Spirit of the Island is a cozy farming-sim game heavily inspired by Stardew Valley with the nice twist of setting up your own shop and have tourists come and buy your goods. The game in it's current state is great but not perfect.

Pros:
- Relaxing and Cozy
- 2-Player Co-op
- Cute Art Style
- Smooth Performance (I do however own a 3080ti)
- Gameplay loop is fun, just like Stardew Valley
- Shop and Tourist system is great fun :)
- Farming-Sim gamers will love this game
- Overall a good game to play with your significant other :)

Cons:
- No drag and drop system with the inventory system. Very awkward to use. It's not a deal breaker for me but it may be for others.
- NPC shops only last from 9am - 12pm in-game. It's too short, in my opinion.
- Map UI could use work. I find myself confused sometimes trying to look for buildings since they are not marked on the map only NPCs are. It'd be nice to have icons of every house including the cave, the pier, and the positions of the tourists.
- No Auto-Save, from what I know of. You need to sleep in your bed in order to save.
- No Widescreen Support.
- Using a Controller is very confusing and awkward to use. When I navigate the UI using a controller, I don't even know what I am selecting. Definitely needs work. However, devs have stated that they are working on it.

Overall:
Spirit of the Island for an early access, in my opinion is in a good state. It is at the very least playable with a good gameplay loop to keep players playing. However, despite all the positives I've mentioned it does struggle in the user interface department as Inventory management is awkward without a drag and drop and the map needs alot of work. At the time of this review, I haven't dug deeper into the mines or deeper into NPC relationships so I will update this review when I reach that phase in-game. This is one of my first few reviews and I hope it was helpful and read-able lol.

I love farming games. And I wanted to love Spirit of the Island. But this game needs some serious work. There's an idea here, but no heart.

This game's got the least friendly experience for new users where it tries to shovel a ton of 'how to play' windows down your throat one after another, after another, after another, until you bump into a bee hive and die of poisoning.

This game wins at having the worst menu interface known to gaming kind. I started with a game controller and that was a mistake. Figuring out keyboard after that was a chore, and trying to navigate the menus when you can bring up separate parts of them with several individual keyboard buttons is about as fun as trying to sort and delete the garbage in your inventory to make room without being able to drag the item to the trash can. Which means not fun at all.

Every character in town talks novels, and your responses are also so long that the words are gradually tinyfied to fit the box. This makes talking with anyone a chore. SSsssssoooommeeettiiimmmessss thhheeee wooordddsss aaareee elloonggaaaated fooorrr noooo rreeeeaaasssoon...

The town is a decent walk away from your home with an obnoxious loading screen in between that you'll experience a few thousand times. If you ever get tired in the game, you'll have to trudge at a slow pace for agonizing minutes of wasted time from wherever you tired out back to your house to sleep it off.

There's no drive; no real plot ladder to follow. Everything comes off as unbalanced and empty. Oh, there are little optional quests, but they're not linked to game progression so you'll be asked to get or find items that you have no chance of finding until later/off season and by not filling them (I couldn't find a way to cancel the quests) you wreck your reputation. And few and far between there are plot quests. I got as far as 'find the three books' in that regard, taking on a dungeon where I mobbed through monsters before getting hopelessly and unexpectedly 1hit KO'd at the end of it and losing all my money in the process.

That leaves me with.. what...? Aimlessly doing stuff. I guess I have enough to build a chicken coop. And I guess I can raise funds to get a boat... And I guess I can build an orchard and plant some cops... Put stuff in the museum. Get some tourists coming in. After a point I played and randomly asked myself, "Are you having fun"? I wasn't having fun. It felt mindless.


How this game could improve:

- Make the tutorial windows optional, or better yet just leave it on the side or in an off-game guide to look at if people don't figure out that moving = wsad or Action = A. Not everything needs to be explained. People can figure it out if it's not complicated. If there needs to be a tutorial, don't part it up into a hundred different popup windows.

