This is probably a sentence that could be said literally any day of the week, but a new cosy farming sim is on the block, this time taking the form of Starsand Island. The flavour on this occasion is of the anime variety, with some slightly goofier farming mechanics (i.e. turning your watermelon patch into one singular, 10 foot tall watermelon), some very Pokemon Legends: Arceus looking combat, and some appropriately cute animals to hang out with. And there’s skateboarding! But never do launches go all that smoothly, as developer Seed Sparkle Lab have had to do a dash of damage control regarding some concerns over the game.
A pair of update posts were shared today, the second of which we’ll start with. For one, it appears a bunch of potential early adopters of the early access release have been concerned with in-game purchases, but according to said update post, there are none! “Please enjoy the game with confidence,” so say the devs.
The second concern that was addressed was regarding some potentially dodgy lines in the game’s user agreement, partially in relation to those supposed in-game purchases, but also partially to do with things like mods being restricted. According to the devs however, “All unreasonable or overly restrictive clauses in the user agreement have been removed. We will never restrict players from using mods or other custom content, and there is no anti-cheat system implemented in the game. After the full release, Steam Workshop will also be opened to allow everyone to freely create and share their ideas.”
There has also been some feedback over a lack of story bits and voice acting, which has been duly noted as well, including some optimisation issues, though there are plans for improvements on all counts. “Starsand Island is not perfect, and we will continue to listen carefully to the voices from our players while constantly improving and refining the game,” the post explains.
Regarding that first update post, however, is a strange situation where a bunch of positive reviews have popped up that appear to be AI-generated. Seed Sparkle Lab say they don’t understand why this is happening either, asking whoever is behind this to stop. Better than review bombing I suppose? But maybe cut it out anyway, just a weird thing to do.
If you have any interest in picking up Starsand Island, you can do so on Steam, right here.
