Coral Island Game Review

Coral Island is a farming and life simulator game developed by Stairway Games and published by Humble Games in 2023. As many people have noted, it’s very similar to the extremely popular Stardew Valley, but it takes some of its elements up a notch and expands upon them. Let’s see if this cozy, relaxing game is worth your time or not. 

Storyline

Coral Island begins with your character arriving on the island and into the Starlet Town. Your character’s grandmother owned a farm there and left it to them — and the character used to live there too before they moved to Pokyo. Everyone is kind of confused why the character would come back since the island is in trouble financially. 

You’re met by the mayor and a few more characters who help you set up and introduce you to the main elements of the game. Soon enough, you’ll find that the island has suffered an oil spill and it’s been affecting its waters for a long time. The town rallied to collect money to clean it up, which is why there are no artifacts on display in the museum and why most of the shops are closed or failing. 

There’s an oil digging company threatening to buy out the town and remake it into an oil town, so your job is basically to help the island get back to its former glory and raise its rating from F to S (or wherever you can get it). 

As mentioned, the story is pretty standard for this type of game. There’s always a character coming back from a big city to a small town and trying to save it, so you won’t find anything surprising there. I did like the eco element of it and the overall effort of the developers to make everything in the game sustainable and wholesome. 

Gameplay

In Coral Island, you get a certain amount of Stamina every day. It gets higher the more you play, but you’ll spend it easily if you opt for diving or clearing out your lot. Walking, dashing or simply existing don’t spend any stamina, but most other things do. You can replenish it throughout the day by eating food, which you can either craft or buy at different restaurants and shops on Coral Island. 

The game will remind you when your Stamina is low. If you let it get to zero, you’ll pass out, wake up in your house and will have to pay a medical bill. The same thing happens when you stay out too late (after midnight). 

You’ll wake up each day at 6am — but most shops don’t open until 9am, so you have those “3 hours” to tend to your farm or get started on any activities. Most shops are also closed on certain days, so try to memorize this and plan your activities accordingly. 

There’s in-game currency which you can use to buy food, seeds, upgrade your tools,home, etc. It’s pretty easy to earn, but also easy to spend. You’ll also have limited space in your bag, which you can increase at the general store. The first two rows of your items will appear on the screen and you can toggle between them to use them when necessary. 

Character Customization

The first thing you’ll do in the game is design your character. I found the customization options sufficient since you’re not seeing much of your character’s face anyway. You can choose gender, hairstyle, eye color, shape of facial features, outfit, etc. 

You can later customize some of these elements, as the different shops open in town. I don’t care much about customization in these types of games — but if you do, you might find the options lacking. 

Farming 

Obviously, there’s farming. At the beginning, you’re given some basic tools, which you’ll have to use to clear up the area. There are a bunch of trees, rocks, grass and trash on your lot, so before you can plant, you need to dig these up. This will also give you resources to craft things or upgrade your home. If you don’t need resources, you can sell them too.

Once you do that, you can grow plants. You’ll get some seeds to start with, but you’ll need to buy everything else at the general store. After you harvest your crops, the plants will be gone, and you’ll need to get more seeds. They come in a wide variety, usually depending on the season. 

Since the seeds are pretty expensive (in my opinion), I sincerely recommend using wild seeds. I made a mistake of throwing them away the first few times because I thought only grass would grow out of them — but it turns out, they grow into actual plants. And some of them don’t disappear after you harvest. 

So, wild seeds can save you tons of money. Plus, I really liked not knowing what would grow. 

To make sure your plants grow (and don’t dry up), you’ll need to water them. At first, you’ll only be able to use the watering can, but you can craft a sprinkler later. Keep in mind that you don’t need to do this if it’s raining. And to get them to bronze or higher quality, you’ll need to use the fertilizer, which you can also buy, but will be able to craft later. To keep the crows away, craft a scarecrow and place it near your seeds. 

Overall, I found the farming aspect underwhelming. Especially since it felt like I didn’t need to do it at all. You can get plants and other things by foraging and sell those instead. In all my hours of playing Coral Island, I didn’t need more than a few patches of dug up land, so the huge lot felt unnecessary. 

It would have been better if the plants were more permanent — that way, you would actually need the whole lot and would still need to take care of these plants through different seasons. 

Foraging

As mentioned, you can forage items and sell them for profit. If you explore the world, you’ll find many flowers, bugs, or even fruit and vegetables. If you start diving, you’ll be able to harvest fish, sea creatures, shells, and more from the ocean — and all of these items have a relatively high price. Which is especially great when they come at almost no cost to you. 

