Starsand Island [Opinion]

Starsand Island is a cozy farming sim that had a long beta period with Kickstarter. It has all the basics of a cozy farming game, including farming, mining, and relationships*. But there’s a lot more behind the scenes. I can’t ignore how the devs are treating the Kickstarter backers. A lot of concepts promised in the Kickstarter are not present and are exaggerated. The best example is the multiplayer* or lack thereof they are advertising. The co-op isn’t that great; only the host is able to progress, and you can’t do everything together. You can’t even go into the dungeon together, which is honestly where the multiplayer would have shined best. Not only that, but the multiplayer is locked behind hours of gameplay and specific tasks. It almost feels as if they needed the multiplayer to be locked behind at least 2 hours of gameplay so Steam players wouldn’t be able to refund the game. They even acknowledged on social media that people would be buying the game for multiplayer and put together a convoluted guide to help players get to multiplayer faster. What’s insane is that the guide is just run around so you can rack up more hours of gameplay. Annoyingly, you can actually get multiplayer way sooner than the guide says. Not only that, but many playtesters, including myself, are reporting that they didn’t receive the full game after release despite being promised; as previously stated, I can even attest to that, as my review key was not upgraded to the full game. I just feel lied to. As a backer and as a member of the press who did receive a review key. Misleading the person you’re asking for a review isn’t wise.

As for the game itself, it’s alright. Admittedly, Starsand Island is enjoyable when everything is working correctly. I like that you can adopt multiple pets, but at the same time you cannot name them, and the stray cat you find is named 404. The name seems to be glitched for everyone. I also find the relationship system is very half assed. Characters will give you items during your first conversation without any hearts. Their affection also rises even if given a gift they hate. It doesn’t seem like you can do anything to upset them. It doesn’t feel rewarding to raise their relationship level. I also found it really hard to tell which characters were actual NPC’s of the island and which were tourists. I don’t mind having tourists fill out the world, but some have actual names instead of just being named “tourist” which can get confusing. I do hate that tourists also give you gifts. They don’t even live there. Why do they give the protagonist anything? The game on the Nintendo Switch 2 has horrible popping issues, and the game crashed for me many times. The frame dips are also horrendous. I don’t personally want to review the game further. The whole thing surrounding the team and development feels slimy. Also, I hate being purposely misled, and with the DLC being 20 dollars for cosmetics, it’s starting to give off the impression of a cash grab. Also, I haven’t even gotten into all of the AI controversy shenanigans. There are too many issues under the hood for this one. This half backed game needed more time in the oven. They should have used a real oven and need to put away that easy bake oven. If you are interested in the game, don’t be. It can be enjoyable, but a 40 dollar price tag is high for a game that feels like a passionless My Time at Sandrock knockoff. This game could have been amazing….What happened. I know what happened. My Time at Sandrock already came out.