| Starsand Island | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Early Access Review | Review |
Starsand Island combines farming, ranching, fishing, crafting, and exploration into a cozy island-life RPG. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Overview
What is Starsand Island?
Starsand Island invites players to build a new life on its namesake island, where mysterious history, fascinating creatures, and a colorful cast of residents await. Every local has a story to share, but beneath the island's cozy exterior lies a history of its own.
Starsand Island features:
⚫︎ Multiple Career Paths
⚫︎ Gather, Craft, and Create
⚫︎ Built Relationships
⚫︎ Seasonal Events
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Starsand Island's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
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 Steam |
 Xbox |
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 Switch 2 |
 PS |
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| $39.99 | |||||
Starsand Island Review: Has the Foundations of a Great Escape, Only to Feel Disappointingly Rushed
Couldn’t Reach the Stars
Cozy farming games might look like the easiest genre around. Keyword: Might. You wake up, water a few crops, pet some animals, maybe chat with the locals, and call it a day. Peel back those cozy layers, though, and there is something surprisingly hardcore lurking underneath. Sure, you’re not going to run into difficulty spikes or boss fights designed to test your sanity. But the moment you reach for a note-taking app and a calculator just to figure out how many raw materials you need to craft the materials required to make one particular item, things start getting serious.
And that is what makes a good farming game so satisfying. Beneath the relaxed pace is a carefully constructed web of progression where everything you do feeds into something else. A crop becomes a meal, a meal becomes a resource for another activity, and that activity gives you another reason to keep playing.
Starsand Island has all the makings of what makes a good farming game. Unfortunately, there is no heart to it at all. Progression is there for the sake of progression, the story barely exists, and its setting feels woefully underutilized. Worse, the game is riddled with bugs that had me wondering whether there are somehow more of them now than there were during Early Access. Starsand Island promised us the stars. Unfortunately, it still feels undercooked.
Story That Takes You Nowhere
Like many cozy farming games, Starsand Island begins with a familiar premise. Our protagonist is a burnt-out office worker longing for the simpler days of their childhood. The opening takes us back to our childhood home on Starsand Island. We are given a little piece of land to call our own, and from there, we can carve out our new life as a farmer, rancher, angler, crafter, and explorer. There is progression in island life as we help rebuild certain areas and lend a hand to the residents, while each career has its own progression system that takes us from an apprentice to an expert.
On paper, there is plenty here to keep me moving forward. The problem is that most of this progression exists almost entirely because the game needs something for me to progress through. With barely any story tying these activities together, the island can feel less like a place I am returning to and more like a collection of quests waiting to be completed. There is dialogue, and the island itself certainly paints a picture of the life I am supposed to be settling into, but there is so little narrative weight behind it that I didn’t really feel like I was being pulled toward anything.
The clearest example of this is the Moonlit Forest. Outside of everyday life on the island, Moonlit Forest serves as a "dungeon". Players can explore this area, and its fantastical atmosphere suggests that there is something much bigger hiding beneath Starsand Island's otherwise cozy exterior. The environment feels different, there are hints of an ancient history, and it seems like the game is opening the door to something worth uncovering.
Except, it never really does. The Moonlit Forest is barely explored from a narrative perspective, eventually becoming another place for me to gather and mine materials. That is a huge missed opportunity because, just like the other areas of Starsand Island, it has enough character to make me curious about its history.
Progression in a farming game is not just about giving players another thing to unlock. It should give us a reason to care about what we’re doing. When I am rebuilding an area, helping a resident, or venturing into a strange forest, I should feel like these actions are contributing to a larger story, even if it is only implied. Here, the lack of a narrative makes even the game's more interesting discoveries feel hollow.
NPCs Are Almost Like Just a Bunch of Passing Faces
Then, there’s the NPCs themselves. Many of them are given an initial moment to shine, and for a brief moment, it feels like the game is promising characters I will actually want to get to know. Unfortunately, that promise rarely goes anywhere.
Every now and then, new characters are introduced, and the game gives you just enough of an introduction to make me wonder where their stories might lead. There was one instance in particular where I was tasked with guiding two new comers around town. Their arrival at Starsand Station seemed like the setup for something more. Perhaps I would learn who they are, why they’re here, or how they would fit into island life. Instead, the moment they arrived at the station, the quest simply concluded. That was it.
