Coral Island (2023)

Early impressions:

• For a farming sim, the town is huge. I would've personally preferred a smaller town where I could easily find any building/character, but it's starting to grow on me as it gives the game a more realistic feel.

• This is the first farming sim I've played where the town has a modern look and feel to it. I love rural aesthetics, but it's a nice change.

• The game is very laid-back. I'm free to do whatever I feel like (and there are a lot of different things to do), and I'm not constantly feeling like I'm missing out or lagging behind, which is great.

• I love the visuals. It's cartoony but not too much - still more realistic than most farming sims out there. And I just love fixed/isometric camera.

• All the characters are beautifully designed, in my opinion. I find most of the bachelorettes to be very cute. And I wish Bree was single.

After this week, I'm going to have a lot more free time (as it'll be summer break) to finally get back to some JRPGs. In the meantime, this has been great to play for an hour or so in the evenings over the past week.

I just hit summer last night (and lost a ton of spring crops that weren't ready to harvest before end of spring, ughhh). I love how the characters all change outfits for the season.

One of my favorite things about this has been the NPC interactions that you'll sometimes walk into. At first I thought they were going to trigger quests, but they're legit just you walking by and witnessing a conversation between some NPCs as a little cutscene. Definitely adds life to the characters and game overall.

I'm also really enjoying the diving. It is a little tedious to just be hacking away at trash to clear the areas, but the underwater map is really pretty and I feel good saving the coral, haha.

Money is still a struggle at this point. Crops obv take several days to grow, and the foraging stuff is better for crafting or holding onto for energy than making money. Everything is so expensive. I've upgraded my bag twice (at 1000 and 3500 coral or whatever the currency is supposed to be) and only did like one other thing that cost 2k (upgrading crop value at the lab) and that took all of spring to manage. I did kinda just derp around a little bit, and energy is a consistent issue. But it feels very similar to Wylde Flowers in that sense, as that took the better part of the year to really get money coming in. But there are clothes I wanna buy and they're all so expensive. :c Been in these overalls for a month.

I finally picked this up to play on my Steam Deck the other day. Having a great time so far. Lots of diversity and inclusiveness, ton of goals to meet (the museum, friendship levels, town rating, merit points, leveling up your various skills like farming, foraging, etc.), and plenty to do.

It's yet another sim game with a sped up clock, but you can adjust between 50%-100% in the settings. I haven't timed how long 50% actually gives you, but I'm definitely keeping it there. I tend to run out of energy before I'm ready to end a day anyway, so looking forward to steadily building stamina and being able to refill that without just eating random flowers and mushrooms that I'd prefer to keep for crafting.

I'm on like the 11th or 12th day. The cherry blossom festival was really cute.