The primary hotly-anticipated farm sim of this yr is right here and it is a scorcher. Starsand Island is a crafting-forward life and farming sim the place you will return to the sunny island of your youth to reconnect with previous buddies, meet new love pursuits, and assist flip the city into a good greater vacationer vacation spot by—you guessed it—chopping down a ton of timber and crafting procuring lists of parts for principal story quests.
Small cities aren’t revitalized in a day, particularly on Starsand, which appears to be packing a for much longer play time than I might anticipated. You may learn extra about what it was like playing my first season in Starsand Island however down under I am going to provide you with a farm sim fan overview of what to anticipate from Starsand in contrast with all the different farmlife sims on the market.
Starsand Island options
What sort of life sim is Starsand Island?
Starsand Island is a life sim with a giant give attention to crafting quests. Consider it like the crafting station-based system of Palia or My Time At Portia with only a trace of the creature-breeding and automation of Palworld.
|
Characteristic |
Included? |
The way it works |
|---|---|---|
|
Farming |
✅ |
Crops develop on a steady timer, not as soon as per day |
|
Ranching |
✅ |
Animals have roles like consuming weeds or bugs and might be bred for particular traits |
|
Mining |
✅ |
Mine larger rarity ore supplies by progressing by the dungeon-like forest |
|
Crafting |
✅ |
Construct and improve crafting stations to course of supplies for more and more complicated quests |
|
Fishing |
✅ |
Reel in fish with out snapping your line then promote, cook dinner, or show them |
|
Friendship / Romance |
✅ |
Give presents to unlock tiers of friendship, finally inviting a associate to maneuver in collectively |
|
Fight |
✅ |
Use a ranged slingshot or bow to battle bosses in the forest or deliver automated little robots to battle for you |
|
Museum / Collections |
❌ |
There is not a museum or neighborhood middle bundles collections system |
|
Character development |
✅ |
Full quests to stage every job (farming, ranching, crafting, fishing, exploration) and unlock gameplay perks at every tier |
|
Calendar occasions |
⚠️ |
There are seasonal occasions however townies haven’t got birthdays on the calendar |
|
Store simulation |
❌ |
There is not any market or store simulation factor |
|
Character customization |
✅ |
Purchase or craft new outfits, save presets, and set your individual daytime, swimwear, and pyjamas |
|
Property customization |
✅ |
An nearly level-editor like freeform construct mode with detailed modifying and toggled snapping |
|
Multiplayer |
⚠️ |
Deliberate for full launch |
My favourite function to this point in Starsand is certainly its construct system that lets me actually get into the weeds increasing my home. I wanted plenty of stone and wooden to construct my crafting patio addition however was in a position to simply snap collectively a flooring then toggle snapping off to construct a customized overlapping lattice ceiling that I am fairly pleased with. If I ever get overwhelmed, Starsand has a “layouts” function with fairly, pre-made properties that I solely want to produce the assets for with out fiddling in the detailed editor.
What Starsand lacks proper now could be motivation to promote my crops or crafted gadgets. To this point I’ve earned sufficient cash from fundamental bulletin board requests and the “stamps” achievements system that I simply hold stashing all my produce with out promoting any. The builders listing “steadiness and reward distribution” as considered one of their identified points, so I am to see if this adjustments throughout early entry.
Starsand Island early entry state
How ‘early’ entry is it?
Starsand Island feels practically feature-complete with some small tough patches like automobile dealing with and occasional voice line bugs. The massive function it is planning so as to add earlier than its 1.0 launch is multiplayer, although the builders haven’t defined in element precisely how its co-op will work.
I initially discovered driving automobiles and driving mounts felt very floaty and awkward, however a pre-launch patch has already improved the expertise with much less sensitive steering. Equally, navigating my instruments and different UI menus with a controller was a bit convoluted till the similar patch, which streamlined instruments choice to the D-pad and different enhancements. Suggestions appears to be getting included fairly rapidly right here and the ropey bits haven’t affected my general enjoyment of Starsand’s quests and characters.
Do you have to get Starsand Island in early entry?
Is Starsand Island worth it?
💸 If you happen to’re a value per hours of play time particular person: It took me 23 hours to complete my first season in Starsand, earn 2/5 friendship tiers with only a few of its characters, and attain rank 2/5 in 4 of its professions. The builders estimate that early entry has “greater than 100 hours” of content material and if I proceed at the similar tempo by simply the first in-game yr that does appear to trace.
🐮 If you happen to’re a life sim aficionado: I’ve performed plenty of life sims and I feel Starsand is a good instance of the style based mostly on the first season I performed. It streamlines plenty of widespread gripes like managing storage chests simply and in addition expands on plenty of enjoyable concepts like rentable mounts, customizable PJs, a really detailed construct system, and extra. It is the first 3D farm sim that I discover visually interesting and never awkward to manage. Simply go in realizing that this one is heavy on crafting and useful resource gathering.
💖 If you happen to’re in it for the romances: Constructing friendships is the actual grind in Starsand proper now as a result of attending to a new tier of affection takes weeks of presents and chatting. The brief cutscenes introducing every love curiosity give me excessive hopes for what dates can be like, however with out seeing one but, it is onerous to foretell how particular these moments will really feel. In the meantime, day-to-day interactions with love pursuits contain seeing the similar dialogue very often.
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