- Ditch the controller and make it keyboard/mouse only.

- The inventory and menu should be less obnoxious. Make full menu access one button with the inventory forefront to the rest. Map on another button. Let items be dragged and/or pitched easier. Have a chest or three already at the house that aren't locked for the newbie to dump their items so they can have hands to make more items. Sometimes when I tried to build something, it didn't register I had items in the chest nearby (I believe it was 'building on the land' vs 'building at a station')

- Make dialogue shorter and to the point, at least as far as your replies are concerned. People shouldn't have to read novels in order to answer every little thing. It's boring, easier to blindly skip over, and turns kids away, who I'm guessing this game is geared towards.

- Balance the fighting, leveling, optional quests, etc. Make the earlier dungeons easy to defeat without 1hit or 2hit KO bosses so it's not as daunting. Remove the 'losing your cash when you die' punishment, or make it less steep at least earlier in the game, because both the quick-killing bosses and punishment are heavily unfair.

- Fast Travel to the Town and Home. If the charrie gets tired, have them fall asleep and wake up at home. This would be ok to fine, like 10% of a pouch, if you want to be a jerk about it. Honestly, losing a day and ending up at 25% health, or being drowsey the next day and losing energy faster is enough of a punishment without having a lose the money you made. Making you walk home is too much of a burden.

- Have a stronger plot flow that leads the player more easily from one stage to the next and keep it consistent all game. It's fine and all to have the freedom to do whatever, but having no direction is a game killer because the lack of objectives isn't fun.



To sum it up, Spirit of the Island is a farming game without spirit. It's a game, the premise is there, but all the fun is sucked out through a terrible interface and menu system, unbalanced playability, walls of dialogue, and an unfriendly entry with little direction. By time you join the 10% of players that get to the first island by boat, you'll quickly start to ask yourself what you're doing there. Why are you playing? Are you having fun at all? And if the answer is no, then it's ok to put the game down and pick up a different farming game for a while. Who knows, maybe the game will one day be tightened up and given enough ribbons, bows, and less-venomous bees that I'll be enticed to return and change my review.

Its a decent game but it shouldn't be advertised as a finished game!

Ok so after playing for several days i have to quit this game ad it is now .

These kinda games are supposed to be relaxing , but i was stressing the whole time doing daily stuffs.
- animals get hungry / thirsty too early .
- bucket are not stackable so more taken space from your already limited backpack
-staffs are useless, they dont milk the cows, collect eggs or any crops or products at all .
- the day is too short

I am backer so i wanted to give it a try, coz the game was beautiful when was shown at the kickstarter, but if the devs dont do something about the state of the game then i am not going to recommend it to anyone
.

Verdict: 3/10

I've played Spirit of the Islands with my boyfriend for a few hours, and at the beginning we did like the game. There is a lot to explore and art is very cutesty and cozy.

The reason I'm not recommending this game is because it is definetly not finished and it feels like it was made in a rush.
Firstly I encountered a bug where a tutorial pop-up got stuck on my screen, but managed to resolve it by disabling it. Additionally, there is no inventory space available, except for one player who can obtain extra space early on. Despite playing for five hours, we couldn't find or craft a backpack, which severely limits our ability to collect items.

Furthermore, the day and night cycle lacks a smooth transition. Instead of gradually transitioning from day to night like in most games, it abruptly turns dark. This inconsistency disrupts the immersion
The game also lacks clear instructions on obtaining certain items. Even the spirit wiki, doesn't know.

Building relationships with villagers doesn't offer any benefits either. Overall, the story and the villagers' interactions are lacking, contributing to the overall sense of the game being hastily put together.

I'm disappointed because I thought to have finally found a fun new multiplayer farming game, but unfortunately, Spirit of the Islands falls short of expectations.


Edit: forgot to mention, but even if you are hosting, if the person you are playing with leaves the game, you also get kicked out! So be sure to save beforehand!

