kinda pick a goal and do it with no handholding, no roadblocks, just go out mine stone, chop wood, and build a massive villa? Then this is for you. I get that clashes hard with some of the cozy community but I genuinely despise when I have to befriend npcs to get required items and recipes that are needed to progress. I despise having to donate tons of resources just to progress the story. With starsand you don't really have to worry about all of that, you just kinda handle each and every thing at your own pace with no stress, no big deadlines, no sleeping all year just to be able to get one item that you missed (i'm looking at you stardew). If you do miss a seasonal item in Starsand then so what? There is no big catch every fish requirement, no ship every crop requirement, no donate items from specific seasons requirement. Instead your farm can run the way you want it to all year round. Let's get into the good and the bad. The best thing by far are immortal seeds, you don't need a greenhouse, you don't need a shed with tons of planters, you can just plop the immortal seed down and that crop is good to go all year round. There are multiple building spaces, you can dedicate one to being a farm, one to an amusement park, one to a large villa, or you can really use them for whatever you want tbh. The vehicles are great, particularly being able to get your own large houseboat. The animals are adorable, the breeding mechanics give you a reason to keep interacting and trying to get new variants, getting a horse with every good trait feels great once you get it as you can now zoom around the map on your pony. The building is frustrating at first but once you get into it, holy cow, you can build some amazing houses, gardens, barns, whatever you want! I could spend hours just building things, as I said this really is the just one big cozy sandbox even down to the building. The bad would have to be combat, it is by far the least thought out part of the game along with the woods (the combat area). You use only ranged weapons, and can just craft explosive ammo (which is ridiculously cheap) and finish the entire forest in an hour. THe combat doesn't really change or evolve in any meaningful way, you just get a better bow, better arrows, get bigger numbers, and that's it, there is no variation, the forest is incredibly short, and once you get mining and lumberjack robots you have very little reason to ever actually come back to explore the woods. The forest also has mechanics like growing and burning away roots that it introduces to you in order to progress, two issues though, 1. you can just kinda path around these 2. the mechanic is only used in two spots leaving me to wonder why it was ever added in the first place. Like all of the combat and forest mechanics are like this, they feel pointless and just when you think there will be even the slightest bit of complexity to them you realize it is only for one spot you will never come to again and the forest ends after a five minute walk. All in all it certainly isn't for everyone, if you require a deep story to play a cozy game (which I would argue ruins the cozy do it at your own pace charm) then play something else. If you want a sandbox where you set your own goals, get lost in building things, farming, fishing, growing your wealth, and just relaxing as you play then this is a phenomenal pickup. I'd give it a solid 8/10.

