Spirit of the Island is a colourful life simulation RPG released on Early Access on Steam by developers 1M Bits Horde and publishers Meta publishing. The game was originally backed on Kickstarter by 1,107 backers who pledged $56,098 to help develop the game. I happened to be one of those backers, and I recently received my code for the game for Steam.
RPG Simulation
Spirit of the Island is a farming-sim heavily inspired by Stardew Valley. You get to customise your character at the start of the game with some colours and pick the sex; my little Paula had a purple body with purple hair, so it was purple Paula I ended up being.
Coming of age Ritual
There’s an old tradition running in your homeland: to become an adult and complete the coming of age ritual, you must go on a journey of discovery. So after being washed up on a shore on a distant island, deep in a tropical archipelago, you find your way to a deserted, run-down house in the woods.
The tropical island you find yourself on was once a thriving tourist spot, but unfortunately, as time has passed, the tourists stopped visiting. It’s your job to fix up the run-down house and restore the islands to the once-thriving tourist haven it was.
Set of tools and Workbench
You have a set of tools and a workbench at your disposal to use. Unfortunately, there isnt much of a tutorial in the Early Access game, but if you use your intuition and the tools you have, it’s not long until your backpack is full of resources and you can make items at the workbench.
Farming plays a big part in Spirit of the Island; once you have gathered the right resources, you can make a plot or two to plant crops in. Once grown, you can use the crops to feed your character or trade the crops in the town. Your character must eat, drink and sleep in a bed at night. Sleeping in bed at night also saves the game; there isn’t any other way to save other than to go to bed. I’d like to see that change so the player can save when they want to instead of being restricted to saving in bed.
Town of Maluhia
Upon further investigation of the island, you will discover the town of Maluhia, not far from your home. The town is full of quirky characters who are all willing to give you simple quests to complete. There are also a few islands to explore with some caves where you might discover a few creatures to fight. You can build a tent and campfire while out exploring the island if your character gets tired and has to sleep.
So far, I have found that Spirit of the Islands plays much like similar simulation games such as Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon, with farming, mining, foraging, social interaction, and fishing all part of daily life.
However, since the game has been released in Early Access, the developers are still updating the game. As a result, there is a road map of future updates. I’ve been playing the game since I received the code, and while I am impressed with how the game looks,… there are many things still to be added to make the game complete.
Crafting, Farming and More
I’ve crafted, grown crops, explored and visited a cave with two creatures in it and a chest that I have to craft a key for and spoke to all the people in the town. I’ve also completed more than a few fetch quests for the folk in Maluhia.
It has a nice twist of setting up your stall and having tourists come and buy your goods. I set up my stall only to discover I couldn’t hire staff to run it as it isn’t implemented in the game yet and planned for a future update.
Early Access
Of course, as an early access game, there are little things that need some fixing. For example, you can play the game using the keyboard WASD for movement; I could also play the game using a controller. However, the controller isnt fully implemented yet, which means you end up using both the mouse and controller.
Graphically the game is lovely, with a cute and bright art style. The music and sound effects are appropriate. However, the game has frame rate problems, which were especially noticeable after being updated while I was playing it.
Nevertheless, the developers seem to be very active on Steam, so I do not doubt that Spirit of the Island will turn into a decent simulation farming game through future updates.
Spirit of the Island is available on Steam priced at US $22.49 | UK £17.99 | EU 22,49