Spirit Of The Island Preview: If You Build It...

Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Hokko Life and now Spirit Of The Island; we’re spoilt for choice on some of the best lifestyle games available at the moment. 

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Like Hokko Life, Spirit Of The Island is currently in the Early Access stage, but a playable demo was on show (and available at the time of writing) during the Steam Next Fest. If you’re not one for reading, let me tell you it has a lot more potential than expected and one to watch.

From 1M Bits Horde (a solo dev!) and publishers META Publishing (Biped), you find yourself arriving on a beautiful island with an abundance of natural resources for you to craft your own little paradise.

Spirit Of The Island Preview

As appears to be the goal in many of these games now, you need to make it a desirable destination so that it encourages tourists, a.k.a. money to the area, allowing you to expand or clearing off down the pub enjoying early retirement.

After creating a custom character from a few options (alas, no beards on show), you set off to the derelict home your parents have left you to do up and make it your own. Derelict is a bit harsh as it’s a perfectly sound property, but you need to clean up before renovating.

In the Spirit Of The Island demo, you’re pretty spoilt for choice in locations – at least for a demo. The first task is to build a bridge into town; alas, you can’t make it yourself, just source the materials for the local carpenter.

Handy

From the outset, you can equip a pickaxe, axe, hammer and more, allowing you to cut down trees, wear high heels, suspenders and a bra. The hammer doesn’t fix stuff up, but it will enable you to craft items from the gear you source.

In my short time on the island, I accumulated a great deal of material, cleared up the local area, hacked some crabs with a machete and checked out the local pier. Upon my return to the bridge, the carpenter completed the work overnight, but that’s when the demo ended – well, you can stay and fiddle with the items on show.

Spirit Of The Island is as pleasant as one could imagine, but the options available at the start makes this a contender for our time. With the restrictions lifted or further tasting the Early Access model, I could imagine spending a lot more time at my place, affectionately named Dave.

Check out a teaser here.

In the event I get my hands on the Early Access, I’ll report my findings here.