Sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for until you find it. That’s exactly how I felt during my early hands-on with Starsand Island. Fusing farm life sim mechanics akin to My Time At Portia and Stardew Valley with the graphical finesse of Genshin Impact, this newcomer is an incredibly promising addition to the cosy scene.
From the countryside to the sea, Starsand Island’s environments are stunning, its world brimming with possibility. It’s begging to become your new favourite cosy game. While I could gush about it for hours (probably), because your time is valuable (and the devs don’t want me to give everything away), let’s stick to the essentials of what I previewed.
After struggling to choose just one favourite outfit from the character creator – do I want to till soil and herd sheep in the khaki explorer shorts or the polka-dot panties with bows on the hips? – I was greeted by Solara, an old childhood friend who was delighted to see me return to the island where we grew up together. It seemed that I’d moved away from Starsand some time ago to pursue life in the city and now I was back with a renewed desire to experience the quiet life.
Solara soon had me set up with the little cabin my grandfather left for me, the Island Life app, and all the necessary information to pursue my Islander Certification. Following the quest objectives from the app, I foraged for resources in the forested area around my new home and sold them for Starshells – the currency on Starsand Island.
With that, I had unlocked my certification, and I was rewarded with the right to be a “formal islander, able to engage in various professions”, as well as a collection of blueprints to craft basic tools. It wasn’t long before I flitted off, back into the forest, to pick berries and mine copper ore. A stockpile of spending money, set aside as an emergency fund for fashion and homewares, never goes astray in a world like Starsand.
Starsand Island’s worldbuilding has a gentle incline. I often find that farm life sims have high barriers to entry, with long tutorial sections and large chunks of information to memorise. My brain simply can’t sponge it up all at once. But my preview didn’t indicate that this was the case for Starsand. To quote Solara: “Rome wasn’t built in a day, take it slow”. That translates to a learn-as-you-go approach and I very much appreciated the lack of overwhelm I was feeling as I explored the map at my own pace.
Starsand Island is a cross between cosy and cunty
Circling back to my newfound privilege to engage in labour, Solara introduced me to the five core professions: crafting, farming, fishing, ranching and exploring. From what I could gather, professions are the centrepiece of the game– at least in its current pre-release state. Each could be learned from a relevant expert in the field, who I’d need to seek out and pay with Star Points (XP) to begin my training. Consulting my map and the Vocapedia (the handy vocation encyclopedia app on my phone) I chose a profession and charted a course for its coach. This is where the Goldilocks principle began to take effect.
Charmed by the pigs at Pastelle’s ranch – not a sentence I thought I’d be writing today, but seriously, they’re so cute– I first dabbled in ranching. My induction quest involved building a bed and caring for a bunny. That seemed easy enough and the promise of one day raising my own pigs, sheep and capybaras, such as the ones I was seeing frolicking around the island, was beyond exciting…until reality set in.
I had to feed, and have Starshells to buy food for, this bunny every day. That was going to cut into my – thus far imagined – fashion fund and I wasn’t sure if selling the rare poops the bunny sometimes dropped would be enough to make up for it. Not to mention the grooming and breeding requirements if I wanted to make this a viable career option. It all felt a little too involved, so I moved onto caring for an organism of less dire consequence.
An adorable resource drain
Tending to a garden had to be a better money grab, right? Perhaps, but that wasn’t much good if I didn’t have fun doing it. Sagewood, the aptly-named farming sensei, summed it up pretty well when he said “farming doesn’t actually involve that many steps”. Till the soil, sow the seeds, water the seeds, harvest the crops and sell them. Rinse and repeat. Somehow, digging holes for a living didn’t feel involved enough.
Finally, as I jogged along the pale sandy shores of Half-Moon Bay, towards the Tidal Dive Shop – complete with a giant statue of a whale shark on its roof – I felt like I might be onto something. Once inside, I was greeted by an awe-inspiring view of a floor-to-ceiling aquarium à la Blathers’s Museum in Animal Crossing. Delphin, Starsand Island’s resident angler, stood before it and was quick to send me on my first mission to catch fish.
Sitting on the jetty, absentmindedly casting my line out in front of shadows in the water, I felt that elusive sense of zen that we’re all hunting for in a cosy game. Fishing minigames are a time honoured tradition in the life sim genre, but they can easily fall to either extreme; too taxing or too tedious. Despite its simple controls that constitute a mere click and hold of the left mouse button, Starsand Island manages to find the sweet spot in the middle.
Starsand Island breaks the curse of the bad fishing mini-game
It was easy for me to fish the location dry, my Type A brain rejoicing in each new fish being added to my Islandopedia as it popped out of the water. Better yet, when it came to selling the fruits of my labour, I found that they were worth big bucks compared to the measly wheat crops I’d managed to grow earlier. This profession felt just right.
The moral of this slightly long-winded story is: even looking at careers alone, Starsand Island has something for everyone. While I didn’t check out the Crafter or Explorer stories, I suspect they’ll have even more eventful questlines, with Zerine teaching you how to build your own robot personal assistant and Zephyria promising to turn you into an expert beast hunter.
I got the sense that I was barely scratching the surface in my preview of Starsand Island. It has a fully open world with a bunch of indoor and outdoor spaces to explore – it even looks as if you can hop to other islands – and zero loading screens between them.
As for your own space, you can customise your home and garden with a build mode that has a similar feel to The Sims. It’s fluid, letting you angle and place furniture with precision and ease. The decorative options themselves are nicely detailed, too. I had my eye on the pink and black gamer girl desk setup from the moment I walked into the furniture store.
Furthering the customisation, it looks like fashion and vehicles will be a strong focus in the final game build. There were six distinctly themed outfits in the character creator, but I spotted a fashion store in the shopping district, so it certainly looked like there’s more in the works.
I’m hopeful for a wide variety of styles in future, including some streetwear options so I can look rad while speeding around town on the skateboard I received as a starter vehicle. Yet again, I saw the promise of much more to come, including land and water vehicles to collect. And do I dare to mention that Neona, who works at the vehicle shop, was giving off extremely dateable vibes?
Farming? A woman of your talents?
There were glimmers of possibility in the relationships with most of the key residents of Starsand Island. Not only do they give you quests like any run-of-the-mill NPC, you can build friendships and romantic connections. I didn’t have the opportunity to explore this beyond casual conversation and seeing the word “single” under my professional tutors in the journal – is that inappropriate workplace conduct? – but I think it will be a major drawcard for prospective players.
While it seems the full release of Starsand Island may still be some time away, with a current estimate of Q4 2025, there’s so much to love already. This preview has left me wholeheartedly excited for the day when I can play the game in its cosy, slightly quirky entirety. Until then, I’ll be dreaming about a successful ranch of my own – filled with bunnies and pigs, dropping the max cap of golden poops, of course.
Previewed on PC using code provided by the publisher
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