It is difficult to become invested in characters when the game repeatedly introduces them without giving them enough time or narrative space to actually matter.
The relationship system does little to remedy this. Building relationships is largely a matter of interacting with residents and giving them gifts to increase their relationship levels. This should gradually make me feel closer to the people around me. However, the relationships feel superficial because there is very little beyond levelling up their hearts to make that growing bond feel meaningful. I give them gifts, they give me gifts, the relationship level goes up, and eventually, bam, they're in love.
That can work when the surrounding narrative gives those mechanics context. When I already know who a character is, understand what they want, and have watched them grow alongside my own character, a relationship meter can simply quantify a bond I already feel. Starsand Island doesn't give me that foundation. Without a strong overarching story, the characters themselves needed to become the reason I cared about staying on the island.
Instead, the relationship system becomes another progression bar to fill. For a farming game that gives me so many ways to spend my time, it is surprisingly difficult to find a reason to care about the people I am spending it with.
Progression Without a Destination
Still, the lack of an overarching story or dynamic characters aren’t really the reason for Starsand Island’s disappointing 1.0 release. There usually isn't a big need for a sweeping narrative in farming games because, more often than not, the gameplay itself carries the experience. Give me a satisfying routine, enough goals to work toward, and a reason to keep improving my farm, and I can happily spend dozens of hours watching my little corner of the world grow.
However, while Starsand Island does have that foundation, the gameplay itself doesn’t really grow beyond that. The island-life progression in Starsand Island is essentially a series of milestones that eventually has me rebuilding different parts of the island and purchasing nearly everything that can be bought. Career progression works in much the same way, giving me another ladder of ranks to climb as I get better at whatever career I have chosen.
None of that is inherently bad. In fact, this is exactly the sort of progression that can keep a farming game going for a long time. The problem is that so much of it feels shallow. I am constantly unlocking something, improving something, or working toward another milestone, but those milestones don’t feel like they are changing my relationship with the island. I am progressing because the game gives me another level to reach, not because reaching that level meaningfully changes what I can do or why I want to do it.
To be fair, the actual foundation underneath all of this is solid. The main loops of farming, ranching, fishing, crafting and exploration are enjoyable, and each gives me enough to work toward without making the day-to-day routine feel completely aimless. In my case, I focused heavily on exploration because, early on, it genuinely felt like it was going somewhere.
I also liked how the different careers are not completely isolated from one another. At certain points, they naturally intertwine, giving me reasons to engage with activities outside of one career. I might need to improve my crafting to accomplish something related to exploration, while farming can provide resources that feed into farming. That interdependence is one of the better ideas in Starsand Island because it makes the game’s systems feel like a connected ecosystem rather than a collection of separate features.
There is also the grind, and I mean that in the best possible way. For plenty of farming players, myself included, there is something satisfying about having a ridiculous long-term goal sitting in front of you and slowly chipping away at it. The game gives me plenty of materials to gather, skills to improve, items to craft, and milestones to reach. There is always something I can spend another in-game day working toward.
But eventually, I started asking myself what all that work was actually building toward. That is where Starsand Island falls short. The gameplay can give me things to do, but it struggles to give those things meaning. The loops are good enough to keep me busy, and the interconnected progression is good enough to keep me moving between activities, but without stronger payoff, everything eventually starts to feel like progress for progress's sake. I can keep completing milestones but there is very little waiting for me on the other side of them.
Bugs Can Stop You From Playing
And, of course, the very bane of Starsand Island's existence is the bugs. I cannot tell you how many times I encountered something that forced me to roll back to a previous save just so I could continue playing. Worse, there were times when even that did not work.
There are two particularly notable bugs that stand out to me. The first involved my house randomly gaining walls in doorways while losing parts of its flooring. Eventually, I had to start using the windows as my primary way in and out of my own home. I could chalk the missing flooring up to a rendering issue, especially since Starsand Island does have a recurring problem where assets simply disappear from the world. But the walls appearing where my doors were supposed to be? I genuinely have no idea how that happened. I eventually managed to fix it, but having my own house become an accidental escape room is hardly the kind of cozy experience I was looking for.
