2025 was a tough year for fans of life and farming sims. A lot of new games came out, but few lived up to expectations. That means many of us are hoping to see some solid new entries arrive in 2026. And there are a lot of contenders for the next big cozy game, including Starsand Island. This new life sim has an anime-inspired 3D art style and a solid mix of different cozy gaming staples, from farming to crafting to raising adorable animals. It’s one of the most anticipated new cozy games of the year, and it’s headed to Early Access very soon.
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I recently had the opportunity to check out Starsand Island‘s Early Access build early. I’ve had the game on my radar for quite some time, but I didn’t know quite what to expect when I jumped in. After playing it for several hours in Early Access, it’s still a bit hard to put my feelings on the game into words. The art style is gorgeous, and all the basics of a great cozy game are in place. But it’s still a little bit rough around the edges, which takes it just a few notches below greatness. Let’s dig into what Starsand Island has to offer so far, and where it has room to get even better.
Starsand Island Offers a Stunning, (Mostly) Cozy Open World To Explore
Starsand Island welcomes you in with a quick cutscene. But then, it’s time to do what so many of us love – customize your character. The starting options for hair and clothes are pretty basic, but that’s by design. You unlock more cosmetics as you play, through regular gameplay, not microtransactions. Otherwise, you can dig into detail with a good range of sliders to get a custom look, within reason. The body size options are a bit lacking, which isn’t surprising, and the darker skin tones look a little off. Even so, I couldn’t help but immediately fall in love with my in-game self, because the anime art style is just so gorgeous.
Once I crafted my avatar, it was time to explore the titular Starsand Island. I was surprised by how big the map felt, making all those transportation options we’ve seen in trailers make a lot of sense. The game hits you with quests right away, and you’ll soon be running around the island uncovering its various areas. You could honestly sink some solid time into exploring, because the island is simply beautiful. The blades of grass, bushes, and trees sway in the wind, and you can head to the shore for some beachside beauty. For the most part, the world feels polished in Early Access, though I did have to use the “unstuck” menu option a few times while I roamed.
Despite its relatively big size for a cozy game, the Starsand Island map feels fairly alive. It’s full of cute critters, tourists, and NPCs roaming around. I like that you can talk to the tourists, even if they’re fairly static characters. They even tend to have a gift for you if you chat with them long enough, which is a fun detail that makes talking even to these side characters feel rewarding. NPCs tend to give you something nice if you chat with them, as well, and you can actually give gifts back. But just talking to the main characters and completing quests raises your relationship, as well. As someone who gets annoyed with gifting-only relationship mechanics, I appreciated these other options for earning hearts with everyone from eligible bachelors and bachelorettes to the island elders.
One thing Starsand Island does differently from many cozy games I’ve encountered is character introductions. When you first encounter any of the marriageable NPCs, you get a little cutscene of the first meeting. These cute little animated sequences help show off that character’s personality, and make it clear that you’ve just run into someone you could romance, if you wanted. These scenes themselves need a little work, which I’ll get to when I talk about the snags that need ironing out. But it’s a nice idea to make the characters feel more well-rounded, if Seed Sparkle Lab can stick the landing.
Quests And Reward Trees Give Starsand Island Players Plenty to Do
One common area of concern for so-called cozy games is giving players enough to do while still feeling light and not stressful. I’m of two minds about how Starsand Island handles this. Each of the available “professions” has an associated quest line, which will spark when you speak to the relevant NPC. These quests can make the game feel pretty linear if you get stuck in the grind of going down one specific path early on. Each time you finish one tier of a profession, the next quest is right there waiting to pick up. This can make it hard to remember you’re able to explore, talk to other NPCs, and unlock other professions, as well.
The different quest paths for each profession are pretty straightforward, but the difficulty feels about right. You’ll need to fetch and craft specific items to complete tasks to get certified as a Crafter, Farmer, Rancher, etc. Because each profession has several tiers to unlock, there’s plenty to do here. And you get access to new items and recipes as you raise in the ranks. I felt a little overwhelmed at first by how linear this felt, but once I gave myself permission to toggle between questlines, it was nice to always have a clear idea of what to work towards.
Along with profession quests, your phone has a nice Island Life app that offers a list of other objectives to complete. Doing things like hitting specific quest milestones and gathering or crafting certain items will unlock rewards. This battle-pass style reward system adds another sense of guidance to make sure you’ve got tasks to grind through, if you want them. It’s also one of the ways you can get new outfits and hairstyles to customize your avatar, which I appreciated because I needed more options for ponytails and buns. Even so, it feels like there’s a lot going on with the different quests and reward tracks. I don’t necessarily mind having a lot of ways to make gameplay feel rewarding, but it is hard to keep track of everything that you’re working towards. This is one area that may well need to be streamlined a bit before 1.0.
Some Snags Need Ironing Out Before Starsand Island Hits Full Release
From my early play experience with Starsand Island, it’s clear the game is laying the foundation for a solid life sim. There are plenty of activities to do, and the world and characters look gorgeous. I didn’t run across any major performance issues, but even so, playing Starsand Island did very much feel like a work in progress. There are still quite a few issues with unfinished cutscenes and uneven localization. Some characters speak their tagline greetings in English, while others are still in Chinese. The same goes for cutscenes, which are a mix of languages and sometimes seem to be unfinished, with no voiced lines or subtitled dialogue. Though this doesn’t take away from the game’s overall mechanics, which are in good shape, it does give you the sense of playing something that’s not fully baked just yet.
Along with unfinished cutscenes and incomplete localization, the game does have the occasional bug. I was honestly fairly impressed with how the basics run already, and nothing I ran into was even close to game-breaking. The biggest issue I ran into was that my character would sometimes fall through the ground, getting hopelessly stuck. Thankfully, the game menu has an easy “unstuck” option that will reset your character position. So, the two or three times I wound up knee-deep in the middle of the ground, it was a pretty easy fix to reset and get back to the cozy grind.
Overall, I think Starsand Island already shows a lot of promise. It’s a fun life sim with plenty to do, in a world that’s so pretty you can’t help but want to explore. The pivot to an Early Access launch makes a lot of sense now that I’ve played the game and gotten a look at where it’s at. It’s close, but it definitely needs a bit more polish before I can say for sure that it’s the next big life sim on the market.
Are you looking forward to checking out Starsand Island when it hits Early Access? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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