I have a love-hate relationship with life games. I've put countless hours into Dreamlight Valley, tried Coral Island, and am loving the new Doloc Town. Like many others, I played plenty of The Sims in my youth and became obsessed with Animal Crossing: New Horizons during the pandemic. Though I adore the relaxing nature of the simulation genre, each demands so much time that it's hard to get into new releases. One that might be worth trying out, though, is the Starsand Island, which combines the best elements of them all. After a few hours with an early build, I think this cute life sim has what it takes to be the next big hit.
Now approaching double its Starsand Island apart in such a saturated market, they told me that it "fills the gap" with its anime art style and varied combination of mechanics.
"While Animal Crossing leans into being childlike and whimsical, the My Time in… series adopts an overtly American comic aesthetic, and Stardew Valley uses 2D pixel art, our game fills the gap as a high-quality, 3D anime-style pastoral life simulator," says Golton Gao, producer and technical director. "We believe our players' true desire will be to create and enjoy their ideal pastoral life in a virtual world. This manifests through a number of elements inspired by The Sims, including interactive environmental objects, diverse career paths (with sub-professions currently in development), a free-form construction system, and NPCs with more vivid behavioral logic and responsive interactions."
The career paths are among my favorite mechanics from my time with the game so far. In fact, they make Starsand Island more complex than many of its contemporaries by forcing you to carry out specific quests before you can unlock basic items.
So far, there are five career paths: crafting, farming, fishing, ranching, and exploring. To embark on them, you must first meet and carry out a task for set NPCs, such as Pastelle, your ranching mentor. This nice touch forces you to leave your homestead and meet the locals early on, before you can craft most items or even buy anything but basic seeds and tools. Most crafting recipes are locked behind career milestones, which adds greater depth and a sense of achievement to the whole experience.
On the flip side, the moment-to-moment interactions and mini-games can make Starsand Island feel like 'baby's first life sim': fishing is easy, farming is quick, and your inventory is huge, but I don't see this as a negative. Sure, inventory management in a horror game or action RPG adds to the gameplay. In a supposedly relaxing game, the tiresome task of frequently returning home to empty your pockets isn't enjoyable. When I ask Gao how the team is implementing so many features without overcomplicating things, he seems to agree, saying, "while many gameplay elements are [here], we've streamlined them to ensure quality."
Streamlining these features we all know from other life games – fishing, farming, crafting, gathering – allows for its more unique features to shine, including the careers and modular customization, vehicles, and even pets.
While the ranching career teaches you to raise sheep, rabbits, chickens, and more, a cast of wild animals around the island is crucial to the game's pet adoption mechanic. Each of these cute characters has a name and distinct personality, and interacting with them in the wild makes them available for adoption.
Another fairly fresh mechanic here is its vehicles. From a skateboard to a classic car, you can use land, marine, and aerial vehicles to travel at speed around what Gao calls a "sizable" map, which is set to expand with multiple offshore islands via DLC.
These mechanics are all grounded in reality, but there's a fantastical element to be found deep in the island's forests, where combat is introduced. The peaceful beachside town with its stray dogs and cats and happy families offers nothing out of the ordinary. Step through the portal into Moonlit Forest, though, and you'll encounter Glow Frogs, pick Forget-Me-Not Mushrooms, and mine crystals. Combat is part of your explorer career, but you don't have to fight enemies if you don't want to. Instead, you can use other career paths to craft machinery to handle the action for you.
Finally, Starsand Island's free-form construction is another standout feature, offering scope for different playstyles. Inspired by The Sims' modular customization, you can tweak your farm, houseboat, and more in great detail, even building some structures from the ground up. That said, set builds are at your disposal if you don't like granular customization. While you can't alter NPC homes, Gao mentions an "uninhabited island" where you can customize freely, similar to Animal Crossing.
I haven't touched upon the NPCs yet, but from what I've seen so far, conversations and relationships are similar to those in Stardew Valley. Later, there are more in-depth interactions, but I haven't had the chance to play with those yet.
Overall, Starsand Island is on track to be the next great cozy Starsand Island release date, and you can even consider backing the Kickstarter campaign before it ends on Saturday, May 31, 2025.