Starsand Island

Game is addictive and fun, However, my game currently bugged and i'm unable to continue after the cutscene of "Invitation froom Graminova" The screen is just stuck and i can't move or even press exit...... Plssssssss save me and my animals devs!!!

I love this game very much, and that's exactly the reason why I'm posting a negative review. DO NOTE that I'm not advocating against buying the game. If you can tolerate missing features and bad optimization, go right ahead—you'll probably still enjoy the experience overall. I will update my review to a positive one if the issues get addressed with the full release. But let's start with the positives. First of all, this game looks absolutely stunning. The colours are bright, the music is great (although I wish there were more variations, because it can get tiring hearing the same track while building/travelling around the town), character designs are pretty cool, and the animals are all very cute. The core gameplay loop works, although not without issues. However, there are tons of features that can be improved. Let's start with the character creation: Right now you can pick a male or a female character. You can't edit the shapes; you can only choose clothing, makeup, and hair. You unlock more as you progress, which is good, but I feel like the character creator could be a lot deeper—it's a life-sim after all. Now the NPCs, or rather the interaction with them. You can gift items and talk to them, which will increase their affection, but you can only do so once per day with each NPC, and it gets repetitive really fast. The trailers showed completely different interactions with dialogue choices. I am aware that developers are preparing an update on NPCs, so we'll see how it goes. There's also somewhat of a dungeon in the game, but it's very... short? You can finish it within one season. Also, the combat doesn't help because it's pretty barebones. There's no close combat—you can use a slingshot and a bow. All of the enemies you'll encounter are VERY easy to defeat without taking a SINGLE hit. I feel like if they added a bit more enemy variation that roams around the dungeon, it would help a lot, as well as adding close-range combat, balancing it a bit, and making enemies a bit harder, because as of now there's zero challenge. When you first start your game, you can select one of five professions: Crafting, Farming, Ranching, Fishing, and finally Exploration. You can actually max all of them, which is good, but the problem is the progression, because you can max all of them pretty fast. For example, I started with crafting and exploration and maxed them really fast. I feel like it trivializes them and makes them feel less rewarding. I was riding on my hoverboard in the middle of my first summer. Now, the mounting system. It works—I expected a lot less—but that doesn't mean it can't be improved further. It's still a lot better than in a lot of other indie games, which is a bit funny to say the least. But the turning/overall driving mechanics could be improved—for example, make the turns feel less instant, adjust the speed of certain vehicles, because the scooter right now feels like you're riding a cow on the ice. Maybe add the ability to fall from the vehicle, because bumping into a fence could be a bit more realistic and funny (I'm not really a big fan of realism, but this would surely make me want to use driving in this game a lot more, lol). Now let's dive deeper into the bigger issues. The story, or lack thereof. Yes, there's zero story. You're greeted with the intro, and after that it's an "entertain yourself" type of game. I feel like the addition of at least one storyline could benefit it. Hell, there's been so much footage of flashbacks from childhood in the trailer. But if the devs are sure they want to go that route, maybe add at least side stories. This could improve NPCs and the overall feeling of the island a lot. For example, we never really know what the Moonlit Forest is, or how such a structure appeared on the island.