Island Times: Easy Life 9+

Love it that’s it just love it

From my AppRaven review-

I have a love for Stardew Valley like games, but was hesitant with this one because of how basic it seemed. So far, I’ve been pretty pleasantly surprised.

You start off on a small island and follow the tasks to learn the ropes. Instead of tilling land and buying seeds, you purchase a plot dedicated to a specific plant. You can place these 4x3 plots anywhere on your island and you can freely move them around as you expand via the editor. What confused me at first was the little goblin running around. I thought he was attacking my crops, but he was a helper! You can purchase more goblins with gold or via ads. I liked this game so much that I purchased the $4.99 IAP to remove ads, and it includes removing them for the “free” items. There are goblins and drones to help pick things up on your farm, Idols, and even pets that don’t have much of a use yet. They sure are cute, though.

There is a farm animal system as expected, but you’re not *required* to have farms or coops and upgrade them for different animals. You unlock new types of animals, flowers, buildings, and crops via leveling up and purchasing Idols. You can have up to eight Idols and they unlock random plants and animals as you get them.

While you can mine, you have to be certain levels to unlock them and then purchase them to place them on your farm. So far, the mine seems to save every third level. When you enter the mine after leaving, you have the option to pick a floor to port to. You can take your goblins with you to help with mining, which is awesome as you’re pretty slow mining by yourself. My biggest gripe with this system is leaving the mines. You have to go up floor by floor until you’re out.

Fishing is actually pretty easy. You can fish from your boat or from the edge of your island, and the mechanic is much easier to control than fishing in other farm sims.

You can also explore once you unlock the boat option. There doesn’t seem to be much yet and it’s hard to tell when you’ve reached the edge of the map. There isn’t much detail on the water, so you have to pay attention when you’re boating around. The boat sort of bounces once it hits the edge, so you know it’s time to turn around.

There isn’t a combat system, and no NPCs to romance, so if that isn’t your thing, no worries. You can expand your island for gold, and it makes it much easier to decorate and organize as you do. As far as making gold, you can sell directly from your inventory, or lock items that you don’t want to sell. Storage chests are only in your house, all of the chests outside of the house are where your helpers put the items they collect. With the helpers, you could almost call this a semi-idle game as you don’t have to do much if you have enough of them. You can still interact, though, so if you want to water and harvest crops or mine ores, you still have that option. Decorating is pretty basic, I’m hopeful that the dev will add more in the future.

They’ve got a good start, and I would absolutely recommend this to folks that want a simple portrait farm sim. I’ll definitely be playing for a while!