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Starsand Island on Switch 2 is such a disappointment at launch. The idea behind the farming life sim seems solid. Especially since it involves pursuing different paths to find a place for yourself on a cozy island. I remember enjoying what I started when playing a preliminary build and the early access version on the PC! But this console release just isn’t ready yet and feels like it needs a few more weeks or even months before it could be good to go. Wait until you know Seed Sparkle Lab put out at least three more patches.
The most noticeable issue with Starsand Island is that moving feels terrible. As in even walking around can make the frame rate drop. And the area doesn’t even need to be particularly “busy” for this to happen! Just leaving your immediate house to the fairly empty expanse around it to gather some small pieces of stone and wood can drag things out and make you feel uncomfortable, if not outright a little stuttery with some pop-ins. Heaven forbid you try and use your skateboard, one of the first “mounts” you can craft, because I found that made it feel even worse. Not only that, but it would just… clip into the ground and didn’t seem designed to properly interact with the boundaries of the world. I’d rather try and take the slow way around, since it seemed like trying to hitch a ride in some manner made things worse.
Oh, and if you are playing now, I honestly recommend not trying to farm at the moment. Which seems odd, given Starsand Island is a farming sim. The thing is, the frame rate slows to a crawl whenever you need to harvest more than one or two plots. Like planting is bad, but gathering up my crops was worse.
Speaking of slow, the Starsand Island loading is so bad on the Switch 2. I’d say just starting or picking up from a save when I was first hopping in before some patches took about 100-something seconds, give or take. (The first time I played, it felt like it took about two minutes and I was wondering if something was wrong.) And even after patches, that was still an issue. There are even times when I felt like maybe there was actual loading when I’d be checking in with folks to let them know I completed an assignment, as there would be unreasonable pauses when finishing up requests.
Technical elements don’t seem to click sometimes too. When Solara asked which of the three main paths I wanted to start with in the beginning, I selected Crafter. And… then she went through the whole spiel again and asked what path I wanted to follow. I needed to select Crafter a second time for it to stick. Things not quite registering seemed to be an issue before one patch! But one persistent problem I encountered is notification delays, which means I might get messages about things I gathered or could do pop up way after they should have, resulting in multiple notifications or very much out of place ones interrupting what I’d be doing.
Once time, after I placed a chest in my house, I got stuck to the house. As in my character didn’t seem to be touching the chest. They didn’t seem to be touching any walls. I had gone into the item placement menu and everything. But when I exited, I. Could. Not. Move. There’s supposed to be a button in the menu that helps if that happens, but it didn’t work, so I needed to completely exit, restart, and go back in (losing progress) to continue.
Speaking of completely restarting, Starsand Island crashes on the Switch 2! It crashes a lot! It did during my first fight against the Runebird, and I have no idea why! Maybe the Dive Attack broke the game? I’m not sure. When I went to talk to Zerine to start the Junior Crafter Trial, it crashed the first time. (It didn’t the second. Why? No idea!) One time, it crashed while I was going to bed for the evening and to save on the evening of the third day of Autumn. Fortunately, it didn’t corrupt my file. However, it also didn’t actually save, so I needed to do it all over again.
Starsand Island just isn’t ready to be played on the Switch 2 yet. I don’t think this is a permanent state of being! I think that, with time, Seed Sparkle Lab could get it to a point at which it won’t crash for inexplicable reasons or freak out if I try to do things like harvest crops or ride a bike. The farming sim needs more time. I recommend checking back in on it around October or November.
Starsand Island is available on the Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.
