Starsand Island looks like a place anyone would want to visit and forget about their life’s stresses. With a bright, blue sky and lots of lush, green vegetation, it’s easy to imagine how fresh the air might be. Tourists fill the town streets, and numerous shops occupy the pretty buildings.
With no particular end goal in sight, Starsand Island presents a low-stakes experience free from much pressure. The intention here is to relax rather than face a challenge. However, the game’s design philosophy and a general lack of polish may present a few glaring issues.
Getting a Job
Starsand Island drops the player into its colorful world almost immediately. A childhood friend named Solara welcomes the player’s character back to the Island after a ten-year absence. She trusts the player character with restoring a yard she remembers from their youth.
Outside of a tutorial explaining the game’s basic mechanics, this is most of the context provided at the start of the game. After that, the player can pursue a profession or spend their time on the island however they wish. For this particular playthrough, Solara suggested starting out as a crafter, which sounded like a good fit.
Soon after, players will likely find themselves completing a linear questline to unlock more advantages for the job of their choice. It’s at this point that the game begins to become not too unlike completing a list of chores. While it does help in tutorializing the game’s systems, it also makes it feel surprisingly restrictive, as certain upgrades, blueprints, and more are locked behind these questlines.
There is also very little narrative incentive to complete these questlines. None of the game’s characters appear to have much depth. There’s no story hook to draw players into the lives of these individuals. Instead, they walk around representing vague archetypes that are hard to get invested in.
A Relaxing Vacation With a Lot Going On
Starsand Island is a cozy game taking inspiration from titles such as Stardew Valley and rarely presents the player with any sense of urgency. Objectives may usually be tackled at the player’s own pace outside of optional side quests. Even so, these errands provide ample time to complete them.
There is a joy to spending time on a scenic island without any particular goal. The island is almost something of a virtual tourist destination. The player can visit various shops, rent a vehicle, and even go to an arcade to play a version of Snake.
Starsand Island feeds the player just enough progression to keep a play session going. There are small goals to work toward that make the game hard to put down. However, when the bigger picture is brought into question, it’s hard to say what the ultimate point in taking on all this busywork is.
Regardless, playing Starsand Island is a valid way of unwinding after a stressful day. Players can invest as little or as much time into it as they want to, and it never feels as though the game asks for anything in return, other than the money already spent to purchase it.
Too Ambitious For Its Own Good
Starsand Island tries to do a lot, but most of its systems end up feeling half-baked. The game features several methods of traversal, including skateboards, rollerblades, cars, and more. However, the skateboarding doesn’t deserve to be in the same sentence as Tony Hawk, and the vehicle handling is worse than the average cheap racing game on Steam.
The game even features some light dungeon crawling in the Moonlit Forest, but the combat mechanics are basic to an almost comedic extent. Enemies do not present much challenge, if any. It’s easy to keep firing the slingshot until the health bar depletes.
If Starsand Island were to rein in its scope, it might accomplish more. There is a lot of potential in the game’s crafting mechanics. However, the presence of so many different features stretches the game thin. There are plenty of interesting ideas here, but the resources to execute on them don’t seem to be there.
Starsand Island is Full of Technical Hiccups
Starsand Island‘s lack of polish quickly becomes noticeable. While the game runs quite well on a higher-end rig, bugs and other issues become apparent. They’re seemingly small, but they add up.
The jump animation lacks any natural sense of weight, making movement somewhat clunky. The slingshot’s sensitivity feels off compared to the normal camera, which might be adjustable in the game’s settings, but the default is awkward. Issues such as these aren’t game-breaking, but in abundance, they drag down the overall experience.
However, some bugs did impact gameplay. One character I often needed to talk to during the crafter questline found themselves stuck moving between two spots. When this occurs, it’s impossible to interact with them, as any attempt to do so results in a pop-up message notifying the player that the character is busy.
This issue impeded some of my progress and made me concerned about the rest of the game’s functionality. Fortunately, things usually go as planned, but there’s never a guarantee that they will.
Starsand Island Needs More Refinement
There is an enjoyable farming game underneath Starsand Island‘s pile of problems. It’s not quite a diamond in the rough, but there is something worth salvaging here. There are times when the game clicks and the appeal comes across clearly. Sadly, it’s difficult to recommend wholeheartedly when other farming games such as the recent Fields of Mistria exist.
Starsand Island is far from the worst game to exist, but its existence is unremarkable in a year full of fantastic games. That being said, it may resonate more with others than I, so it may still be worth checking out for those who have been keeping their eye on it.
Starsand Island leaves early access on August 18 and will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Steam.
Disclaimer: Seed Sparkle Lab provided Final Weapon with a Steam copy of Starsand Island for review purposes.
