I’m a big fan of chill games that I like to play when I’ve had enough of the frustration in online games. Yeah, I’m the guy who likes to play unrewarding games like Valorant and Counter Strike, which take up a lot of my energy – and make me come back to other games to throw the steam off. Jokes aside, chill games have become a very important part of most people’s gaming routines. After a stressful day of work and getting yelled at by bosses or managers, most people like to come back and play a video game in an imaginary world where they’re completely inside the game and enjoying themselves.
I started playing such games when I played My Time at Portia, a fantastic game that plays off slightly differently than other simulators by allowing the main character to be a Builder who builds stuff for the rest of the folk in the town. Naturally, this “evolution” of the Stardew Valley gaming mechanics from a farming simulator into something where you have to craft stuff for others was adapted rapidly into other games. Starsand Island is another such chill game that has come out recently, which builds on top of gaming mechanics derived from a lot of games (seriously, a LOT of them).
Starsand Island is an Early Access title that was released for PC on Steam on February 11, 2026. The game is modelled like a farming simulator, but has many features to augment it so that gameplay never feels boring at any point in the game.
The Village Retreat
Starsand Island starts the game with a trip taken by the protagonist to the village to “rediscover” themselves when they get bored with city life. Sounds familiar, right? Yes, this was exactly the starting sequence for Stardew Valley. In fact, the starting sequence plays out much like Stardew Valley, with the only difference being that Starsand Island has somewhat detailed character customization. The only difference might be that Starsand Island is a 3D game while Stardew Valley was 2D. While character customization is up to the player, it seems that the canon character for the game is the girl, as she was featured in multiple trailers, including the starting sequence for the game itself, right up to the character selection.
On arrival, Solara, the mayor’s assistant, helps you with a brief tutorial of what to do and how to do it. She doesn’t go in depth about a lot of features, so it does leave some room for experimentation for the players to find out more about the game’s features (and there is a lot of stuff to discover and get into!) Depending on the player’s choices, Solara guides the player towards one of the characters in Starsand Island to understand more about their profession (as everyone on the island is happy and contributing to the economy and all of that). Gradually, the player will complete some story quests and meet some NPCs on the island, too, opening up more avenues for progression. There’s no linear way to achieve progression, just like Stardew Valley. Oh, there’s no grand end goal to grind towards either.
Commissions, A Lot of Them
Starsand Island doesn’t take off after Stardew Valley only; it also models significantly from My Time at Portia (and improves every aspect of it). Players need to build and design items for NPCs and deliver them to them when their shop is open or in their houses. Some items are easy to collect, while others need new processing stations to be built. Going with the Crafter in the tutorial makes Solara explain this, and guides the player to Serine, a shopkeeper who has a lot of tech know-how to get the player started. Serine gives blueprints for beginning “processing stations” to the player, and also explains the process of picking up commissions and delivering them. After that, the player can pick up some simple commissions and deliver them to get a hang of it – and with time, pick up more complicated commissions to complete. The bigger the commission, the longer it takes to complete it, but it offers significantly more rewards for the position.
Commissions are the lifeline of the game, despite other professions also being in it. Commissions help boost the player’s relationships with other characters (especially if they want to take the romance route) and also grant a steady amount of in-game currency for upgrades. Other professions, like farming, fishing, or ranching, take a while to build up, and mostly produce raw materials that need to be processed anyway, so there’s that. This is where the game starts sounding essentially like My Time at Portia, except that Starsand Island looks prettier and NPCs aren’t entirely a blank slate – they have their own unique personalities, and even unlock unique quests when they develop a certain amount of affection for you.
Sometimes, raw minerals are also required for processing into ingots, plates, and other pure forms. Minerals are very scarce in Starsand Island – there are just a few ore veins for copper near the farm where the player starts. To get ore, one needs to take a portal to Moonstone Forest – a mythical place where many dangers lurk. The place is not only full of rare minerals, but it also has dangerous creatures lurking about. The only sad thing with the combat is that there’s only ranged combat as far as I played, with the slingshot. The slingshot can use stones or pellets as ammunition and cause damage at range. I did try swinging the axe and pickaxe at enemies, and they seem to mystically avoid them.
Moonstone Forest has several unlockable areas, which gradually open up as the player mines special stones called gravemites, which unlock spirits to unlock the next section of the map. Some sections have small puzzles to solve to move on – and some have a boss standing in front of them, who does quite the damage. Thankfully, the boss’s damage is easy to avoid (which would be catastrophic, considering the player only has 5 lives, so they can only survive 5 hits from the boss). Sadly, Starsand Island itself doesn’t have many puzzles as such – it would be a fun throwback to other gacha games like Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves (which seem to influence the graphical design of the game by a long shot).
Starsand Island has a lot of stuff to try out. There are fun interactions with random NPCs, there are growing crops, there are rearing animals, and of course, some fishing, exploring, and mining. Farming holds the same restrictions as Stardew Valley – not all crops grow in all seasons, so preparing ahead is almost always worth it. Rearing animals is a costly affair until you start growing pasture grass as part of your farming exercises to feed them (cleaning and maintaining them every day is another hassle the game borrowed from Stardew Valley). Fishing is possibly the easiest – just go to a shore where you can see fish in the water, set up your fishing ro,d and wait for a bite. Once the fish starts pulling, all you need to do is pull back and reel the fish in till it’s out of the water. Oh, and once you’re bored of all of these, focusing on your relationships with the NPCs inhabiting Starsand Island is also a thing – you can romance most of them too!
Genshin Valley(?)
Starsand Island borrows heavily from Genshin Impact and other gacha games in terms of its design aspects. The character design looks anime-esque and similar to the NPCs from many of the gacha games that are currently a-plenty in the market. That itself isn’t a bad thing, but it might not fit into everyone’s taste (certainly worked very well with me, though). The game, despite trying to mimic the mechanics of My Time at Portia, is better in most aspects, including NPC design. NPCs don’t feel like drab objects – they have a life and schedule and also feel lively to talk to.
The game’s music is also similar to the chill lo-fi tracks one listens to on YouTube. It’s just good – one that makes you feel like you’re the one on Starsand Island in place of the player character. It’s just too good.
Content-Rife, and More Incoming
In its current state, Starsand Island already features a fully-fleshed out game with a lot of features to keep one busy. There’s a lot to do, and the game quickly becomes a time sink if you’re into these kinds of games. With the game being an Early Access title, more features are definitely going to arrive, so that’s something to feel even more excited for. For me, this is a definite buy, especially if you liked the chill vibes of My Time at Portia and Stardew Valley – two games it heavily borrows mechanics from.
