love love love, it so cute and amazing cozy games, second of my favorite

Coral Island is so much like Stardew Valley that it is pretty much impossible not to compare the two. If you have played SV, you will never be lost or confused in CI. There are bundles to complete, townies to meet, and something else that rhymes with the last two.

Really, CI is literally just SV. Although there will be places that CI TRIES to improve on the SV formula, there is just a general feel of CI being overall weaker than SV in terms of quality, longevity, and progression.


If there is one category where Coral Island absolutely cooked, it is in their character designs. On the store page, you can see all 28 (!) NPCs you can marry, and wow, the artists really ate. If you wanna buy this game just for those hotties, I wouldn’t be surprised. Plus, there are still all the non-marriable NPCs who look just as good, if not greater. Compare these people to Stardew NPCs, and I fear Coral Island clears those, relatively speaking, frauds.

But, note that I am speaking entirely from a visual standpoint. I am praising CI’s designs, not their characterization. Let me tell you, actually speaking to these NPCs… oh man…

All these mfs are the same! Everyone is so nice, caring, and boring! Where are the oddballs and meanies like Shane, Haley, Emily, Clint, and Pam? Where are the scandals like Lewis x Marnie and Abigail (probably) being a daughter of infidelity? Let me tell you, you’re not gonna find any juicy drama in Coral Island - both because everyone is so nice and because their heart events are so… nothing!

I was looking forward to the heart events for my townie of choice, Zarah, but it was just so boring! Here’s the summary of Zarah’s heart events up to Rank 8. For context, Zarah is a sort of adventuring, outdoorsy, independent type.

2 Hearts
Zarah saves you from some scary, life threatening slimes. My hero.
What I learned from this event: Zarah can fight.

4 Hearts
You find Zarah eating lunch in the forest. Some cats turn up and we learn that Zarah is allergic to cats.
What I learned from this event: Zarah eats outside and is allergic to cats…?

6/7/8 Hearts
A multi-part story about solving a pirate’s riddle, going on a treasure hunt, and donating the loot to the town.
What I learned from this event: Zarah likes to go on adventures and is a good person. Didn’t we already know this stuff?

I haven't seen her 10 heart event so I can't speak to it. Either way, Zarah’s heart events are just not engaging. My opinion on Zarah has not changed, I don’t see her any differently… What’s the point? But let’s compare Zarah to our favourite gamer girl Abigail, who wishes to be an adventurer just like Zarah is. Below is what we learn/gain from Abigail’s heart events:

We get to play a video game with her
We have a duet on a rainy day
We learn that abigail wants to be an adventurer, so she’s practicing her swordplay
We use a ouija board with her and learn she has feelings for us
We comfort her after an encounter in the caves
Abigail saves us from a monster (reminds me of someone...)

So, in our time with Abigail, we learn that she is a musician, gamer, and wannabe adventurer. Then, at the end, we see her grow into a REAL adventurer who has become confident enough to defend YOU, her partner. Wow! Beautiful! Mwah, cinema. Now, I haven’t seen nearly as many heart events in CI as I have in SV, but I can tell you with 99% certainty that the rest of CI’s heart events are similarly boring.

In terms of characterization, Stardew Valley beats Coral Island, by a lot.


Progression is totally skewed in Coral Island. Year 1 Spring will feel pretty much identical to Stardew. Water your plants, go scavenging, chat with NPCs, go mining (or ocean cleaning) on rainy days. But the problem shows its face around Year 1 Summer/Fall. Rainy days are great in SV, but in CI they are TOO good. See why below…

If you would, picture in your mind Stardew Valley’s sprinklers. Copper AND iron bars to water only 4 crops? Terrible! Might as well skip those! But iron and gold for 8 crops? Now we’re talking. But it’ll take you a while to get those bars when gold is so far away. Then there’s the iridium sprinkler! 24 crops! But the catch is that you need iridium, hence the name.. And those are inside skull cavern… which is blocked by unlocking the bus… and you have to wait for Pam to show up… It’ll be a while before you’ve fully automated watering in Stardew, and once you do get that, it’s basically GG. Keep this in mind.

Now, let’s look at how Coral Island does sprinklers. First, sprinkler materials are found in ocean cleanup, not the mines. I mean, the ocean is functionally an underwater mine, whatever. Wait, actually, the ocean is much faster than the mines because you clear trash (rocks) with an AOE swing. And the ocean isn’t procedurally generated, nor does the trash respawn. So that means you can revisit areas you’ve cleared and it’ll be filled with materials that you can grab. And the materials respawn daily. Okay, I guess that means you can get the equivalent of gold pretty easily. Oh, actually, an equivalent of skull cavern doesn’t exist. Iridium in Coral Island is literally found next door to gold. There is nothing stopping you from having Iridium tier sprinklers.

But wait! There’s more! Cast your mind back to SV, where copper and iron make a dinky little 4 crop sprinkler. That poopy sprinkler doesn’t exist in Coral Island! Those cheap coppers and irons make the 8 crop sprinkler! What! So that means iron and gold makes… a 24 crop sprinkler!? And… and!! Gold and iridium makes an EIGHTY (80! 9x9!) crop sprinker!? WHAT! Do I need to tell you how FAST this progression is? I was fully automated in sprinklers in Y1 Fall, and I didn’t even have the 9x9 sprinklers! I probably could’ve been automated in Summer! Now I’m halfway through Y1 Winter, and I'm wondering what to do in Y2? What are my goals? I am literally going to be a multi-millionaire in Y2, and I have not seen anything more expensive than ~40k.