You can earn tons of money just by foraging and clearing up different areas. For example, hay (which you can get anywhere, very easily), is enough to give you about a 1000 in-game currency a day, depending on how much you collect. 

House Decor & Upgrades

Once you collect enough wood and stone, you can go to the carpenter to upgrade your home. At the beginning, you’ll only have a bed and a small room, but you can buy furniture and expand later so that your home looks like other homes in the area. For design inspiration, you can enter most homes and explore their rooms (depending on your relationship with them). 

To buy furniture, you can go to the furniture shop and buy it, but house upgrades usually require only wood and stone (and other resources). 

Fantasy Elements

Once you start exploring, you’ll run into these trees where you’ll be able to awaken spirits. If you follow that mission, you’ll soon unlock the teleporting feature, and you’ll also be able to interact with the spirits, the gods, and more. 

You’ll also meet mermaids if you keep exploring and cleaning up the ocean. 

Cleaning up The Ocean 

One of the most interesting missions, at least to me, was exploring and cleaning up the ocean. You’ll get the diving equipment from the lab NPCs and from there, you can dive anytime you want. The bottom of the ocean is full of trash and oil spill roots, which you can clean up with your scythe. 

Somewhere under the trash, there are magical golden essences which you can activate and they will clean up the oil spill in increments. This gets a bit grindy, I have to say, but it’s also fun because you have a chance to also find treasure chests. 

The treasure chests contain artifacts which you can place in the museum (and boost town rank) or sell them in your shop if you have duplicates. 

It’s also kind of satisfying to clean up the ocean and make it look nice again. You also get to meet some mermaids, so that’s fun!

Town Events

Sometimes, you’ll get a message in your inbox that there’s a town event. If you decide to go, just follow the instructions to get there and activate the event. You’ll spend the whole day on it, which is annoying, but it gives you merit and some rewards, as well as a relationship boost with various characters. 

I’m not a huge fan of these events, but then again, I wasn’t really interested in the social aspect of the game. I just wanted to explore and do my own thing. If you do enjoy the social/dating aspect of these types of games, then you’ll likely love the events. 

Relationships

There are more than 70 NPCs in the game and 28 of them are available for romance. But the game allows you to also build relationships outside of romance. 

Once you reach 10 hearts with someone, you can marry them, and once you reach 15, you can have children. The way to get hearts is by giving presents and following what NPCs like or dislike. For example, if the NPC you want to romance is into animals and saving them, you should do that. You can also get hearts by talking to the NPCs, though you can’t really respond to anything they say.

Overall, I didn’t care for this aspect of the game. I liked that there’s a lot of NPCs and the world felt populated. The NPCs do feel like unique and interesting people with their own relationships to each other. For example, you’ll meet and be able to romance Antonio who was married to Suki (who you can also romance) and has a daughter. 

But the problem is that you can’t really interact with these characters other than giving them presents. If you could really speak to them, that would be fun maybe, but the way it is, you as a player feel mostly outside of it all. 

Misc

• You can run errands for different characters and that gives you money and merit. 
• You can offer gifts to the temple and get various rewards. 
• Crafting allows you to use up your resources and get things that might be too expensive to buy otherwise. 
• You can mine and get gold and other ores to upgrade your weapons or sell them. Be careful as there are monsters to fight in the mines (though they are easy to beat with the sword). 
• There’s another mission in the mines, to free the elemental spirits. 

Graphics and Audio

I really liked the graphics of Coral Island — they’re cartoony and colorful. However, what I liked even more are the drawings of characters that pop up when you speak to them. The art style is really beautiful (much more than the regular art of the game) and I almost wish the entire game was done in that style. 

As for the audio, there isn’t much to say. I liked the sound effects like the rain and typing that happens when characters speak, but other than that, there isn’t much to speak of. There isn’t any voice acting and the soundtrack is largely unremarkable. 

Does Coral Island work on Steam Deck?

Yes, Coral Island works on SteamDeck — and very well, in my opinion. I didn’t have any issues and the controls are very easy to grasp, most of them being on the gamepad instead of the touchpad, which I loved. 

Games Like Coral Island

Whether you liked Coral Island and want more of the same or you didn’t and want something with the same vibes, but not quite the same gameplay, here are some great games for you to pick up next. 

And a few honorable mentions: 

• Roots of Pacha
• Disney Dreamlight Valley
• Rusty’s Retirement
• Echoes of The Plum Grove

FAQs