Is the new farm sim Starsand Island worth playing in early access?
The first hotly-anticipated farm sim of this year is here and it's a scorcher. Starsand Island is a crafting-forward life and farming sim where you'll return to the sunny island of your youth to reconnect with old friends, meet new love interests, and help turn the town into an even bigger tourist destination by—you guessed it—chopping down a ton of trees and crafting shopping lists of components for main story quests.
Small towns aren't revitalized in a day, especially on Starsand, which seems to be packing a much longer play time than I'd expected. You can read more about what it was like playing my first season in Starsand Island but down below I'll give you a farm sim fan overview of what to expect from Starsand compared with all the other farmlife sims out there.
Release date: February 11, 2026 (early access)
Price: $27.93 in early access, $39.90 at full launch
Steam Deck: ⚠️ Playable
Full release: Expected summer 2026
Play time: Developer estimates at least 100 hours in early access
Starsand Island features
What kind of life sim is Starsand Island?
Starsand Island is a life sim with a big focus on crafting quests. Think of it like the crafting station-based system of Palia or My Time At Portia with just a hint of the creature breeding and automation of Palworld.
Feature | Included? | How it works |
|---|---|---|
Farming | ✅ | Crops grow on a continuous timer, not once per day |
Ranching | ✅ | Animals have roles like eating weeds or bugs and can be bred for specific traits |
Mining | ✅ | Mine higher rarity ore materials by progressing through the dungeon-like forest |
Crafting | ✅ | Build and upgrade crafting stations to process materials for increasingly complex quests |
Fishing | ✅ | Reel in fish without snapping your line then sell, cook, or display them |
Friendship / Romance | ✅ | Give gifts to unlock tiers of friendship, eventually inviting a partner to move in together |
Combat | ✅ | Use a ranged slingshot or bow to fight bosses in the forest or bring automated little robots to fight for you |
Museum / Collections | ❌ | There isn't a museum or community center bundles collections system |
Character progression | ✅ | Complete quests to level each job (farming, ranching, crafting, fishing, exploration) and unlock gameplay perks at each tier |
Calendar events | ⚠️ | There are seasonal events but townies don't have birthdays on the calendar |
Shop simulation | ❌ | There's no market or shop simulation element |
Character customization | ✅ | Buy or craft new outfits, save presets, and set your own daytime, swimwear, and pyjamas |
Property customization | ✅ | An almost level-editor like freeform build mode with detailed editing and toggled snapping |
Multiplayer | ⚠️ | Planned for full launch |
My favorite feature so far in Starsand is definitely its build system that lets me really get into the weeds expanding my house. I needed a lot of stone and wood to build my crafting patio addition but was able to easily snap together a floor then toggle snapping off to build a custom overlapping lattice ceiling that I'm quite proud of. If I ever get overwhelmed, Starsand has a "layouts" feature with pretty, pre-made homes that I only need to supply the resources for without fiddling in the detailed editor.
What Starsand lacks right now is motivation to sell my crops or crafted items. So far I've earned enough money from basic bulletin board requests and the "stamps" achievements system that I just keep stashing all my produce without selling any. The developers list "balance and reward distribution" as one of their known issues, so I'm interested to see if this changes during early access.
Starsand Island early access state
How 'early' access is it?
Starsand Island feels nearly feature-complete with some small rough patches like vehicle handling and occasional voice line bugs. The big feature it's planning to add before its 1.0 launch is multiplayer, though the developers have not explained in detail exactly how its co-op will work.
I initially found driving vehicles and riding mounts felt very floaty and awkward, but a pre-launch patch has already improved the experience with less touchy steering. Similarly, navigating my tools and other UI menus with a controller was a bit convoluted until the same patch, which streamlined tools selection to the D-pad and other improvements. Feedback seems to be getting incorporated pretty quickly here and the ropey bits have not affected my overall enjoyment of Starsand's quests and characters.
Should you get Starsand Island in early access?
Is Starsand Island worth it?
???? If you're a price per hours of play time person: It took me 23 hours to finish my first season in Starsand, earn 2/5 friendship tiers with just a few of its characters, and reach rank 2/5 in four of its professions. The developers estimate that early access has "more than 100 hours" of content and if I continue at the same pace through just the first in-game year that does seem to track.
???? If you're a life sim aficionado: I've played a lot of life sims and I think Starsand is a great example of the genre based on the first season I played. It streamlines a lot of common gripes like managing storage chests easily and also expands on a lot of fun ideas like rentable mounts, customizable PJs, a very detailed build system, and more. It's the first 3D farm sim that I find visually appealing and not awkward to control. Just go in knowing that this one is heavy on crafting and resource gathering.
???? If you're in it for the romances: Building friendships is the real grind in Starsand right now because getting to a new tier of affection takes weeks of gifts and chatting. The short cutscenes introducing each love interest give me high hopes for what dates will be like, but without seeing one yet, it's hard to predict how special those moments will feel. In the meantime, day-to-day interactions with love interests involve seeing the same dialogue quite often.