Among the many recent games following in the Stardew Valley mold, Coral Island is perhaps my favorite in a while. Its gorgeous setting and magical vibes make it stand out from the crowd, and developer Stairway Games is already busy working on building it out even further with new NPCs, wildlife, clothing, and much more besides. In its latest developer update, it lays out a refreshed Coral Island roadmap showing us what we can expect from Coral Island update 1.1 and beyond, and there’s a whole lot on the way.
This new Coral Island roadmap covers a rough idea of what we can expect through updates 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 for the farming game. That kicks off with Coral Island 1.1, then, which will introduce a huge stack of content including attractions, ocean farming and ranching, a tourist system bringing weekly visitors to the neighborhood, access to the Savannah along with the buffalo and ostrich, a full Merfolk storyline with the potential to form relationships (and even a little romance), and the ability to upgrade your town to the elusive Town Rank S.
Hangouts are perhaps one of the most exciting upgrades, allowing you to bring any of Coral Island’s dateable NPCs along for all manner of activities up to twice a week – take them for ramen, go fishing together, go see a movie, the choice is yours. Stairway Games says it’s planning to expand this in future updates to allow you to hang out with all the other NPCs as well.
Update 1.2 might look a lot smaller, but that’s because the focus is on one big feature – the introduction of fully-featured Coral Island multiplayer. There will also be the addition of a Merfolk festival and NPC outfits for the spooky season. Then, further down the line, update 1.3 will focus on children, giving them more dialogue and heart events and allowing them to grow up as time progresses.
Stairway Games also shares a comparison between the Coral Island launch in November 2023 and now, and it’s quite a staggering upgrade – including 35 new NPCs, 46 clothing items, 15 wildlife types, and 345 decor items (that’s more than a 50% upgrade on the number of decor pieces included with version 1.0). The team promises additional details on the Coral Island 1.1 update in April, where we’ll get more of a deep dive into the ocean-related content.
Until then, we’ve got even more of the best games like Stardew Valley if you just can’t get enough of that laid-back life, along with the best relaxing games on PC to help melt away all your troubles in 2024.
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