Starsand Island Might Be The Next Big Farming Sim - Preview

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Starsand Island has the potential to be the next big farming sim game, and the Early Access launch is only days away. We were fortunate enough to receive Closed Beta access to the game, allowing us to try it out before its release.

Despite my reputation for making NPC prisoners fight to the death for food in Rimworld, throwing hogtied people off cliffs as Arthur Morgan, and massacring peasants in Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 for fun, I do enjoy farming sims. There’s something about carving a niche out of the dirt in a video game that interests me when I need something besides various crimes, and the farming sim usually does great for that. Starsand Island has been in production for a while, and it’s nice to see more ambitious, 3D farming simulators. There are plenty out there, such as My Time at Sandrock, Fable Farm, and Dinkum, but this is the first one in years that got me excited.

I can see how much love and care have been put into the game. Farming sims come in all shapes and forms these days, and while I can’t say Starsand has any real unique selling point, developer Seed Sparkle Lab knows the market well. In an era where ‘imitation’ is the sincerest form of flattery, if you’re not doing much new, you'd better do everything right. From my time with the game, Starsand Island feels like a lot of lessons were learned from analysing the state of the genre today. The Early Access version of the game has the core content complete already, with further updates planned for multiplayer and more content down the line.

Things kick off with the usual bread and butter. You are a new arrival at a lovely village community, and Starsand Island provides a lot of customization options for your avatar that go above and beyond most in the genre. From there, the classic farming sim gameplay loop reveals itself. You farm crops, craft items, and fulfill a life, basically. We’ve seen this song and dance time and time again. That’s not a bad thing, however, because the mechanics are solid overall, and Starsand Island boasts lovely visuals as well.

Villagers are always a big focus with these games, but it’s a challenge, apparently, to find well-written characters in these kinds of games that feel alive. Fields of Mistria and Wylde Flowers currently hold the record for me, but Starsand’s characters have got some great vibes going for them. In the game, you take out apprenticeships with the villagers of the island to unlock more mechanics and recipes, and the playtest gave me plenty of time to get a taste for these questlines. While the mission design is fairly simple as quests go, I like this kind of progression system in my simulation games. While the game has the classic ‘save at day's end’ mechanic I’ve grown to hate with this genre, it does save automatically when you quit the game, so there’s no pressure on rushing through a day if you need a beer.

I was also quite impressed with the exploration. You gain access to a skateboard within the opening minutes of the game, with other vehicles to unlock as you expand your life on the island. One of my pet peeves with the farming sim is that travelling around the map can get tiresome, but Starsand Island seems to nail this.

Overall, there’s a lot of promise here. Starsand Island came into being through a successful Kickstarter project, and while there have been many successes since then, it’s important to consider the potential pitfalls. First impressions with a commercial release are critical, especially given the Kickstarter model's history of controversy. Seed Sparkle Lab seems fully aware of this, and a lot of love has gone into their game, with a solid plan for the future. I’ll need to see further gameplay from the commercial launch once the game hits Early Access on February 11, but I’ve had a blast so far.

Starsand Island is on sale for $27.99 until February 25th.

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