Coral Island Early Access is a diamond in the rough
Coral Island from Stairway Games has just this second released into early access, bringing with it a new and hopeful lease of life to an oversaturated genre. It has everything that makes up most farming sims nowadays: romance options, crafting and tools to improve your farm, and an ancient mystery that may just save the crumbling town from despair.
If you’ve played a farming sim game lately, you may think ‘eh, that’s a bit too familiar’, but trust me when I say that Coral Island has more than enough of everything to pull you in. You start off your adventure by heading to the island, and not just on any ordinary boat, but one that oozes charm and has a chicken for a head. It’s a small thing to include in the grand scheme of things, but its little details like these that makes your first steps into a brand new world actually feel inviting.
Once you’ve met the mayor and settled in on the island, you’ll be met with the familiar stomping ground of clearing up your farm, with other content being drip-fed to you as you learn the mechanics. In this way, the game feels like it’s holding your hand at times and if you’re someone who loves farming sims to the point that you know them like the back of your hand, it can feel as though you’re being held back. That should be somewhat expected considering Coral Island is in early access, but if you like to speedrun things then you’ll need to learn some patience. Coral Island doesn’t just want you to do everything at once, it wants you to relax, too – even if that can easily turn into tedium.
Even so, there’s a lot to explore on the island and much like Stardew Valley, you’re not really told what to do outside of a few quests to guide you through gameplay mechanics. While you slowly open up the world though, there’s still plenty to do with my major pass-time in these moments being exploration, harvesting, and my personal favourite: trying to find everyone to talk to. Because let me tell you something, there are so many NPCs on this island that I can’t tell whether I should be surprised or terrified about the scope Stairway Games has for this game. There are at least 70 different people, and I’ve not even met all of them still and, considering there are a number of hearts underneath their names, it looks like there will be heart events too. Good god, this game is going to be huge.
The huge scope doesn’t just go for the characters either, because the underlying intrigue hints of a story that doesn’t just deal with ecological disaster, but the impact capitalism has on nature and the people of Coral Island. Before the arrival of the player character, an oil spill that threatens complete destruction to life and the island’s residents has no choice but to sell off artefacts in order to help clear it. This has left the island bare of anything that makes it worth visiting and as to be expected, their star rating has dropped considerably. The island is in trouble and Pufferfish, an oil rig company, knows it.
With the threat of Pufferfish on the horizon, players are encouraged to find a way to save the island from being transformed into an oil town. How isn’t really explained at first and we don’t want to spoil the story completely but expect a combination of magic, nature and the power of friendship.
Speaking of friendship, you are able to get closer to the town’s inhabitants and give them gifts in order to raise your relationship with them, signified by the numerous hearts that you can see under their names. Some characters are already in established relationships, but there are plenty that are single and ready to mingle as long as you put the work in to get to know them. I didn’t get too far into any sort of relationship to really comment, but considering the number of romance options? It looks like there’ll be something for everyone.
Being in early access, there were a few things that made me grit my teeth and do my utmost to carry on. During my time with Coral Island I had several crashes, these mostly occurred during the diving activity and unfortunately meant I would often lose a day’s worth of progress. It got to the point that it was that annoying to have to redo everything that I mostly left the diving activity alone, a shame too considering the amount of salvageable goods you can find there. I also got stuck inside a few houses sometimes, which was funny for the first few minutes before I realized I would, once again, lose a day’s worth of progress due to the lack of a save system.
I also wasn’t a huge fan of having to constantly bring up the in-game menu up and scroll through various other menus just to get to the map. While it doesn’t really matter in the long run (particularly because I grew to not need the map in the first place), it felt like an added obstacle to a feature that sounds so simple.
Yet even with these serious growing pains, I can’t say that my time with Coral Island was a negative one. When I wasn’t farming and harvesting, I was fishing and catching bugs to add to the museum or sell to the general store, and when I wasn’t doing that I was diving and breaking geodes and trying desperately to make enough money to upgrade my house so I could cook. There were moments of tedium, whether because I had to wait for something, or because I’d finished my tasks for the day, but I never found myself bored.
Are there more than a few things that could be improved? Absolutely, but the game has far more positives going for it. Its gorgeous art-style for one, the amount of things it has for you to do, and the clear love and dedication that’s been put into creating a diverse and inclusive world…
Even if you’re not into farming sim games, Coral Island is still a game to watch out for. It just needs a bit more of time in the oven before you should sit and chow down on what it has to offer.
Coral Island (Early Access) is available to play now on Steam.
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