I don't like cozy games, but this Xbox Game Pass freebie has changed my mind

I’m not a huge fan of ‘cosy games’. While I have enjoyed Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I’ve basically skipped all of the other major cosy game releases that have been released over the years.

From Fields of Mistria to Disney Dreamlight Valley, A Short Hike to Harvest Moon, I recognise that these games may indeed have a good design, but I know deep in my heart that they’re not for me.

This changed for me recently when I played Starsand Island at its 1.0 release earlier this month. I’d heard good things about the game when my colleague Kate wrote about it earlier this year.

“Starsand Island is exactly what I’ve claimed it to be in previous previews. It’s the very best of Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and The Sims, with a flavouring of Studio Ghibli thrown in, but it’s also something completely original,” she wrote in her 10/10 early access review.

“Starsand Island’s depth of offering places it leagues above its competitors making it, for me, the new poster child of the cosy gaming space. I’ll be championing it until the rest of the world catches on, but I have a feeling that won’t take very long.”

With that I thought, okay I’ll give this a try. There are so many cosy games releasing nowadays which I feel try to capitalise on the Stardew Valley hype, that having something which is also touted as being completely original is something that got me to download it on my PC.

Read More: I bought Animal Crossing to improve my mental health – it did the opposite

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Starsand Island is fun for those who don't usually play cosy games

Being a fan of sandbox games that are often rooted in more action-adventure or stealth genres, one thing I wanted from my next cosy game experience was to have something that gave me a little more freedom in being able to do what I want, when I wanted to do it.

It’s these features which made me bounce off Animal Crossing for a time, where you only have a limited number of actions to do per day, and must wait until the next day (or time travel) to be able to continue playing. While it was nice to spread out the experience over a series of weeks or months, it did become frustrating to have to wait an entire day if you wanted to move a house or bridge around.

I had the same feeling with Stardew Valley, with the game’s energy system zapping all the fun out of the game when I spent basically my entire time farming or going after a certain type of resource, that I was unable to focus on the aspects which I enjoyed more.

Meanwhile, Starsand Island had that “just five more minutes” feeling that I often get with sandbox games. I really like the professions system, where the game doesn’t necessarily pigeonhole you into one style of gameplay but rather you can play the game however you want, whether that’s as a farmer tending to your crops, or as an explorer which does offer more of an action-adventure approach.

In some ways, it’s a good middle ground between a game that takes some time to get going before you understand it, like Stardew Valley, and another where the onboarding feels far too simplistic, like Animal Crossing. Here, I can focus on what I want to focus on, without it feeling too overwhelming to learn the systems.

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As a fan of Studio Ghibli, and as someone who has occasionally dumped a load of hours into games like Genshin Impact, the anime-like aesthetic of Starsand Island is quite easy to get on board with. The game boasts a colourful, dreamlike visual style that is soft on the eyes, and I really like that it does feel like something concocted from the mind of Isao Takahata.

Whether or not Starsand Island is for you, that depends. Like I say, I’m not completely cosy-pilled like a lot of gamers are, so I have fewer points of comparison to make. To someone who plays a lot of cosy games, it could be that this game has a lot of flaws that I’m not seeing, simply because I’m less aware of the genre’s shortcomings than others are.

But, I can confidently say that as a newcomer to more cosy games outside of the Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing zeitgeist, Starsand Island has acted as a bridge for me to go and check out more games I’ve been missing out on. It's not going to move mountains, but it does exactly what it sets out to do. And really, that's about all we should ask of games.

Starsand Island is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2.