If you love Stardew Valley, there’s a good chance Coral Island is already on your radar – but if not, it absolutely should be, and now this fantasy-tinged life sim is ready for launch. Having already racked up an impressive 91% positive Steam rating during early access, developer Stairway Games has now set the Coral Island release date for November, with a whole raft of new features inbound for the full release.
Coral Island is a deliberately laid-back island life sim with beautiful visuals and a fun cast of characters, and promises to be a fine addition to the best farming games in 2023. It blends relatively standard, everyday farm management and social interaction with more fantastical elements that could have come straight out of Disney movies. You’ll meet mermaids and friendly talking sharks in its waters, and go toe-to-toe with trolls in its caves.
With a robust character creator and a diverse cast of characters to make friends with, pets to adopt, and of course plenty of dating options that can go all the way to marriage and raising a family together, Coral Island has all the trappings you’d want and then plenty more on top, which has secured it a ‘very positive’ 91% rating on Steam since its launch in early access just over a year ago, with 6,767 reviews at the time of writing.
Coral Island 1.0 includes a pretty big update, with plenty of additional content from the early access version including a storyline that will have you helping the townsfolk to revitalize Coral Island. You’ll be able to customize your house inside and out, adopt a pet (including several ‘mythical’ options, if you can find them), explore the full diving and mining regions, and take part in eight seasonal festivals.
With how much is being introduced in the full version of the game, Stairway Games notes that you won’t be able to carry over your early access save to version 1.0. However, if you load your early access save and reset it, you can carry over all the gold you earned in a ‘new game plus’ mode. You’ll also be able to access the early access version of the game to check in on your old farm until Thursday, February 1, 2024.
The Coral Island release date for version 1.0 is Tuesday, November 14, 2023, on Steam, alongside Xbox and PlayStation consoles. The Switch version is currently targeted to arrive in 2024, so if you wish to switch to a Steam key you can request a change from the developer until Wednesday, November 1.
The price will also be increasing slightly when 1.0 arrives, so if you’re already sold you may want to jump on ahead of launch. Coral Island is currently priced at $24.99 / £19.99, but developer Stairway Games says the suggested price “will increase to $29.99 upon the release of 1.0 to reflect the breadth of content the game will offer.” If you’re tempted to grab it, you can get Coral Island on Steam.
Looking for more of the most relaxing games on PC? We’ve got plenty of wonderful ways to melt the stress away, along with more of the best life games to live out your digital fantasies.