The world is a stressful place right now, and I’ve found myself gravitating towards cozy games to decompress more and more. Starsand Island is one of the more recent of these games to be launched, and I’ve found that it’s got the perfect mix of features that make it relaxing and gives you that addictive gameplay loop that makes cozy games so appealing.
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Balancing cozy games can be tough, especially if they encourage minmaxing or maximizing profits. It’s a bit harder to fall into this trap in Starsand Island because of its crafting and profession system, which forces you to take a break from any tunnel vision. Here are some of the features that make Starsand Island a great way to disconnect from the tenth once-in-a-generation event happening this year.
10 Starsand Island’s Longer Days
More Time is a Valuable Resource
The length of a day is crucial in any cozy game that forces you to sleep. Usually the day begins at 6am and ends at 2am, giving you 20 hours of in-game time. How quickly that time passes in real life determines how fast you need to act and how much you can fit into one day.
The amount of time that passes for each day varies per game. For example, here are the day lengths for some of the most popular cozy games:
- Coral Island: 22 minutes
- Starsand Island: 20 minutes
- Stardew Valley: 14 minutes
- Fields of Mistria: 12 minutes
Starsand Island falls at the upper end of time per day. More time in a day means more can be done, but it also means that you can approach everything at a slower pace.
9 Starsand Island’s Approach to Crafting
Crafting is Intuitive
Chores and busywork are often some of the most relaxing parts of cozy games, and Starsand Island has them in abundance, particularly in its crafting system. The crafting system builds on itself as you progress through each profession, giving you more effective and powerful blueprints that streamline your day-to-day tasks and gives automated options.
Each part of crafting is important and builds on each other. Gathering resources is just the start — you also need to craft different components that all fit together, such as smelting ore into ingots, then cutting them into sheets or further refining them into more specialized ores or parts.
8 Many Options for Building
You Have Full Control Over Your Home
Designing and building a functional farm and home is often one of the main draws to cozy games, and Starsand Island offers a couple of ways to approach this. You can design your farm the traditional way, by building it free form. You can also use the layout blueprints that design your farm and home for you, and you can edit once they’re placed.
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The layouts give more structure, removing any of the growing pains involved in designing a farm. Some like the process of designing one, but that there’s a choice in how to approach it is important. It’s also helpful to see the layouts as they serve as inspiration for your own designs, and show the potential of what you can build, giving you something to work towards.
7 Professions are a Guide
Starsand Island Leads You Where You’re Meant to Be
Starsand Island offers five different professions:
- Crafting
- Farming
- Adventuring
- Angling
- Ranching
Following these professions is completely optional, but opting into them unlocks new blueprints and overall gives you more options on every level. Having an identity beyond one profession, such as purely farming or foraging, adds a depth to gameplay, especially as the crafting mechanics are so deep.
Instead of having to discover these mechanics on your own, you find them organically by progressing through the professions. This takes away a lot of the fear of missing something, and you can trust that you’ll end up exactly where you’re meant to be.
6 Professions are Interconnected
Break the Minmax Cycle
Most farm sims include several paths that include farming, ranching, fishing, and mining. Starsand Island goes further in encouraging you to do all of them, because each profession informs and supports the rest. For example, crafting requires materials from the Moonlit Forest, and access to the higher levels of the Moonlit Forest requires advancing the Adventure profession.
This makes a difference when you’re used to hyperfixating on one path. I was laser focused on the Crafting profession, only to reach a point where I had to invest in the Adventurer profession to gain access to the resources I needed. Taking a forced break from one path really helped with discovering more about the game, but it also stopped me from setting up an advanced system that would turn the experience into a money-making machine rather than a cozy game.
5 Starsand Island’s Art
The Visuals Alone are Relaxing
Art design can go a long way in establishing the tone of a game, and Starsand Island goes all in on the visuals. It has a gorgeous art style that emphasizes cute character design, bright colors, and gentle vibes. Starsand Island itself is a tourist destination in-game, and it really feels like a vacation spot with tranquil bamboo forests and wide white sand beaches.
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Its art style goes beyond this island aesthetic in its different areas even beyond your farm. Moonlight Forest has soft, silvery shades of blues and purples with a landscape dotted with shining mushrooms and colorful ore. These peaceful environments immediately set my mind at ease and go a long way in creating a world to escape to.
4 Low Stakes
There’s No Pressure
Starsand Island is in early access and currently has no main plot, with the bulk of its content built around progressing through the professions, decorating, and crafting. The combat is minimal and what’s there doesn’t pose a challenge at all, removing most of the stress of progressing through mining.
While the lack of a main plot line and very lukewarm NPC relationships at the moment isn’t exactly a positive, the lack of drama or stakes is a reprieve from the real world. I have enough stress in my own life, so being able to escape to a sunny paradise where there’s nothing expected of me is downright dreamy.
3 Deep Customization Options
Creating a Beautiful Homestead is Easy
One of the joys of Starsand Island is its beautiful aesthetics, and the options for customization and building form a big part of that. There are a lot of really cute decorations, clothes, hairstyles, and layouts here, and it’s possible to build pretty much anything you can imagine.
There’s also a nice balance of European, modern, and Chinese architecture and decor. Some of the build options are a little clumsy and there’s a bit of a learning curve to master the tools, but I’ve been able to sink a lot of time into building and decorating. Designing and building a farm and home are one of my favorite things to do in cozy games, and Starsand Island’s customization features go a long way in making the perfect escape.
2 Clear Guidance
Always Know What to Do Next
Starsand Island is not a game for those who want to figure things out for themselves, which has its pros and cons. This is more of a plus for those who want to turn their brains off for a couple of hours and sink into a pretty utopia.
I have dozens of hours in Starsand Island, and there hasn’t been a single moment I haven’t known what I have to do next. The game holds your hand for every quest, and almost feels like a really long tutorial. However, as there’s no real story at the moment, I found I didn’t mind this at all and could save my energy for enjoying the world and making my home look as cute as possible.
1 The Save System
Save Whenever You Want
Hands down, my favorite part of Starsand Island is being able to save whenever I want. Cozy games like Coral Island and Stardew Valley save at the end of the day when you go to bed, and Fields of Mistria requires you to go to your farm and manually save from a book at any time of the day in addition to when you end the day.
This makes everything unnecessarily stressful and puts you on a timeline of when you can actually put the game down. If the game crashes, you lose the entire day. Starsand Island lets you save right from its main menu. It’s a reassuring safety net, a mechanic that lets me end my play session when I decide it’s over.
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