During its wildly successful run on Kickstarter, an upcoming indie farming simulator called Coral Island has accrued over $1.6 million in just 30 days, setting it up to be a popular installment into a crowded genre.
While it doesn't quite make the list of most successful Kickstarter campaigns for video games, Coral Island's numbers are certainly nothing short of unexpectedly significant. Starting at a modest funding goal of $70,000 for Stairway's debut title, most backers saw impressive graphics and wholesome gameplay and pledged the base amount of $20 to get the game, while tens of thousands of other gamers were excited enough to pledge more for the early alpha version. Coral Island was fully funded in the first 36 hours.
Following the indie farming sim's early stretch goals such as seasonal NPC outfits, minigames, and bug catching, Coral Island continued to gain momentum and eventually, the developers needed to add more goals as the Kickstarter continued to rise in popularity. This resulted in highly requested stretch goals becoming easily surpassed, including a merfolk underwater village and, later on, the option to romance 2 of the NPCs from this village.
After surpassing the $1.25 million milestone on Kickstarter, the indie farming sim will now support post-launch content in the form of island hopping, where players can "build a ship and travel to different islands for even more stories." Perhaps this means that Coral Island will support further updates in the future.
Inspired by the classics like Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon, Coral Island includes everything farming sim fans look forward to: a sandbox farm, a wide variety of romanceable characters complete with LGBTQIA+ support, and a hint of fantasy.
Coral Island is expected to launch October 2021 for PC, PlayStation, Switch, and Xbox.