At first glance, Starsand Island looks like everything fans of cozy farm life sims could hope for — sunlit fields, pastel skies, and a world that seems to promise endless afternoons of planting, crafting, and chatting with friendly locals. Its anime-inspired art style is the very definition of "eye candy," while its loop of farming, exploration, and social connection should feel familiar to anyone who has spent time with other games in the genre. Developed by Seed Lab, this upcoming entry in the ever-growing cozy genre clearly aims to capture the same laid-back magic that made Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon beloved staples, but with a few twists of its own.
The Best War Games recently went hands-on with an alpha build of Starsand Island to see how the experience is shaping up ahead of its planned February 2026 launch. There's no question that the game already has the framework for something special, but what's beneath the surface isn't quite as blissful as it first appears. After spending around 30 hours exploring its systems, world, and community, a more complicated picture began to emerge.
A Beautiful World Currently Missing Its Beating Heart
Just a few hours into my preview of Starsand Island, the reality was already setting in that this particular build for the upcoming cozy farm life sim has the farm part down but lacks the life that makes games like it worth investing in. By and large, the world feels static and its NPCs more like scripted mannequins than people with stories to tell. Something about that part of the day-to-day experience in Starsand Island just feels off, and I couldn't help but narrow it down to the drab, stilted dialogue of its characters. Even so, the island's scenery makes a strong first impression before the cracks begin to show.
There's a big part of Starsand Island that wants players to pursue relationships with the characters who inhabit its world, with a heart (affection) system not unlike those found in other cozy games like Stardew Valley. As players chat with these NPCs, give them gifts, and complete quests for them, their affection rating with that NPC increases, unlocking new interaction opportunities with every heart gained. The problem is that these interactions currently feel hollow, almost forced, leaving each character just as uninteresting as they were to begin with.
It also felt like Starsand Island preferred certain relationships above others in the preview build, as it seemed to give me more organic opportunities to increase affection with one or two specific characters while the rest required more effort.
The world itself is beautiful and worth exploring, with a vibrant color palette, plenty of variations in the environment, and secrets scattered across the map — including chests filled with crafting recipes and materials. Its anime art style also serves its visuals well, giving the game a charm that its other features fall short of contributing to. However, with the preview build, I found that beauty to be only skin deep, like makeup trying to hide an expressionless face. Specifically, the world rarely feels like it's actually alive and moving, making the clock little more than a reminder that you eventually need to sleep.
There are "events" in Starsand Island, but I'm not sure one could even call them that. For example, I occasionally woke up to a letter in the mail telling me something special would be happening at the beach, only to arrive there during the specified hours and not experience anything special at all. The schedules and routines for each of Starsand Island's main NPCs also felt stiff in this build, like they didn't have a life outside the businesses they managed. For some of them, when their shops would close, I could still see them through the window, sitting motionless at their desk as though they had nothing to do but wait for the next morning.
Speaking of closed shops, one thing that works well from a gameplay standpoint in Starsand Island is the ability players have to buy and sell items regardless of when businesses are closed for the day. While transactions can be made through the characters themselves, each shop has a POS that can be accessed at any time, even outside business hours. However, as beneficial as that is to gameplay, it almost makes the NPCs less relevant than they already were, which inadvertently contributes to the lifelessness of the game's world.
Life on the Island, One Profession at a Time
The whole of my roughly 30 hours spent previewing Starsand Island wasn't a complete drag, though, and instead felt more like a roller coaster full of some exceedingly high highs and dreadfully low lows. Much of this comes from the fact that Starsand Island is a very mechanically sound cozy farm life sim, as its solid gameplay loop can be quite addictive depending on what players focus on.
To put it simply, Starsand Island has all the gameplay essentials of a cozy title, with farming, crafting, animal husbandry, and more at its core. Its primary progression system is split into five unique Professions — Crafting, Farming, Fishing, Ranching, and Exploration — each of which can be advanced as players spend Starsand Points to unlock quests with their respective Profession Trainers. Starsand Points can be gained by completing a wide variety of activities, from harvesting crops a certain number of times to selling a specific number of items, so they're fairly easy to earn.
