Starsand Island Has Me Held Captive and I Don’t Want to Be Rescued // An Early Access Cozy Game Review

Guys, Starsand Island really has me in a vice grip.

I like to consider myself a connoisseur of cozy games. Maybe it’s an appreciation way the creators are given a premise of “make a cozy game” and so many different games can come from that prompt, maybe it’s a sense of nostalgia since my first favorite games were the Harvest Moon franchise, maybe its the natural crippling anxiety that haunts me from day to day that these games soothe . . . there’s no way to really know, but boy do I love cozy games.

Back when the demo first came out, I downloaded that and gave the game a try—and I fell in love. So naturally, I was excited beyond belief when the Early Access release dropped on Wednesday, I ran right home and downloaded the deluxe addition of the game (because it gave me some really pretty aesthetic DLC and girl I’m gonna be honest with you I can’t pass up a good aesthetic-only DLC) and have been obsessively playing it ever since.

The game is still in Early Access with the full release scheduled for, I think, sometime this coming summer. Once the game fully releases I might do another, more in-depth review but honestly I don’t see myself feeling any different about the game than I do right now.

Starsand Island is everything I could want for a cozy farming life sim. The world we play in feels like one you can snuggle into. One where you can relax your shoulders, take a deep breath, and just vibe to the gentle soundtrack while you harvest your hot peppers and hit on the handsome owner of the seed shop who is also a biology scholar. It feels like a place you could live in for hundreds of hours.

The monitor options for this game are blessedly simple—it lets you select Monitor 1 or Monitor 2 if you have multiple monitors, so you don’t have to fight to get the screen to go to another monitor. For a good chunk of the day I laid on the library side of my office on my couch, snuggled up with my pink blanket and both Salem and Wednesday. Some might think that’s a weird way to spend Valentines Day, but I had been looking forward to it since the day the game released and frankly it’s too much trouble to try and go out for Valentines day anyway.

I like the simplicity of the fishing mechanic. It’s just throwing the bobber in and watching the string on the rod as you’re reeling in to make sure it doesn’t break. Why am I going out of my way to talk about the fishing mechanic specifically, you might ask?

Well.

Last year, sometime in the summer, I played Echoes of the Plum Grove and though the game was pretty fun (I’m glad I got it and I’ll probably play it again, but it definitely isn’t my favorite cozy game) the fishing mechanic was obtrusive and got incredibly tiresome incredibly fast. I’m pretty sure there was a button to skip it but the fact that you need one is less than ideal.

But Starsand Island isn’t that way. Fishing is quick, easy, and fun.

Why can’t we have character customization screens like this irl? I’d love the ability to adjust the exact style and hue of my hair with a click of a button!

I’m a huge fan of the character customization tool too—though I won’t lie, it does have it’s own set of issues. If you want to play a Caucasian character or an Asian character, you’re all set. But if you want to play a person of color outside of Asian, you might not have nearly as much fun. I hope that’s something they fix in the full release (a lot of people have been vocal about this issue, so I hope they hear the voices of the consumers and add more options in that direction) because everyone should be able to see themselves reflected in whatever game they want to play.

Outside of that issue, I really enjoy the character customizer. I was so worried because in the demo you had to just grin and bear it if you wanted to change hairstyles because the colors didn’t change. That drove me crazy at the time because I might have loved one hairstyle but hated the color, and as someone who needs to have their cake and eat it too that would have been a major bad mark on the game. But in Early Access we see that you can change the color of the hair for every style! And they’ve added hue and saturation options too, so if you wanted a very specific hair color you can tweak the sliders until you get it! I wish they also had that for clothes but hey, I’m just happy about the hair lol.

Graminova is in love with my character, he just doesn’t know it yet ~ 💜

The romance and relationship building mechanic has been pretty good so far. Its way slower than I expected, but that isn’t all together a bad thing. It feels more realistic building relationships this slowly. It feels like you’re really building your place in the community rather than just immediately being able to make yourself loved by the whole community right away. It makes every boost in relationships feel like a real achievement, something to get excited about, and that’s something overall that I enjoy about the game. If makes everything feel like an achievement and that’s great for feeling accomplished!

Gorl.

Let’s talk about the pet adoption system.

You can adopt any pet—and I mean any pet.

I currently have 2 cats (one of which is featured above) and am currently working towards befriending a squirrel, a dog, and a capybara. There’s a panda up in the mountains I’m considering also making friends with. It makes the world feel so magical, and makes you feel like a real Disney princess when the squirrel is excited to see you. I haven’t figured out if you can befriend birds yet because the only one I’ve seen so far is the pet of one of the bachelorettes.

Here’s my gripe about the pet system: You can’t rename pets. I love one of the cats I got, but I don’t love that their name is 404. I want so much to fix their name, but I haven’t quite figured out how to yet. If there’s not a way, I hope they add it in future updates / the final release.

Here’s my biggest problem with the game so far.

It’s . . . pretty buggy in places. It took me a full hour to figure out how to place my layout house (above) because the construction part of the game was wonky as hell. Firstly, you have to move or destroy your beginner house before you can place the new one. Pain in the butt number one. Pain in the butt number 2: You can select multiple things so you can move your old house out of the way have to click each and every one of the things (and I do mean each and every one. Down to the smallest possible selection that you wouldn’t even think of) and then the whole thing would freak out and you’d have to back out of the construction stuff and go back in, only to have the same thing happen again. I had to close the game and open it a couple of times before I was able to finish putting my dang ol’ house down.

But goddamn if it isn’t the cutest, most Studio Ghibli looking thing I’ve ever seen 💚.

The buggy-ness doesn’t stop there. I had sub-interactions from two different people populate on a third, unrelated person (again, going back to the main menu and going back into the game fixed it, but it was annoying), which was annoying but ultimately not as disruptive as the house thing.

All-in-all, I love this game more than anything else despite its flaws. It’s stuff I’m hoping and praying they fix on full release, and I’m sure they will since a lot of the issues from the demo aren’t there anymore either.

If you’ve played Starsand Island, what do you think? If you haven’t, are you thinking about it? ‘cause you should, because this game is insanely addictive!