The adorable life-sim, Coral Island, will have multiplayer capabilities and so much more!

I recently had the chance to get a closer look at the upcoming adorable life-sim game, Coral Island. Even with their insanely busy schedules, the amazingly kind developers at Stairway Games took the time to answer a few questions that would give everyone a much better idea as to what to expect from their upcoming beautiful indie title.

In the interview I learned that, while Coral Island will be a super charming life sim game, underneath is a true and deep message of positive change. The developers mention the game exploring such topics as the effects of climate change, as well as cultural representation in gaming. But don’t let me spoil all the juicy details, the interview below has everything you need to know!

Q&A With Developers Of Coral Island

Q: Who are the members of Stairway Games, and what is their favorite part of being developers/artists/musicians?

Jeremiah, Game Director: Loading the latest build of the game, and handing the controller to my daughter — only for her to find a new bug in 5 seconds flat!

Ayuni, Creative Director: It’s hard to say. Because I love writing this game and seeing the ideas being implemented… But if I had to pick just one, my favorite part would be seeing the characters come to life.

Soma, Game Producer: I get to work with very talented and driven people that really want to make this game great. 

Damas, Game Art Director: Creating a world for others to be fully immersed in and (hopefully) also enjoying it as much as I enjoy making them. 

Bimo, Technical Artist : Using all my knowledge for the game and working with very talented people.

Reza, Studio Co-Art Director: I get to sit and design. It’s a great feeling to see them turned into 3d objects and placed inside the game. 

Rama , Animator : Learning new skills!   

Baiquni, Level Artist : Place & organize the assets into the game map to make the game more alive & fun to play. Fav part, optimization is everything!

Aditya, Sound Designer: It’s such a challenging experience working on game audio since this is my first interactive audio work. My favorite part during this production is learning audio middleware (Wwise) as part of audio implementation in a game. In addition, working with very talented & kind people in this team is a great experience.

Surya, Game Programmer : Learn and grow with awesome people to build this game.

Mario, Game Programmer: My favourite part about being a developer in Stairway Games would possibly be that I get to learn as much stuff as possible and have fun in the process. It is such an honor to work in such a great atmosphere with some of the most talented people in the Gaming Industry in Indonesia.

Laksamana, Game Programmer : Just ordinary person that bored to only play the games, and now love to make one, first time to work in game studio and really get excited to make this game with other talented dev.

Q: What inspired the creation of Coral Island?

At Stairway, we’re all gamers and collectively have played through our fair share of games. We don’t see as many characters as we’d like who look like us or our family/friends and want to change that. We believe that the gaming community can do better with regards to representation. 

Aside from that, the space that we all share, our planet, is our second biggest inspiration. We want to spread awareness of the very real and current environmental challenges we face and the need for sustainability. We touch on these topics through gameplay that combats trash build-up, all of which will feedback directly into the gameplay loop.

While the game itself is inspired by our love of Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon, Coral Island is, hopefully, our way of contributing to the wagon of change by adding even more representation and sustainability awareness to the industry.

Q: What would your team say is the hardest part of making a game like Coral Island?

Nailing the game feel continues to be the hardest part of development. We’ve found that many farm life sim games, as they make the transition from 2D to 3D, lose something that makes play as enjoyable as it could be.

Many things influence game feel, such as the camera settings (distance, whether it is fixed or free-roaming), the scale of objects and characters in the world, the speed that the player will move, even map size, etc. All these things also end up impacting our art development pipeline — so a balancing act indeed!

Q: What is one feature of Coral Island that your team is particularly excited about?

We’re very excited about diving! How you go about yourself here will impact the game directly. Whether that is improving the quality of your crops or animal products, and most importantly, the island’s ecosystem.

Q: What are some of the key features that make Coral Island what it is?

Although we could list it all here, in the coming months we’ll be releasing a video showcasing all of our games key features! We hope this will form a clear idea of what Coral Island is and what to expect.

Q: Any ideas yet as to an approximate release date and/or what platform/s the game will be releasing on?

The team is targeting a Q1 2021 release for early access on PC. Given the large scope, we can’t wait to get feedback from the community, and together, shape Coral Island into the dream farm sim life game we know it can be! In the future, we would love to release our game on other platforms.

Q: What would your team say is the main message or theme of Coral Island?

To our players, we hope our diverse cast of characters makes you feel wholly represented, and second, we hope to bring attention to the impact of global pollution and promote sustainability.

Our big dream is to create the type of farm sim life game we’d like to play, but don’t yet see on the market. We hope Coral Island can be enjoyed by the gaming community and push the standard for farming sim life games.

Q: Do you plan for there to be any sort of online functionality in the game, i.e. co-op, leaderboards, trading?

Yup! Though things may change during the course of development, we are currently planning to implement drop in-and-out couch co-op, and traditional online/LAN modes too.

Follow Coral Island

To stay up to date with what’s going on in the development of Coral Island, be sure to follow the developers on Twitter, and join the conversation on Discord. You can also follow on Facebook and Instagram. For more information on the game, check out the official website.

Click here to check out the Kickstarter campaign now!!