For full disclosure, I am a Kickstarter backer, and I am furious with the developers who STILL haven't gotten all the keys to us, and some keys they have only told us in the last week we will NEVER get depending on the system we wanted them on. I regret backing this game, and I will never buy anything from them ever again after how they've treated their backers. I waited until 1.0 to give them every single benefit of the doubt, too. But I will be honest about this game, and leave the behind-the-scenes drama out of it and stick only to what the game itself offers. TLDR: If you care about a simple but satisfying gameplay loop that has tons of rewards with zero stakes, a beautiful world, and robust building features, this is a game you will love. If you want your games to have a bit more depth and characters to have personality, stay far, far away. There is absolutely none to be found in this game. I will start with the good: The game is beautiful. There's tons of outfits and hairstyles and options to customize your characters. The darker skin tones have some blending issues though, so be aware of that. There aren't many in the beginning, but you'll be drowning in gorgeous outfits very quickly. Tons are just rewards for leveling up. The gameplay loop is satisfying and there's a lot to do. You'll constantly be running around from one point to the other. All the quests for are extremely easy and have very few steps. You will be flying through them and unlocking the highest tiers in the jobs very quickly. This can be a pro or a con depending on if you want a very low stakes easy time, or you wanted a bit more meat to your game. Many of the quests kinda feed into each other as well, so you'll be able to complete multiple at the same time. The ones that take a bit longer is just because you have to wait for things like crops to grow or hunting down specific materials. There's lots of vehicles to help you get around the map quicker, and the map is quite large. The temple area is a particularly beautiful area and worth poking around at least once. If you like building, this game is for you. It has so many features to build your house. It easily has the most robust building system I have ever seen outside a Sims or Sims-like game. There are so many blueprints to collect and a very free style of placement and building. Now the bad. The game is as deep as a dry puddle. There is zero reason for you to be doing any of the quests that you are tasked to do other than to unlock the ability to do more tasks. There is no overarching story. There is zero story at all beyond, "Grandpa died and left you a plot of land; you left your corporate job to take over the land." That's it. That's the "plot." This has been a consistent complaint amongst backers since Alpha. The characters are largely just as shallow. Their opening cutscenes when you first meet are where you'll see their personalities, but after that most of your interactions will be just about turning in junk or requesting more tasks. I never once cared to get to know them, not that there's much to get to know, and I don't even know most of their names, which half of the names are also stupid. 4 of the male relationship options look nearly identical. We begged the devs to at least change the hair color of a couple to differentiate them, but they chose to ignore that and nerf Neona and Zerine's designs instead. One guy and one girl look like they're supposed to be twins, but aren't. They took Delphin's tan for some reason even though he's a fisherman so he should have a tan being outdoors all the time. None of the characters that should be tan, like the farmer, are tan. Everyone is extremely pale, like creepily so. The girl who looks like the twin sister of the farmer is actually white. Not white as in Caucasian; her skin is literally the color white. There's really not any relationships either. They're extremely barebones despite a robust jealousy system being used to market the game during the Kickstarter phase. And one of them tells you you smell like dirt when you first meet. Speaking of marketing, they said they were inspired by the My Time series and definitely implied they'd be a similar game. They even have a few My Time characters that will cameo in the game. Don't let this fool you. They have none of the their original charm, and this game is almost nothing like the My Time games. The only similarity is the crafting system, which is worse. The fighting is extremely easy, which again, can be a good or bad thing depending how you like your game. If you've got the coin, you can buy one-time use robots to do your fighting for you, and the fights aren't even difficult to do in the first place. This game really is just Fetch Quest Island. Someone tells you they need something, you go get it. You want to go up a job level, go fetch some ores and build a simple thing, then deliver it. Like I said, the gameplay loop rewards you constantly for completing things so it scratches that little itch to make you feel like you're accomplishing something, but it's so shallow. There is no depth to this game at all. I was sold on it being like a My Time game, and it's not. At all.

i love this game ... i'm aware i'm the minority but i would be lying if i said i don't. i'm not an EA player and idc about the romance aspect so that's probably why. i'm a big fan of customisation in games, having many little machines, tasks to fulfil. i DO agree it feels 'shallow' in the character depth aspect - that's probably its biggest downside. like, at first i was super confused because the cook, gardener, and even the mechanic looked the same. but whatever lol. i don't find it an issue. there was a bug a few days ago where the game would crash when building something, though i think that's been fixed. the beach festival is bugged as in, the crab guy sometimes doesn't show the finishing line, the festival appears to be still a work in progress on the 27th... that happens when you load a previous save. to fix that, load back to the 25th, and take those 'road to beach festival!' requests again till the day of the festival. i didn't find any other game-breaking bugs besides these. i like to look for the most profitable ways to make money while my blorbo wears cute outfits, that's pretty much it xx

Dont spend money on this. Unplayable.

Got this in early access and I don't see much of an improvement in 1.0. Game is very buggy and seems to have gotten worse since early access (textures don't load in correctly, NPCs teleport across the map randomly, actions are missing visuals at times, game freezes constantly, and with the newest update I had to reinstall the game because it refused to launch). The translation from Chinese to English is abysmal and for the price of this game, honestly should have been done much better. There are grammar and spelling errors constantly. I suspect they used AI; this game would be an excellent case for why human translators/localizers are necessary. May come back to this game and re-review it if it gets further (and better) updates, but I would recommend holding off for a while before getting the game so it can be improved.

ANYONE PURCHASING THIS FOR THE MULTIPLAYER, DON'T! You entirely rely on the host for everything including needing to be in the same place (one can't be in the mines while another person is in the overworld) and it really boils down to not even really feeling like a multiplayer setting at all. If anything, it feels like you're just visiting someone's island like you would in games like Animal Crossing. I hate to leave this kind of review but this game has majorly disappointed in a lot of different ways. They've failed to make due on their promises to have romances who pursue you in any meaningful way (you initiate everything), there's a lot of bugs and overall feels lackluster to what they promised. There's also the undisclosed AI, completely removing a romance option would even addressing it and so much more. I wouldn't recommend this game at all, and I'm disappointed.