Coral Island 1.2 Update Report - Friends Saving The Ocean Together
Coral Island is a farming sim with Story of Seasons vibes and Stardew Valley mechanics, plus a generous sprinkling of its own unique approach to the genre. Considering my completely healthy obsession with farming sims, I’ve always been interested in picking up the game. The recent patch—released on 14 August 2025—gave me the perfect excuse.
The 1.2 update added new details to the existing romance system, providing more unique interactions and ‘hangouts’ with NPCs. But—more relevant to me—1.2 also added a multiplayer system that I have used with my friends to spend hours cooperatively tending to a cute farm filled with crops, animals, and various machines for creating artisan goods.
You can see the DNA from other farming sims throughout Coral Island—but this isn’t a criticism. When playing other games in the genre, I often find myself thinking, ‘Why have you redesigned this mechanic for the sake of it, instead of learning from the games that came before you?’ Coral Island knows exactly what’s good about existing games in this genre, and it doesn’t try to reinvent the wheel. But that doesn’t mean Coral Island is derivative; its innovation comes from entirely new systems, settings, and cultural references added on top of or alongside the mechanics we’ve come to expect.
One of the unique elements of Coral Island is its diving system. You are enlisted by a scientist at the town’s laboratory to put on a wetsuit and clean the ocean, which has been overwhelmed with litter and oil spills due to the efforts of an evil corporation. I have spent many relaxing hours hitting piles of trash, collecting coffers that you can open at the blacksmith, and catching sea critters with my bug net while chatting with my friends.
Eventually, as you clean more and more of the ocean, you become familiar with a city full of merpeople. About thirty hours into the game—and I’m sorry if this is a spoiler, but the game has been out for three years—I ended up with a mermaid tail of my own. The fact that Coral Island waits so long to give the player something entirely unique in the farming sim genre shows how much faith this game has in its execution of the classic game loop. Coral Island knows it’s polished enough that it will capture your attention without any extra bells and whistles. I love magical farming games like Wylde Flowers and Fae Farm, but you can access the fantastical elements of these games quite early, comparatively; merfolk in Coral Island felt less like the game’s selling point and more like a genuine surprise.
Another aspect of Coral Island that makes it feel distinct is the Indonesian flavour throughout the game world. Stairway Games is based in Yogyakarta, and this is seen through some of the community festivals and spiritual landmarks, as well as parts of the game that retain the Indonesian language. I am now incredibly familiar with jamu—a traditional Indonesian herbal tonic—because my friends and I have been using it to refuel our energy for a long session of cleaning coral reefs or mining in the cavern.
There are some teething issues with the game’s multiplayer, however. Some aspects of the game are only available to the server’s host at the moment, like choosing level-up gifts overnight or adopting a pet from the animal shelter. We’ve also found that our server host will sometimes randomly get hearts with NPCs that the rest of us don’t, despite all of us attending the same festivals and completing the same errands. We have desynced from each other a few times too, leading to us needing to close and refresh the server. But none of these issues are particularly game-breaking, and I’m sure they will be improved in upcoming patches and bug fixes.
Overall, Coral Island is one of the most polished and impressive farming sims I’ve seen in recent years. It follows in the footsteps of its predecessors, learning from their mistakes and optimisations to create a really enjoyable core experience. Coral Island then layers its own unique flavour—environmentalism, underwater mechanics, and Indonesian culture—on top of that strong foundation, creating a memorable farming sim that I intend to play for many more hours to come.
