Starsand Island is a farming-life simulator that aims to give players a relaxing and cozy farming adventure. Read our review of its early-access build to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Everything We Know About Starsand Island
Starsand Island Plot
Starsand Island has players making a home on the eponymous island, where ancient secrets, awe-inspiring creatures, and a diverse cast of characters await. The local residents all have a story to tell, but so does the island itself.
As players venture farther away from home, they’ll discover the many diverse sights and environments the island has to offer, from breathtaking coastlines to dense forests. Not only that, but they’ll find ruins and relics from Starsand and its neighboring islands’ past and piece together their colorful history.
Starsand Island Gameplay
In Starsand Island, players have the freedom to create their dream farmstead, as they’ll be building their homes from the ground up, literally. From the trees outside to their shingled rooftops, players can meticulously construct their home as they so please. This isn’t your typical farm, though, as players will have access to all sorts of helper robots to help things run smoothly.
Away from home, players are free to explore Starsand Island and its neighboring isles via a myriad of methods, like hoverboarding and paragliding. While out and about, players can gather rare resources, delve deep into ancient ruins, and even engage in battle with exotic creatures.
Starsand Island Release Date
Released on February 11, 2026, Starsand Island is now available to be purchased in Early Access on Steam for $39.99. It will also be available on Xbox PC Game Pass.
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Starsand Island Review [Early Access]
Gonna Be A Star One Day
Here I am again with another cute and cozy game, not long after I dove deep into the heart (heh) of Heartopia just a few weeks ago. Cozy farming games have always had this pull on me. You can show me a picture of the game’s animals looking all cute and enticing—I’m sold. And for Starsand Island, it was the adorable as heck pigs.
Kidding aside (er, not really), this cute farming sim has definitely been on my radar. It doesn’t matter how many farming-centered life-simulators pop up in the gaming market—they're the same, but different in their own little ways, and that’s the joy of trying them all out. I may not see my stories to the end all the time—real life can be a big hindrance to my dream life—but the enjoyable moments of starting off somewhere new will never get old.
I made my mark in Heartopia just a few weeks ago, and now I’m whisked away into another compelling journey—this time, in Starsand Island. Onwards, to a new adventure!
Home Sweet Home, Starsand Island
Tired of your monotonous and dull everyday life in the city, you, the player character, decide to return to your hometown of Starsand Island after ten years for some peace of mind. Known as the "Star of the Deep Sea" the eponymous island is a coastal paradise filled with the best of what nature has to offer, as well as a lively cast of townspeople to get to know, each with their own story and ambitions to share.
It’s not a new premise at all—an overworked urban city dweller looking to start a new life out in the countryside as a farmer-rancher-fisher-weaver-entrepreneur-and-more, becoming a jack of all trades. However, in a game like this, the story doesn’t always have to be innovative. You’re here to relax (subjective) and play a cozy game with farming sim, RPG elements, and a sprinkling of romance here and there.
Idyllic Farming
Similar to other games of its genre like Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons, Harvest Moon, and the like, Starsand Island is a cozy farming adventure that incorporates several gameplay mechanics in one life simulation title.
Firstly, you can focus on your homestead and farming. You can farm crops, tend to your animals, go fishing, craft all sorts of items from furniture to little knick-knacks, cook delicious meals, and more. Resource gathering with specialized tools like axes and pickaxes is also a large part of the gameplay loop. Eventually, after toiling under the sun with manual labor, automation will be available to ease your daily tasks, even by a little bit.
It’s decent and quite engaging, especially if you’re a fan of the routine grind. Farm, feed, and pet your animals, harvest, go into town to fulfill quests or sell your produce; rinse and repeat. Progression is rewarding enough and doesn’t feel sluggishly slow, so there’s a motivation to keep going.
Dungeon Crawling Lite…Very Lite
Aside from staying at home being a farmer-rancher, you are also able to venture into the Moonlit Forest, which serves as the game’s "dungeon". Here, you can mine for ores, catch forest-exclusive bugs, discover ancient ruins, and battle forest creatures for materials and rewards. The forest is sectioned off into several areas, each with their own handy-dandy campground that you can sleep in for the night so you don’t have to rush back home before 2AM lest you pass out (sighs in Stardew Valley).
As said before, it feels and acts kind of like a dungeon. It adds more action to your otherwise cyclical farmstead life, although not much. There’s very (and I mean very) light action-adventure going on, with only a single enemy to fight every few areas. It’s definitely a "relaxing" take on dungeon crawling, which complements the cozy vibe it’s trying to portray.
There’s no news as to whether or not it’ll receive any buffs to the combat in the future, but then again, it’s fine as it is in my opinion. I’m just here to mine for ores and flowers to give to the love of my life, I don’t need Luminfrogs breathing down my back every second.
Forming Friendships and Romances
Where there is a life sim, there are relationships, and Starsand Island is not to be beat. You can meet a total of 25 townspeople and are able to form friendships with them, with 12 of them being romanceable. There is an even split between genders, with six girls and six boys to choose from, each with their own distinct personality, likes, dislikes, and image. There’s Solara, the mayor’s granddaughter and your childhood best friend; Graminova, the local genius farmer; Serena, the beauty guru; and Zephyria, the resident hunter-explorer, to name a few. There’s a trope for everyone, and I appreciate the variety.
