Review: Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands - Farm, Fish, Cook and Fight Ghost Pirates in This Simple Desert Island Sim

A long ocean voyage to a distant snowy land gets off to a disastrous beginning when a storm scuppers your plans and leaves you washed up on a tropical island. You’ll need to find your crew, build a little base camp, explore, and try to find a way to escape.

One of the first things you’ll notice in Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands is that you have an energy meter, and every action you take, including just walking around, will start to drain it. Thankfully it’s pretty easy to replenish your energy -- you just need to eat food or go to sleep. And even if you do run out of energy in the middle of nowhere the game doesn’t punish you too badly -- all that’ll happen is you’ll collapse but then wake up back at camp. It’s a bit annoying if you’re trying to explore somewhere far away, but fortunately not the end of the world.

Look past your limited energy and there are some very simple minigames for you to get stuck into. There's a rhythm based fishing game, tending a little garden, and discovering new recipes by selecting the right ingredients. You can also cook a big pot of stew for the crew which raises your popularity; this rewards you with improved tools and new ideas of things to build for the camp. There's basic combat, too; ghostly pirates can easily be taken out with a few swipes of your sword.

In fact, everything from the art style to the storyline is fairly simple, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Even though we ran into the occasional bug (nothing that couldn’t be fixed by rebooting), this is a fun game if you just want to relax with something nice and easy.