Anyway, automation of watering is achieved WAY too fast when everything else in the game moves at the same speed of Stardew Valley. Additionally, through ocean cleanup, you can permanently upgrade the quality of everything you harvest on your farm. That's crops, animal products, and tree produce. This results in very high amounts of gold/iridium quality items... $$$


I'm running out of space:
Coral Island has virtually no modding scene
There are no alternate farm maps. Combined with no mods results in very little reason to replay, for me.
I’ve encountered more bugs in CI than I have in SV
There’s a fast travel system introduced early in the game which greatly cuts down on travel time. What does that mean? More time to get sprinklers!
1.0 release wasn’t actually a finished product. You might notice that the 1.1 update was titled: “Story Finale: Land and Sea”
Multiplayer is going to be added at some point


If you’re looking for a version of Stardew valley minus the ‘effort’ or ‘stress’, don’t buy Coral Island. Just install some Stardew mods to make it easier. If you’re looking to mingle with the hotties in Coral Island, just be content with looking at their pictures on the store page, because they have the depth of a cardboard cutout.
I’ve tried a LOT of farm/life sim type games, and, frankly, Stardew is still the peak of this genre. Coral island does get up there in my rankings, but everything just feels bad compared to Stardew. If Stardew Valley didn’t exist, Coral Island wouldn’t either, but just imagine if Coral Island still did. If that were the case, I would give Coral Island a thumbs up, but when Stardew Valley is right there… yeah.

Great graphics, gameplay and stuff. but the progression feels so damn terrible. never seen such a bad unintiutive game design. so i cant recommend this game for people who are having a problem or dont want to look stuff up on the internet.

the game does not respect your lifetime you invest in this, not in the slightest.

Or the longer version:

The game is really bad in explaining stuff, most stuff is locked behind other later stuff at different locations/events in a combination with season bound stuff for "main story quests" so if you miss it, because you dont know it, because its not explained anywhere (example are the "secret unlocks" which comes from goddess if you unlock x amount of sets and even the description of one full set bonus is wrong, because you get it from something else).
and you cant know it, if you dont look at external resources, and then you miss it and then you can wait another year, feels like progress lock for main story line. the need to look at a wiki/reddit or other sources feels more and more requiered the later the games goes on. there are no hints, npc hints or whatever that would help for many things on how to get xy, because there are no tooltips/etc for what unlocks what or where.

and there are wrong tooltips on top. one example for one item without spoiler: tooltip says "use it at the location x" a) there is no such location in the game and b) you can use the item from everywhere

And its even worse. stuff like marriage where you have to "watch all cutscenes from that person" without any hints where to see the next cutscene, at what number of cutscene you are or how many are there. you max out the hearts you buy the ring and games says only "no i dont want marriage" no hints on why. and then the trigger points are time bound, place bound and sometimes weather bound too. this goes for way too many things. so many events are work in that way. even main quests, without any word on where you have to go next or why the next quests is not triggered and on top the trigger points are sometimes way off. as example: "go to the entrance off" the cutscene trigger is not in the front of the entrance, its a longer distance away from the door on the street and on top buggy sometimes, so it triggers only if you run over it from a specific direction. had this where it only worked if i ran from right to the left over that spot, no other direction (and no it wasnt bound to time).

there are times where i didnt had any quest in my log for many hours, had to look in the wiki if i am done with the story or not, because nothing happened or triggered.. its so damn bad game design for that part of the game. and i dont understand why there isnt a filler quest like "wait for new events" which is a tiny indicator that there are more quests or whatever.. and this is the case for mainstory and sidestories.

beside some other bugs, like performance which gets more worse the longer you play. on top from small freezes/stutters if the game loads areas. longer and longer loading screens. more short freezes when normal running later in the game even if only on farm (at the beginng every 30sec, the time where i stopped every 3-4secs). had a bug where i used my skillpoint and the skill didnt unlock but the point was gone. had to restart the day. with larger/more fields and more animals, every morning i have a big slowdown for around 20secs and if the auto harvest is runnings its a freeze.. with gtx3090&amd5900x. and if this is not enough, there is a memory leak so i have to restart my game every x amount of ingame days.

and the worst for the progression:
the requirement to fully finish the museum with all items to see the full story is a really bad decisions.. museums should be optional for achievement/extra unlocks whatever. and here you need super random stuff where you need to grind mining and stuff and hope that you get lucky to get the stuff in a okayish time span, because of opening geodes and stuff with random outcome and no drop buff for missing items. its so damn bad design decision. and later on there are gacha machines with treasure maps you maybe want (super expensive, only 5 pulls per day, multi item pools, duplicates common) and then as reward for a map you get a seed as example, which you can buy in the shop at the beginning (dont know if there are other rewards, but this stopped me from getting the other one) this and other things feeling like baking a super expensive cake in real life which take the whole day and getting a glas water as the reward.

this is on a whole other level of pain, i would call it mental torture and i played most grindy farming/factory/idle/clicker/incremental games. it was hard to give up on this after the already spend amount of time, but it got worse and worse the further i got near the end.

there was no sign of light. the rewards for the grinds became ridiculous after 80-90% done with the game, like getting items you can pick up from the ground in large quantities as a reward for a grind you spent hours on. and this goes for nearly all grinds and not only a single exception.