However, perhaps because it’s still early on in development, the writing for the social interactions feels bland and not that appealing. There are differences in their text that reflect who they are, yes, but their dialogue just doesn’t feel great. Also, although perhaps a minor thing, but why do Aurelius and Sylvain kind of look similar…with the same colored hair too? So many colors of the rainbow to choose from, but they decided to go with three white-haired romanceable men and three brown-haired romanceable women.
But wait, there’s more in the friendship sphere—you not only form bonds with the human settlers of Starsand Island but also with the adorable animals that bask under its sun. There is a separate tab in the Social app in your in-game phone to check your affection levels with certain animals like Crescent the tabby cat, Booboo the panda, Zippy the squirrel, or Scrappy the pup! Once you get to three hearts with them after daily interaction, you’re also able to adopt them as your own. Easier said than done though, I’m doing all I can to adopt Mellowhen the capybara…
Dressing To The Nines
Just because you’re a farmer in the great outdoors all the time doesn’t mean you can’t rock a gorgeous outfit! Starsand Island has you covered there, with tons of customization options to freely express yourself. The game’s Steam news page boasted that each body type would get over 200 pieces of clothing, along with the freedom to mix and match the way you want it to be.
Of course, there are some limitations, but aside from obvious no-nos (no, that capybara cap isn’t going to go with your dinosaur onesie, I’m sorry), everything seems to be fair game. And there are a multitude of ways to get your fashion fix. You can buy it from Lunelle’s clothing shop, sew them yourself with the right materials and patterns, or funnily enough, find them in the wild while exploring.
Visual Lapses, Here And There
Given that it’s in Early Access, it’s not surprising that it’s not at its best state just yet (and the developers have acknowledged this), but these bugs and glitches do stand out, especially if they keep happening.
For example, even if I’m running the game with the recommended PC specs, the game tends to stutter and randomly drop in frames. This is evident particularly when running or cruising in a vehicle; while I do understand that assets may take a bit to load, it’s jarring nonetheless. Luckily, I have not experienced a full-out crash or freeze so far in my hours of playing, but I’d rather not wait for that to happen. On that note as well, assets tend to clip into each other or disappear outright—nothing game-breaking, but it definitely makes things a little harder to discern from one another, or make things hilarious as seen in the image above.
On the side of NPC dialogue, text boxes have several grammatical errors, mostly missing punctuation marks, but there are some misspelled words as well and random placeholder text (such as a local giving you "#ITEM" instead of the actual name of the item). There was also an instance where Zerine’s lines clashed with my character’s—it said that I was saying them, but in reality it was Zerine’s. These inconsistencies, though few, are still a mild annoyance.
Some Controls Are All Over The Place
Not all controls are affected, but there’s a great lack of polish in some of the things you control. By far the most frustrating thing is that the Travel menu, which houses all your Vehicles and Mounts for easy reference, is keybinded to R. That in itself is not the issue, but the fact that even when you’re just typing R to rename your storage chests or even your pets, it brings up the darn menu.
Now, you can easily keybind it to another key and that should be fine, right? Well, it doesn’t matter what key you bind it to—if you use that key in typing and renaming things, it still counts it as a Travel menu click. Weirdly enough, it’s only for the Travel menu and nothing else. It used to be a minor thing, honestly, but I was pretty miffed when I accidentally hit R and it completely covered up Sylvain’s first introductory cutscene. No matter what I pressed to try and close it back up, nothing worked. My white-haired pretty boy musician was covered up by an image of a godforsaken rental scooter.
Going back to controls being wonky, the house building controls could also use some work. The developers acknowledged this as well, but playing through the jankiness of it all firsthand implores me to highlight that base-building isn’t as smooth as it should be. This may also be due to the fact that Starsand Island allows you to put almost anything and everything in your little homestead and has the option for enabling overlapping items for the ultimate customization.
In that case, it’s a double-edged sword in that regard. More freedom, but more jank. So if that annoying wooden beam won’t connect to the part of the wall you want it to, it’s not your fault—it definitely makes building and expanding the homestead five times more difficult though.
Overall Conclusion
Starsand Island has its foundations down pat—an engaging and rewarding gameplay loop and dozens of daily activities to do so that there can be variety in your everyday life on the idyllic island. It will definitely keep you entertained for hours on end. Although, its current state does leave quite a bit to be desired. There are bugs and glitches everywhere, alongside optimization issues and jankiness, that can sour (or add a dash of humor to) the experience.
Nevertheless, I still have high hopes that it will eventually deliver on all of its promises along its Early Access development phase. For now, I’ll still continue my relaxing adventure along the shore of Starsand Island, fulfilling my dreams of a farmstead-by-the-shore paradise.
Game8 Reviews
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Starsand Island Product Information
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| Title | Starsand Island |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 12, 2026 (Early Access) |
| Developer | Seed Sparkle Lab |
| Publisher | Seed Sparkle Lab |
| Supported Platforms | Steam, Xbox, PS5, Switch |
| Genre | Indie, RPG, Simulation |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Starsand Island Official Website |
