Starsand Island Feels Like Stardew Valley Meets The Sims - Gamescom 2025

If you haven't yet, follow us on X (Twitter), Mastodon, or Bluesky to know when we post new articles, and join our Reddit or Subscribe to us on YouTube to check out our content and interact with our awesome community. Thank you for supporting us!

Over at Gamescom, I got to see so many great games that vary in genre and style. There are some really amazing ones that come to my mind that I can't wait to talk about soon, but there were a handful of games I went into not expecting to be wowed the way I was. The first of those came on the first day, where I went to check out an upcoming farming simulator that opens up buildings to be so much more flexible to make whatever you want. That is Starsand Island.

When I first started playing the game, it gave me the same feeling many other farming simulators give. I started customizing my character, inherited a plot of land from my grandfather, and would learn how to craft after starting to clear the land of loose rocks and logs. The game takes place on an island with a town with unique residents, with whom you can build relationships. It sounds very familiar to a lot of other farming simulators, and in the first 10 minutes of my appointment, I thought so as well. However, that's when I got to see the differences, and I was blown away.

When it comes to general gameplay, the structure has been changed slightly. There are different professions you can take on to teach the mechanics of the game with their own quest lines. This includes jobs like a crafting mentor or a farm animal mentor. You can have every single profession at once, as it acts more like a tutorial, but it's a nice way to learn with specific quests and get to know more of the interesting townspeople. We can also get a multitude of vehicles to drive around, which can range from cars to other animals. It's pretty cool to be able to get around the town in a faster way.

The animal breeding is pretty interesting as well. We can build different structures to breed animals, like fish and rabbits, and they can also affect your farmland. For example, breeding rabbits can also cause them to start to eat flowers that are on the farm. It's small in the grand scheme, but it's an interesting angle.

But the big appeal for Starsand Island is going to be building. Building your home is very free-form, allowing for a ton of customizability. We can build our houses and other assortment of structures block by block, with tons of props, tools, and different building blocks to utilize. There's a solid amount of land to build on, so we can go crazy with the structures. I saw a couple of examples that developer Seed Lab showed me, and it's pretty amazing to see how diverse they are. It immediately made me think of The Sims, where you can build your house from the ground up.

One of the vehicles we can get is a decently sized ship, and we can build structures on top of it. It uses the same toolset for regular building, so we can go crazy with our own portable home. There are about four different plots that we can build on in and around the island, but being able to build on a boat is definitely one of the coolest areas.

Starsand Island is fully playable in co-op as well, and one of my first questions when I saw this was what it would be like building in the same world with friends. We can really do anything together in the game, but there are some small limitations for building. However, you and your friends can't build on the same plot of land simultaneously, so the idea of building houses side-by-side won't be doable, but they can build simultaneously on separate plots in the same world. So, it's still possible to build at the same time, but we have to be in two separate areas.

If you build a home you like, you can save it as a prefab to build whenever you want. Not only that, you can also download and try out other prefabs that different players have made and saved. It's great to be able to create and share with other people. The team also plans on providing new free post-launch updates to add more themed props based on different cultures.

To make the game sound even more appealing, Seed Lab is also targeting the Steam Deck for Starsand Island. I wasn't able to play on the Deck directly, but I did get confirmation from the team that they are prioritizing making sure it's playable on the go. I can see this being a great game to play in bed or right next to friends, and I love the changes from other farming simulators. The general gameplay may be similar to other farming simulators, but the freeform building is fantastic and helps set it apart. I am looking forward to seeing how the game runs on the Deck for myself, and I can't wait to dive deeper into building my luxurious mansion.

Starsand Island can be wishlisted ahead of its release later this year.

If you enjoyed this article, check out the rest of the content on SteamDeckHQ! We have a wide variety of game reviews and news that will help your gaming experience. Whether you're looking for news, tips and tutorials, game settings and reviews, or just want to stay up-to-date on the latest trends, we've got you covered!