Damn, you know, I really didn’t see myself sitting here writing THIS review when I started Starsand Island, or at least I didn’t want to. It makes a well enough case for itself if we are being honest, at least in those opening minutes. Hell, even the opening hours were mostly fun, with some annoying grinding mixed in because, you know, this is a cozy sim; why not? If you aren’t paying attention, though, you are going straight over the cliff unprepared, and there is no worse feeling than that.
Let me start by making the comparison to another game you may or probably may not have heard of. That game was Sunnyside, which was another farming sim trying to punch way above its weight class given the size of the team and the scope of the project. I still recommend that game to everybody because, despite a massive amount of flaws, much of what it attempted to do was such a great forward step. I see a lot of that potential in Starsand Island as well. The problem here, though, is that a lot of that is also mixed in with a generic gacha game formula. This isn’t a gacha game, mind you, but if you have played any of those games, you should get the comparison.
The world has a lot of things in it, but much feels pointlessly open. There is this painful lifelessness to the world around you, which is worsened because, compared to other games in the genre, the map is huge. Maybe that’s the issue, and a smaller, denser area could have fixed it. This also doesn’t help that stores feel big and bright and vacant all at the same time, which isn’t an exclusive issue to this game, but I remembered a similar feeling walking into a cafe in NTE and thinking, “Ok, I can do all of this; you just aren’t making a compelling case for it all.”
The bigger issue in this, though, is that the game runs poorly on console, if nothing else, and most gacha games, to me, are defined by an unsteady framerate. You have two modes; neither of them resolves the issue, as movement feels chunky. Character movement in general feels very stiff, something that is exacerbated once you unlock vehicles and then move in that bizarre fixed-direction way. It is a hard feeling to explain, but you know it when you have it at the tip of your tongue. Even with this, though, doing flip tricks on a skateboard was an enjoyable addition. My experience, though, was defined by the chariot I got in the deluxe edition. I left it in front of a store and never collected it, seeing it there, just sitting in the middle of the road as I went about my days.
Despite all of that, I enjoyed creating my character and do feel they came out looking good. This is always a great step in the process. You also get to remix this style like a lot of games do, which is a feature I have grown to appreciate. Unlocking clothes is also effortless, so your outfit should expand quickly. Other characters all had great, anime-inspired designs as well, so the world has cool characters in it. The problem is that the size of the world makes tracking them down a nightmare, with an in-game map that can constantly complicate tracking down somebody for a gift, even when you know where they like to hang out. They do all get pretty nice introductory cutscenes and voice-acted moments, though.
So, like most of these games, you are inheriting a farm that is in the middle of an empty field that you can assume you will be upgrading as you go. As you start, you get a very pleasant half-room house with nothing in it. There are A LOT of decorations, so you do get complete freedom to make this place your own, though it might take a bit to really get started on this. My best comparison to the actual gameplay of this is the My Time games, rather than Story of Seasons, since farming is there but a distant secondary. Similarly, ranching is there but feels similarly secondary.
I guess though that depends on what you put value into. The thing is, progress in the game is structured around a series of missions to gain licenses that unlock upgrades for the player. The game pushes you towards the crafting license first, and I see why, but there are a few, and you can do them all when you want. This isn’t really a fair assessment, as crafting requires like five hundred materials that are locked in the game’s mining area (which is a lot cooler than a standard mine). This requires the adventurer’s license to unlock, which is also needed to finish later fishing tasks and is needed to craft ranching items. It’s a tangled web they weave.
The mine itself is an enjoyable place, as it’s a forest with a lot of personality in its design. You will spend a lot of time in here since you need literally too many items to progress, so they give you useful tents to sleep in. Here you will also learn, through the many platforming sections, everything I stated about movement above. You will also, through this area, be introduced to combat, which just isn’t fun… Like at all.
Combat is mostly done at range, since your character primarily uses a slingshot. You can find pellets for it by mining ore, but it also uses rocks, which, yes, you will find an insane amount of rocks, but I want to… You know, use them to craft, not fight enemies. Starting, you have only a small amount of health, and despite there not being a lot of enemies, it is possible to get stun-locked by almost every one. One boss has a move that, if you get hit at full health, can drag you straight into a corner and destroy the rest of your health before it ends. You lose the rest of your day as punishment, which is common and doesn’t affect much. It is just a frustrating experience.
