Code provided with many thanks to Press Engine.
Starsand Island is a modern, cozy life simulation that sees you return to your childhood home to pursue a more idyllic life. Explore the island, craft items, and build up your homestead while forging bonds with your new neighbors and wild animals.
Return to Your Roots
Starsand Island starts with your character burned out from the constant hustle and bustle of modern city life and longing for a return to their cozy childhood home. After a short cutscene, I was able to customize my character’s appearance. You are given a decent amount of options for hairstyles, eyes, clothing, etcetera (with more unlocked as you progress through the game)!
Choose Your Profession
In Starsand Island, there are five different professions, each with its own mentor, questline, and unlockables. While you can choose any profession you like, the game tutorial recommends beginning with Crafter, Farmer, or Rancher before trying Angler and Explorer. Personally, I found it useful to work on all of the professions at the same time (like in Fantasy Life) instead of focusing on just one, since the materials required by one profession’s questline often rely on the skill of a different profession. For example, you’ll need to explore the Moonlit Forest dungeon to mine ores that are required for certain Crafter tasks.
As you advance through each profession’s questline, you’ll unlock new items and crafting blueprints as well as new abilities. You’ll gain Starsand Points as you complete your Starnote tasks, and these points can be used to purchase upgrades for each profession.
Exploring Starsand Island
I greatly enjoyed exploring Starsand Island‘s various environments. It’s never a pain to travel between locations since I unlocked the skateboard (and later the rollerblades) quite early on, which gives you a decent speed boost. You’re also able to rent vehicles and animal mounts as well, which make movement even faster. There are many items to collect in each area, and the Encyclopedia app helps my inner loot goblin keep track of what I’ve hoarded.
While exploring the island, I met the colorful cast of characters (some of whom I’ve known since childhood) and even numerous cute stray animals. Daily interactions include chatting and gifting, which raises the affection meter for both your human and animal neighbors. I also took the time to speak to the tourists visiting because they often gifted me with random items, such as wild fruits or flowers. Some of them will even ask you to help take their pictures in specific landscapes!
Build Your Homestead
Designing the layout for your homestead is fairly straightforward in build mode. You are able to freely rotate and move objects around your plot of land. Because much of the crafting in this game relies on processed materials (similar to Pioneers of Olive Town), I organized all of my processing machines together near the crafting table. Livestock also help keep your crops free of weeds, so I placed my rabbit hutch and chicken coop near my farming area.
Modern Conveniences
I was overall really pleased by some of the modern conveniences offered in Starsand Island. I have experienced the frustration of missing a shop’s hours by just a second in many games, so I greatly appreciated the self-checkout terminals located in each store. Because bag space is limited, I keep many of my items stashed away in storage boxes at home. Fortunately, you don’t need to have the items on your person to complete requests that require them. The map also features a handy tracking system that shows where specific villagers are, so I never had to waste time looking for them.
Some Rough Edges
While my experience with the Starsand Island playtest was mostly positive, there were still some rough edges in this version. For instance, many dialogue lines are missing punctuation and the end of sentences. Some typos were also present with either extra words or missing words. The voice-acted cutscenes were spoken in English, but the short voice clips that play during dialogue, such as “hello,” “goodbye,” and “thanks”, were spoken in Chinese. I wish there were a setting to choose the voice language to keep everything consistent. I also encountered a couple of bugs, one of which caused my screen to freeze after opening the map, and I had to restart the game.
Final Thoughts
As a big fan of life simulation games, I have greatly enjoyed my escapist, idyllic life in Starsand Island. The beautiful environments (especially the bamboo forest and lake areas) are a pleasure to explore, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know certain characters, like Pastelle and Zerine, better and perhaps even romancing them in the future.
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