There is a fair bit of grind in Starsand Island, and that grind only increases as players advance in a Profession and unlock more purchasable crafting recipes from its associated Trainer. In this way, it's perhaps more crafting game than cozy farm life sim, with multiple crafting tiers that require increasingly valuable materials. That emphasis on crafting is also made evident by just how much Starsand Island seems to love money, as players need plenty of it if they hope to make any significant progress in the game.
The Farming, Fishing, and Ranching Professions in Starsand Island are fairly straightforward, as they imitate what many other cozy farm life sims like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley have done in the past. Apart from the fact that crops grow incredibly fast in Starsand Island, and animals can not only be purchased and bred but also captured like Pokemon, those who have spent plenty of hours in the cozy game genre should have no problem catching onto that part of the loop. The Crafting and Exploration Professions, on the other hand, are where Starsand Island truly sets itself apart.
Firstly, Starsand Island gives players unprecedented freedom over the crafting, building, and furnishing side of its gameplay. Objects can be placed quite literally anywhere within the zone that players own (which can eventually be expanded with money and Starsand Points). Almost every inch of the player's house can be customized with various designs and colors, and those designs can be further accentuated by what feels like a countless number of furniture options. As if that weren't enough, players can build their very own house block by block, with an almost overwhelming selection of building options.
Starsand Island also provides several saved prefab buildings that require a specified number of materials for players who would rather not spend the mental energy and time building their own.
Secondly, Starsand Island's Exploration profession revolves around the Moonlit Forest, which functions similarly to Stardew Valley's mines. Essentially, the Moonlit Forest is laid out similarly to a gradually expanding dungeon of sorts, complete with a wide variety of materials for players to farm, animals to fight and collect, numerous secrets found off the beaten path, and boss encounters at every major transition. It even includes camp sites at regular intervals that function as a place for players to rest, craft, and fast-travel if they want to stick around for a night or return to Starsand Island as quickly as possible.
Progressing through Starsand Island's Moonlit Forest requires players to regularly upgrade their tools and weapons, making that side of progression feel more meaningful than simply making the game's other professions easier or more efficient. Of everything Starsand Island had to offer me during the preview, I found Moonlit Forest to be its most rewarding and unique endeavor, although I did encounter a progression bug that prevented me from moving deeper into what looked like a very fun region according to its map.
Rough Edges That Break the Immersion
I encountered numerous bugs during my time with Starsand Island, and although bugs in an alpha build are somewhat expected, these had a habit of jerking me out of the experience. Some of the most prominent glitches were in the game's audio, with strange things like multiple music tracks playing at the same time and never ending, prompting me to turn off the music completely. There was also no audio whatsoever for things like rain and rollerblading, and certain ambient sounds would occasionally be looped, leaving me with little choice but to restart the game.
Apart from those bugs, there were also several progression roadblocks I encountered, one of which involved one of Starsand Island's main quests not registering my action and thereby preventing me from advancing. There were also certain crafting materials that weren't obtainable at all, simply because they didn't seem to exist despite being requirements for a recipe. Progression gates like this would normally be understandable for a preview, but considering the build I played was actually intended to be the full game in its alpha state, it left me feeling a bit discouraged about its future.
Starsand Island Still Needs That Spark
Overall, my preview of Starsand Island left me very concerned about its final build. Bugs like the audio glitches and progression roadblocks I mentioned can be fixed, but everything about how the world feels lifeless and artificial likely comes down to the game's design — something that is much harder to polish. In the end, it left me with this general feeling of "What or who is all this even for?" Fortunately, there are still several months between now and February 2026, when Starsand Island currently plans to launch. Hopefully, that's enough time for Seed Lab to get the game to a more stable place, so it can find its footing in the increasingly saturated cozy game genre. The ideas are there; they just currently lack the execution necessary to build something steadfast.
OpenCritic Reviews
- Released
- February 1, 2026
- Developer(s)
- Seed Lab
- Publisher(s)
- Seed Lab
- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Farming, Life Simulation, RPG, Casual
Starsand Island releases on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 on February 1, 2026. The Best War Games was provided a Steam code for the purposes of this preview.