After a shipwreck washes you up on an island containing an abandoned farm, you decide to take over said farm to help feed the people living on the nearby islands. Unfortunately, the peaceful life you seek for yourself seems out of reach. Two factions, the Pirates and Global Trade, vie for control over the islands and their surrounding waters. It’s your job to join one of these factions and keep the islands safe through naval battle – while also taking care of your crops, exploring the land around you, building relationships with your neighbors, and perhaps even adopting a cat or dog (or several)!
Dreaming Isles is a farming simulator with exploration and naval combat elements, designed and published by solo developer YawningDad. It draws inspiration from classic farming simulators like Stardew Valley with its pixel art style, but adds a unique twist with its setting of multiple small islands and, in particular, the ship vs. ship combat required to build reputation with your chosen faction (either the Pirates or Global Trade.)
There are a lot of things I liked about Dreaming Isles. The first is the art. The classic pixel style works very well, creating a cozy and nostalgic feel. Each island and/or town has its own distinct visual “feel” to it – in Scythe, it’s permanently autumn, and some people even live inside giant pumpkins, while Moon Hollow is a treetop town filled with hanging bridges, colored lights, and an overall ethereal vibe. I also love that you get to choose a faction (I went with Pirates, of course!) and can then unlock new outfits for your character inspired by your faction’s look. I definitely spent money on clothes that I should have been saving for seeds and cannonballs.
The farming aspect of Dreaming Isles is also pretty solid. There are a wide variety of crops (including some that help you in combat!) and they can be grown at any time without limits. You are given a fertilizer recipe extremely early on that speeds up the growth process a lot, and almost every plant has a chance to drop some fresh seeds when you harvest it, meaning you don’t have to spend a ton of money buying new seeds. Best of all, you don’t have to water your crops – it rains enough on your home island to take care of that for you!
The third of my favorite things about Dreaming Isles is, surprisingly, fishing. Fishing is really hard to get right, and Dreaming Isles does it very well. The base fishing system is decent, but where the game really shines is the gambling card game you can play against various sailors in order to earn different types of fish. The first time I encountered a card-playing sailor, I definitely got sucked into the “just one more game” mindset and ended up playing cards for over an hour. The card game is simple, easy to learn, and quite addictive!
Very briefly, here are a few other things about the game I loved: the ability to adopt any dog and cat you meet, the fact that NPC romances are not gender-locked in any way, the heartwarming story about how you are taking over the farm from Miles’ dead daughter, the Moon Hollow Spa customization system that unlocks when your islander reputation is high enough, and that you aren’t limited to sleeping at night / being awake during the daytime and can vary your schedule as needed. Oh, and the ability to throw fireballs at your enemies once you find the right spell stone, of course!
However, there are a few small things about Dreaming Isles that did detract from my enjoyment. The beginning of the game is fairly slow-paced, and it takes a while to get going. Many important elements, like the bottom deck that allows you to sleep on your ship and the crops you can use in combat, take quite a while to unlock. The biggest problem in the early game is that it is easy to accidentally take too much damage in a naval battle and find yourself stuck on your home island until you have gotten your ship fixed again.
When you fight in Naval Combat against a Pirate / Global Trade vessel (depending on which faction you chose to support) your ship takes damage when they ram you or shoot you with a cannonball. Early in the game, when you are still getting used to naval combat and don’t have Frost Berries or other more powerful attack tools, you will take a lot of damage.
And that’s understandable – except, when your ship runs out of health, you are stuck on your Farm island until you can repair it. Repairs are expensive; each one requires a lot of Wood, Cloth, Rope, and Iron. All of these can be found / crafted on your home island, but it’s pretty time-consuming, especially with how long resources like iron nodes take to respawn. It’s easy to get frustrated when you want to get out there and explore the seas but you’re stuck at home for the third time in a row repairing your ship. Once you pick a faction, the other faction’s ships will attack you on sight until you unlock the ability to change your sail color and disguise yourself. This is a MASSIVE help, but, again, it takes a while to unlock.
My second concern is that the game could use a better guidance / hint system in a few places. There were multiple instances where I was given a quest that only vaguely told me what to do, and there were no hints or further guidance available, so, if I was stuck, I simply had to wander around until I eventually figured it out myself. The biggest instance of this is when you are searching for the Air Spell Stone, and you have to upgrade your pickaxe to get into the Freestad caves. The location of this pickaxe upgrade is very well-hidden and there are few to no in-game hints about it. I think this particular section would benefit from some more guidance – perhaps from the ever-helpful neighbor Miles?
Overall, I think Dreaming Isles struggles a bit from being slow to start and a lack of hints in a few places where they are very much needed. But, it is overall a really great farming sim that has some fun and unique elements, particularly the ocean exploration focus and the ability to gamble for fish. Developer YawningDad has indicated that there are several updates planned for the future, including the introduction of new towns to visit, new characters to bond with, and new mini-games such as ship races (I predict I’m going to be VERY bad at that one, but I can’t wait to give it a try). To players who are looking for a little sprinkle of adventure in your cozy games, why not give Dreaming Isles a try?
Kate played Dreaming Isles on PC via Steam using a provided review code.