Sugardew Island takes a lot of it’s gameplay from genre staples. “Clean up this old mess of a farm, grow stuff on it, nurture the crops and a few relationships, and upgrade your house.” That said, it’s story is novel, in that you’re largely alone as a human.
The story gets introduced with a cutscene, where the island you’re set set on is a land of harmony between humans, nature spirits, and animals. Well, until predictably, humans mess it all up, nature fights back and the humans flee. Much later, in search of adventure, your character leaves home and arrives shipwrecked. You meet a short lil guy, who seems human, but might be a nature spirit? It’s not clear, he’s not very spiritlike, well, unless he’s the spirt of capitalism. He helps set you up in your home, open your store, gives you some free seeds and tools and will sell you more.
You then pick up quests to generate harmony on the island, which unlock animals to pet for free seeds when pet (maybe) and unlock new seeds to buy, livestock, improved tools, or home upgrades. You’ll get harmony by selling items at your shop to nature spirits, you’ll also get sugardew, the islands currency. You’ll need this to buy more seeds, or upgrade tools, or…most things really. In addition to growing crops for selling to the nature spirits, there are elemental spirits to quest for (also asking for crops, but they do pay better, but you don’t get harmony), or straight up selling to the shop.
Overall, you’ve got 5 sets of animals to get harmony with and 4 elemental spirits to maybe smooch? In the 8 days the demo lets you play out, I had completed one quest for an elemental spirit and the first tiers of most of the animals. I’m not sure if the games going to require a ton of playtime, but, perhaps that isn’t so bad. Not every game needs to be 500 hours of grinding after all. Maybe there is more I’m missing, especially where this is just a demo.
Sugardew Island releases in a few days on March 7th, with the demo still available at time of posting. Pricing isn’t available, but there is a 4.99 USD supporter pack that’ll add a few outfits and help support the dev.