This feels more like an early access than a ready game, which is a shame because there are some great ideas.
The controller support is not great to say the least, menus can be confusing, loading times when entering/exiting areas or buildings and it doesn't support ultrawide (that's not a big deal).
I'll update my review if those issues get fixed.

This game is off to a great start! for people that love Stardew valley this will be easy to jump into. My Wife and I started a co-op game together and are enjoying it so far.

Note to the Developers
- In co-op there is only one set of tools to start maybe consider placing two sets for both people
- Days seem extremely short and i have to rush to get stuff done before dark. the game is perfect to relax and play but the short days somewhat ruin that.

Ok, so! I play a stupid amount of farming sims. It's my favorite genre. I was really hesitant to get this after reading some of the discussions and comments. I'm glad I decided to go for it. A lot of the things people complain about here and there don't seem to exist as issues anymore.

I don't really understand how anyone struggles with inventory management...? Just make chests! You get two full bars of inventory space to start which is more than some games I've played and chests are very cheap/easy to craft. You can put them wherever you want too. If you're familiar with farming sims at all you really shouldn't struggle with anything here. Apparently you can get bigger bags later but I haven't really bothered trying to find anything like that yet.

You can save whenever you want and sleep for only a couple of hours or more which is nice for fast forwarding crafting. The graphics are adorable, it feels good on controller, and it runs great on the Steamdeck. I don't know if people are just being nitpicky or if they've patched in some fixes but everything seems good so far.

---
After playing a few more hours I am absolutely loving this game. Great job devs! I love how the shop works already and I just barely got the first little stand. Here are some things that other games in this genre could learn from you:

- Chests can be moved even when they have stuff in them. Crafting stations can also pull from chests which I always love to see.
- When turning chests they have a lid animation so you can easily tell what way they're facing. Great attention to detail on this one very thoughtful.
- Fishing doesn't make me want to unalive myself
- No rush or time gating. The stamina/sleep system is really chill and I'd love to see more devs implement something similar. This set a new standard for me for sleep mechanics in this genre tbh.
- Eating/drinking exists but it doesn't feel bad or like a constant chore
- It doesn't spend hours drip feeding tools and dragging you through tedious cutscenes. You're given a pretty full kit right up front and the freedom to play with it
- Veggies etc rotting doesn't feel great at first but you learn to be careful with what you grow and not to pick things until you're ready to use or sell them. You also get tons of free crop seeds just for smacking grass around so it doesn't feel like a huge loss if you accidentally let something spoil.
- If there must be a stamina system, this is a good one. It's forgiving and very easy to manage. I think people were being dramatic or they updated it because town doesn't seem that terribly far and sprinting feels pretty fast.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME FOR CO-OP!!!!! My wife and I purchased this game, and were confused why we couldn't progress in the story. It turns out, they gutted most of the single-player game, and you don't get most of the "cool" interactions, or story, or explanations on how to even play certain parts of the game! You get this mission that can't be unlocked until late game as your next mission, and its the next mission after the tutorial! I have no idea how the single-player is, because I buy these games to enjoy them with my wife....but saying they have a co-op is a disgrace.

I have 17+ Hours and purchased the game after playing the Demo. It is cute and has a unique take on a tycoon/star dew/story of seasons genre. However, the price is a bit much for the content I received.During the 17 hours I only farmed, have chickens,cows and did some villager requests. All quests I have been given I was told, I would be able to complete at a later time...so I spent so much time running around trying to find these items thinking it was in the game. I visited three islands and only met monsters and a few chests..nothing else was there. The main story didn't progress after being told why I was at the island. I built the staff house and stall but then was told after I spent a full season trying to figure out how to hire, that it will be released later.......June 2022 as per the road map. Which leaves me..farming and selling my crops at the one trader in town. I have completed all the content that is available in early access which isn't much more compared to the demo.
I am going to wait a few months for the other content to come out and play again. But for the price they are asking and the really limited content. I do not recommend picking up the game at the moment.