Game: Sunseed Island
Genre: Adventure, Simulation
System: Nintendo Switch (Also on Xbox One/X/S & PS4/5)
Developer | Publisher: RedDeer.Games
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $10.99 | UK £9.89 | EU € 10,99
Release Date: April 25th, 2025
No review code was used; I purchased the game myself.
Sunseed Island is an adorable looking, mini farming simulation. At first glance it reminds me of Dreamland Farm, another RedDeer.Games release. Let’s dig in and see how this farming game grows!
At The Beginning of Sunseed Island
Sunseed Island starts with a narrative, explaining how all the inhabitants come from the Tree of Life. Each resident has an symbol above their head, which represent who they are and what they do. However, one day, acid rain started to fall. It destroyed the homes and also damaged the Tree of Life, until it was no more than a shrivelled trunk.
Whilst all the inhabitants left, the Tree of Life bore one final fruit – a sun. And it’s from this sun fruit that our protagonist, Purrpy, is created.
Purrpy lives in a lovely house on a little farm. The farm has some land to grow crops, a barn to house animals and an area for an orchard. Although Purrpy has no seeds to grow, a full set of basic tools are provided. Which is fortunate, because they’ll soon discover the bridge to the west of the farm is in need of repair and if they venture round Sunseed Island, they’ll discover that the whole of the little town also needs repairing.
So the Sunseed Island adventure begins.
Exploring Sunseed Island
Sunseed Island is not very big, but large enough to have plenty of trees and rocks. You’ll be able to repair the bridge and the lumberjack’s house with the raw materials found on Sunseed Island, and the blacksmith’s and lighthouse will need processed local materials. However, to repair the rest of the village, you will need to travel further afield.
You’ll need a travel pass to sail to other islands, and these can be obtained by completing quests for the residents. You’ll soon get into the routine of repairing a building, completing some quests, travelling to a new island, collecting the resources, then repairing the next building, and so on.
Each of the islands is different, from deserts to volcanoes, and although you’ll only find one individual there, that inhabitant has a unique skill needed on Sunseed Island. You’ll have to complete a quest, quite often crop or food related, to encourage them to move to Sunseed Island.
Ploughing the Sunseed Island Fields
Farming on Sunseed Island is punishing. It takes a lot of stamina to water, harvest a crop, and refill the watering can. You can upgrade the watering can, but that just means it holds more water. Luckily, there are plenty of mushrooms and berries to be found around all of the islands, and these replenish your stamina without costing anything to harvest. The crops take quite a few days to grow, but with the need to collect wood and ore, your days are fairly busy. The day starts at 8 am, and if you are not in bed by midnight, you will collapse, with a serious reduction of energy for the following day. Sunseed Island only saves when you sleep.
In addition to arable farming, you can purchase animals once you’ve unlocked the animal keeper. The animals arrive at your farm fully grown, and as long as you feed them, they will give you produce the following day. You’ll need some animal products for cooking and guests, but otherwise, they are a useful source of income.
Fishing and Collecting
Fishing is hard, but it does get easier as you upgrade your fishing rod, because the green bobber area gets larger. However, in the early days, trying to keep the bobber over the fish in order to catch it requires patience and perseverance. Fortunately, fishing does not use any stamina nor time. Until you unlock the other fishing spots, you’ll only be able to fish at Sunseed Island.
Fish aren’t needed for cooking, but they are needed for the Community Center. There’s a section for fish, critters, plushies, cooking and artifacts. Completing the Community Center in Sunseed Island is not a ‘nice to do’, it’s critical to restoring the Tree of Life. Critters can be found when cutting down trees and artifacts when mining. The resident’s plush is given once all their requests have been completed.
Gameplay
The controls are explained in the journal and are intuitive. Sunseed Island plays well in both docked and handheld mode, but there is no touchscreen functionality. The text auto-sizes depending on the amount in the dialogue box, so occasionally it appears a little small on the screen.
Sunseed Island autosaves when Purrpy sleeps, and there are three save slots. However, I didn’t notice a method of deleting a save game, so use it wisely!
Quite a few times, I got stuck on an invisible wall, even though the gap looked big enough to get through. In the latter stages of the game, two quests repeated the text from a previous task, although Purrpy had to provide different items.
Time passes quite quickly, as an in-game day takes about 8 real-time minutes. However, as time pauses during conversations and menus, it generally takes 15 to 20 real-time minutes to play a day. Overall, I spent 12 hours helping Purrpy restore the Tree of Life, with at least an hour of that waiting for logs to be produced.
Conclusion
Sunseed Island is a bright, colourful and delightful mini farming simulation. I thoroughly enjoyed helping Purrpy explore the islands and restore the Tree of Life.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot 
Do you like our content?
Support LadiesGamers as a member on Patreon!
Or buy us a cup of coffee or tea on Ko-Fi!
 