Starsand Island

I love farming games very much and had this one on the wishlist for a long time, so I didn't hesitate to buy it. This game gives you a very good experience, you can build your own house brick by brick! There is a lot of items, devices, mechanics etc etc., it never gets boring, you always find a lot to do. One of the points that bothered me !WAS! that the characters have almost no depth to them. They all feel very simple and have almost no personality. But I just saw that the game got an update fixing exactly that issue! Which was the reason for me to finally write this review. I am very excited to find out how the characters are now. My negative experiences with the game: a LOT of bugs I encountered within the first few days. Repeating quests, missing items.. I had the cucumber seed bug. If you don't know what I mean by that: Consider yourself blessed. I had to find a chest while exploring that gave me the cucumber seeds I needed, because they were not in the shop for me. I even wrote to the support, never got an answer. Never bothered again. I encountered so many bugs that at one point, I thought about deleting my progress and starting all over again. That really bothered me. I wish that with time, they will release more outfits. Right now, I feel like there isn't a lot of variety so I have big hopes of even more outfit choices in the future! But all in all, I have a great time playing this, so much to discover and I love the overall aesthetic and colors of this game, the island is so pretty and you have endless possibilities. So I recommend this game!

I got the game gifted a few months ago during Early Access as a cheap key, but I decided to wait until the full release before playing it. The collecting, professions, farming and decorating are pretty fun, but honestly, everything else just feels kind of soulless. The characters you can befriend or even date barely seem to have any personality. Unlike in other games (I’m looking at you, Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley), I just don’t feel any motivation to increase my bondlevel with them. The way the game transitions into cutscenes also feels pretty cheap, and there’s not really much of a story either. I haven’t run into any bugs or glitches so far. That said, I’m going to take a break before the summer event, since apparently it’s still pretty damn broken and hasn’t been working properly since release. And honestly, the devs don’t seem to be doing a great job fixing things. (Just take a look at some of the other reviews and you’ll get why I don’t really feel like supporting them.) If you’re looking for a good farming game with interesting characters, some actual depth and a good romance system, save your money. If you don’t care about any of that and just want to have fun decorating, grinding, crafting and enjoying a pretty game, then go for it. Just don’t pay full price. Personally, I’m only playing it because I enjoy collecting things and decorating. If I hadn’t gotten the game as a gift, I definitely wouldn’t have bought it at this price.

Let me start off by saying that I don't write many reviews; I typically only do so for games that I feel really deserve it, whether that be positive or negative. Starsand Island, although still in early access, does deserve the praise. The good -The world is a good bit bigger than I expected, and it it beautiful. The scenery is lovely, which is nice because you do a lot of walking early game until you build/buy other means of transportation. Rollerblades and the hoverboard will be your best friends. -The QoL features are things that i wish other farming/life sims had, like being able to move chests with items still inside and being able to smelt multiple items in a queue at the furnace. -The building/decorating options seem never ending. I wouldn't say the build mode is as technical as the Sims, but there are still so many ways to build your home and decorate it to your heart's content. You don't HAVE to buy all your furniture either, most of your decorations will (and should) be crafted. The bad -It looks like all of the bachelors/bachelorettes have the same face and body style. The clothes, hair, and eyes differ, but that is about it. I know it's probable much too late to edit the NPCs' faces, but that is one thing that has bothered me from the beginning. Everyone looks the same, just different fonts -There doesn't seem to be a main storyline/questline. Your quests seem to be just for your skills (farming, exploring, fishing, etc...) Once you're done with those, you can only fulfil small NPC requests. Don't get me wrong, I love farming/ranching and all that stuff, but it feels like otherwise the game lacks depth. -Romance is not fully fleshed out yet, or it might be at it's final stage and is just not in depth as one would hope. By this, I mean that you don't really get to be boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse to any of the romance options. You can go on dates, and I think move in together at heart level 5 (I'm not quite there yet), but I think at that point you're just roommates, not life partners. Marriage is something I, and many others, would love to see in future updates. Overall, this game has many hours of playtime in it even without a main questline. It is a good game for what it is, and for early access. It does still have some bugs, and some improvements can be made, but the development team is very active with this game and have been pumping updates/fixes out left and right. If nothing else, at least get the game when it's on sale if you're having doubts.

Got this because of the Portia/Sandrock crossover. It's a nice looking game alright, performance is fine, house building is fun, but all in all that's about it. My biggest issue is that I know next to nothing about the town, the characters, anything. I can work to make money to upgrade my stuff, but like, for what purpose? There's nothing in the sense of community centers to work torwards, no Harvest Goddess setting you up to do something, the game invests barely anything more than a generic intro cutscene to make you care about its characters or world. Like I've been playing this for a bunch of hours, did some festivals and profession quests, and realized I genuinely know nothing about Starsand Island's lore. It's really just the skeleton of a cozy game that is nice to look at, but hard to actually care about.

1.0 came out today and I didn't notice any change (singleplayer). Also, there's nothing on here about patch notes. I think the multiplayer is there but from other reviews.. it's not good/worth it. I've sunk so many hours in this game believing it had potential, even through the controversies. Not sure I'm gonna continue playing this.

I would encourage western & OECD gamers to unite and take a stand against chinese game companies like this one. Not only do they have spyware incorporated into what is essentially a single player game, A.I assets actually used in 1.0 release, false promise and incomplete/non existent features at 1.0 vs. EA stated 1.0 game features. However, the most rage inducing thing for me is: Starsand island devs are actively screwing gamers in the west with 170~350% price markup vs. their domestic chinese market. This game is ~$14 USD in china but sells for $39.99 in U.S before taxes and ~$55AUD etc. There’s no justification for this extremely disgusting behaviour and steam regional pricing cannot explain this. This is a chinese game company releasing a ♥♥♥♥ product; then scamming the western gamers to try get maximum revenue. I purchased this game during EA + on sale for ~$35AUD (which is still over 200% of what a chinese consumer pays today for full price 1.0 FX adjusted). I tried the game intermittently throughout EA to 1.0 encountering bugs after bugs and wasn’t quick enough to refund unfortunately. I held off making any reviews but my biggest baseline of belligerent and intentional price gouging beyond reasonable greed vs. A.I assets vs. intentional dishonesty around spyware vs. 1.0 release state were all crossed by this game. I hope to let my mistake be warning to my fellow gamers. I personally will block and never buy anything from this developer and have learnt my lesson with chinese devs that are unproven. The lethal mix here and why I’m specifically mentioning chinese developers is there seems to be more and more chinese devs pushing copy/paste games onto steam with illogical regional pricing that’s 3-4x overpriced vs. how they price to their own domestic market. Just disgusting and yes lesson learnt by me and definitely will not be supporting anymore unknown or this types of chinese devs again.

TLDR: Dont buy this game its unfinished scam. This game promised a lot, and gave much less than every other cozy sim game out there. NPC's are lifeless. Bugs are everywhere (check their discord before buying). This game is not even fully translated yet with chineese characters showing on animal descriptions. What happened to romance, to every action mattered. Why cant you be a crush of npc just by doing things in game like spending time on a beach which was marketed before EA came out? Why did developers not disclose usage of AI? For example on wall paintings and magazines. After them beeing pointed out on discord they just did same "arts" by humans. But whole feel, unnatural positions and scenery ramained the same. It is not just taking inspiration from AI, its shortcuts.