The second was considerably worse because it happened during the Summer event. A game-breaking bug effectively prevented me from participating in the event at all. I could not enter the race because the bulletin board used to sign up would not load properly. Then, when I went to the shops, they did not have registers, meaning I could not purchase anything either. I tried rolling back to previous saves, but that did not fix the problem. At that point, there was really nothing I could do but watch the event pass me by.
Events in farming games are supposed to be the moments that break up the routine, giving players something different to look forward to and making the island feel like it is actually moving along with them.
There are plenty of other smaller issues, too, including rewards that sometimes fail to appear in my inventory. Individually, these might be minor annoyances, but when they keep piling up alongside bugs that can actually prevent progression, they become much harder to overlook.
Honestly, it makes me wonder whether Starsand Island should have stayed in Early Access a little longer. The foundation is there, but a cozy game should not be asking me to keep backup saves ready in case the world decides to break underneath me.
Solid Grind Beneath the Rough Edges
Of course, it is not all bad. In fact, the biggest reason Starsand Island is frustrating is because there is something here worth being frustrated about. The game understands what makes the farming grind satisfying, and if you are someone who genuinely enjoys gathering, crafting, upgrading, and slowly working your way toward bigger goals, there is plenty here to sink your teeth into.
There are also events to look forward to every season, giving the island a sense of time passing and giving me another reason to participate in its daily life. These events come with their own limited-time activities and rewards, and actually taking part in them makes the seasons feel more distinct rather than simply being a change in weather and crops. (The only problem, as I mentioned earlier, these events are sometimes riddled with bugs.)
The economy is also surprisingly fair. I rarely felt like I was desperately scraping together money just to afford the next upgrade. Rather than selling raw materials, I mostly spent my days turning what I had gathered into products and selling those instead, which let me make a considerable amount of money.
Mining is similarly generous. There is so much material available that, if you are anything like me and have the uncontrollable urge to pick up absolutely everything you see, you are going to need a lot of chests. Fortunately, that abundance does not feel pointless because the materials I gather eventually feed back into the game's crafting and progression systems.
And that is really where Starsand Island gets its strongest loop. I gather materials, turn those materials into something useful, use that to progress, and then go out and gather even more. The game does a good job of making my hoarding actually matter. Even when I am stuffing another chest full of things I have no immediate use for, there is always a reasonable chance that I will eventually need them for crafting, upgrading, or another part of my island life.
It is a simple loop, but it works. The problem is that Starsand Island has a solid enough foundation that I kept wishing everything surrounding it was just as well developed. When the grind clicks, it is easy to lose hours to it. When the systems break, or when I start looking for a reason beyond the next upgrade to keep going, that same foundation starts showing just how much more the game needed to build on top of it.
Is Starsand Island Worth It?
Wait For a Sale Or an Update
I am not trying to discredit what Starsand Island offers. There is a solid farming loop here, plenty of progression to work through, and more than enough grinding for players who genuinely enjoy spending hours gathering materials, crafting items, and slowly building up their island. If that is your kind of game, there is a ton here to keep you busy.
The problem is that I keep running into the same question: when all is said and done, when every milestone has been reached, every upgrade has been unlocked, and there is nothing left for the game to put in front of me, what is actually tying me to this world?
For Starsand Island, it is not the gameplay. It definitely is not the story. And when the systems have already given me everything they can, what ultimately keeps me here is my own decision to stay.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. Farming games have always allowed players to decide when they are finished. You can keep farming even after completing everything, decorate your home for the hundredth time, or spend an entire day fishing simply because you feel like it.
But for $40, the game needs to give me something compelling enough that I want to make that choice. Starsand Island has the foundation, the grind, and enough interconnected systems to make its island life enjoyable, but its 1.0 release does not give me enough of a reason to care about the world once that progression starts running out.
For now, I can only recommend picking up Starsand Island on a significant sale, or waiting to see whether the developers roll out enough substantial updates to address what feels like a disappointing 1.0 release. There is a good farming game underneath all of this. I just wish Starsand Island hadn’t rushed itself out of Early Access.
Game8 Reviews