This is all in service to the fact that, of all the things it could take from My Time, it chose the overabundance of crafting stations you need to accomplish anything. Seriously, much of the early game is crafting crafting devices so that you can make the material, all under a time constraint that you need to wait for. I will say that the time you wait is nowhere near as painful as in other games, and you can upgrade your character so this time is cut even more, but it’s boring. Then you have to upgrade these stations by crafting more.
Where it gets really frustrating is the occasional mission where you aren’t told you are missing a necessary crafting station you haven’t been instructed to get. Picture this: you are making, let’s say, a storage item to complete a task; you have all the parts but one, but you can’t find where to make it. You go and check to see where you do that, and oops, you need another crafting station. So you go to build that, which eats into your materials for what you are making, and then… You find another item you don’t know where it is crafted from. Haha, guess what!? Yeah, I lived that, and it is about as fun as you might be expecting.
One of the things it didn’t take from My Time was the inventory upgrade system, which simply costs money. No, here you need to craft materials to upgrade it. I should point out that none of this is really hard, and the grind of that has always been built in. The game just piles grind on grind on grind, locking much of your progress behind money. You really need to complete these tasks to start earning, since the tools to do so are locked. You can easily max out your base inventory in an hour of play, and that was even with six storage containers bursting at the seams, making this a system you really must invest in.
Starsand Island makes the smart decision of allowing the use of storage items anywhere you are. This means you can complete tasks or craft metal bars with items not on your person. This is a minor feature, but you would be surprised how many games don’t add this, and after Stardew Valley changed the way inventory is done, it has become more needed than ever. I cannot overstate how important this is ability is, and if you play Cozy Games, you know.
None of this is really where it went wrong, though; I was at least committed to the loop. No, I knew it was buggy and glitchy, and lacked performance optimization, and that was all fine because, despite all my issues to this point, I am a cozy sim fanatic, and I am pretty used to this. No, my issue is that around the 20 hour mark, I was hit with a game-breaking bug that prevented all progress because it specifically barred me from progressing through the forest, blocking me from valuable materials.
This was capped off with a painful Reddit search in which I tried to figure out how to get the item I needed and ended in a conversation that went like this: Me: ” Where do I get this item?” Redditor: “You get it from the guy when you take the mission.” Me: “I took the mission but never got it.” Redditor: “You get it from the guy.” Me: “He never gave it to me.” Redditor: “Serious question, are you stupid? YOU GET IT FROM THE GUY!” Not a fun day. Eventually, I dug deeper to learn it’s a 1.0 glitch, and I’m not the only one who has gotten it. I don’t know if I have the energy to restart, if I am being honest. Maybe I’ll wait for a patch, but yeah, that’s my story.
Verdict
I wanted so badly to enjoy Starsand Island. I have been waiting for this release for a while. It’s just hard to recommend the game in the state it is in now. I feel worse, given it’s a small team taking big swings. Potentially you will have a different experience; clearly, people have progressed past where my game came to an end. Even before that, though, Starsand Island was underbaked and not ready for primetime in the slightest. Performance issues are incredibly common, and there are plenty of bugs and glitches to annoy you. It could be that this would have affected me less if the core ideas of the game didn’t also cause me to pause. I can’t recommend Starsand Island as it is now, but I do hope that situation changes in the future.
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Reviewed on PlayStation 5, also available on Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC
Developer/Publisher: Seed Sparkle Lab
Release Date: August 18, 2026
Pros
+Big island to explore
+Tons of Craftables and upgrades that feel useful
+Interesting twist on the traditional mine
Cons
-World often feels vacant with lackluster characters
-Crafting and completing tasks through constant crafting station development isn't super fun.
-Missions often require crafting multiple devices to craft already consuming amounts of items.
-Large amount of bugs and glitches, ending my play in a game breaking bug.
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Starsand Island
