Starsand Island

this release is just a disgrace

This game was quite disappointing. The developers made a lot of promises of additions of features and the removing of AI assets (translation/art) upon 1.0 release. They did not keep them. I would not recommend this game for someone who actually wants the 'island feeling' and 'á natural development of relationships with the npc's'. You can get a better experience from any other farm sim: stardew, coral island, fields of mistria etc. etc.

I bought this game during early access to support the developers because the reviews were great and SO much was promised, such as multiplayer. However, upon reading the 1.0 reviews and opening the game, we found that multiplayer was locked behind hours of gameplay. And the guest player is very limited in their activities. The townspeople feel completely soulless and their chats make no sense and have no context. The game is beautiful.., but that’s about it. I’ve been looking forward to this game all year, but I’m severely disappointed. I’m going to try to milk a few more hours since I already paid, but ugh. Absolutely atrocious scam. Save your money.

play for 40 hours, find out i cant even romance the reason i wanted to play the game. his voice is off as well & his dialogue is strange. might be translation errors. they likely did the portia crossover just to draw people like me in. unfortunate that it worked. which in retrospect all of that might be my fault for not looking into it far enough, BUT: there is no story in this game. a lot of the way it works is like my time at portia or my time at sandrock, which are stunningly better games with actual story & characters that matter. if you want a cozy game with story, go play those instead. there is no overarching story, just quest stacks where you have to breed a specific type of cow or build a specific statue. tl;dr please go play the my time series instead.

As a kickstarter supporter, I've seen all the dramas and how defensive the fanatical community can get. The rumors surrounding this game are all very true. Over-promised content and failed to deliver them, and lies upon lies concerning their claims of "indie" studio and anti-cheat software... The multiplayer alone which I waited many months for, turns out a huge letdown as well. Buy it if you want to be scammed. I've never wanted to refund a game so badly.

Man this game is night and day on my PC compared to my Steamdeck. The gameplay loop is enjoyable if you know there isn't really a story and instead approach it like Luma Island, Heartopia, or other progression collectathon kind of games like that where you just want to fill out the different encyclopedias they have. Even though I'm having enough fun (finally, since I moved to my PC) to keep playing for now, I can't recommend this game. Too many hurdles, performance issues, and red flags to recommend this in good faith. I'm simply making the most of my early access purchase since I was beyond the refund window. It's a shame because the gameplay loop itself has great potential, and the world/characters are a nice design so it would be even better if it had any semblance of an engaging story. It has more than when I first launched it in early access but barely. Nothing really connects at all and so you're just doing stuff to do it. Mindless fun when you're in the mood, incredibly shallow when you're not.

I played early access and with the full 1.0 release, it's incredibly disappointing. There is not new added content but some new NPCs that make it sound like they come with new questlines, but really that's just a faux to engage with them and all you can do is interact and talk to them. They don't really give much to the game other than the fact that they're there. Other than that, I have not found anything else new withing the full release and it's incredibly boring and bland. The price point and the paid DLC content is NOT WORTH IT. I have the DLC myself and it just isn't worth the price points they are demanding. Take that with a grain of salt. if you enjoy games that have MORE, do MORE, and give you MORE to enjoy, save your money and don't bother spending it here. This game is for a very specific type of player demographic. If you enjoy just lollygagging, farming and taking care of animals, not really doing much in a game then this game would be for you. I will compare this game to a mindless mobile simulator game with not much content but passes the time while you're on the bus or train. It's underwhelming in sense that there isn't too much to do and the questline is very simple and can be completed very easily within a day or few days-depends on your time. When you complete the questlines for each skillset, there isn't anything to do but just farming, fishing, and breeding animals. If you're someone who is very quest based and actually enjoys good storylines and quests even in cozy games, this game would not be for you. You can easily complete everything as nothing is really too difficult(which I'm sure many might like) but everything is underwhelming and you can get bored easily.

Cashgrab filled with broken promises and largely abandoned by the devs. Another Kickstarter disappointment. It's not terrible, but not worth full price. There's no character development or significant story content, so if that's what you want from your life sim, this isn't it. The building mechanics and graphics are nice, though.