Luma Island is one of those farming sandbox games that had been on the fringe of my awareness for a while. This week's announcement that the game is headed to PS5 and Xbox (and adding full cross-platform multiplayer) pushed me over the line to try it out. A few hours later, I pull myself away because this could be a dangerous time-sponge. I now see why this one has been a big hit for Feel Free Games over the past couple of years.

See, Luma Island is Cozy with a capital C. The 'dangerously soft couch' kind of threateningly comfortable. This is a game you can sink into and get lost between the cushions of. Yes, there's adventuring and dungeons and puzzles to solve and skeleton pirates to tussle with, but even that feels soft and inviting. There are no health bars - get knocked down, and you just restart the current room. No stamina meters telling you how long you can chop or mine or farm each day. No inventory limits, so you can hoard every weird item you find lying around, and given that the entire world is PACKED with treasure chests, that's a lot. And I've not even gotten into the creature-raising side of things.

While I tend to gravitate towards more challenging games, there's something fundamentally compelling here, and it felt like the game never gave me a clean point to stop. It was always effortless moving onto the next little goal, the next upgrade to gather resources for, or the next little NPC side-quest to pick up. And within a few minutes of getting out of the tutorial, I'd already bumped into Dave the Diver, guest star of the game's big summer update. He appears as a new quest-giver on the main town's shore, and nudges you in the direction of Spicy Rock, a new fishing spot where he lost one of his flippers.

You can check out the full summer update patch notes here. Just the latest in a round of big updates. Last year the game also saw a major free expansion, adding a whole pirate cove region with a bigger focus on action and adventure, albeit at the same gentle pacing as the rest of the game. This update also added a new, more demanding difficulty mode where loot is dropped on death, and while that might fit in a little bit more with your average survival crafting game, my gut feeling is that most players will be sticking with the game's breezy Adventure mode.

Luma Island is out now on Steam for £16/$20, with a 40% discount running until September 28th. There's a little extra discount if you own Dave the Diver too. Pre-orders are up for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox (Series X & S) versions too, and when those launch, everyone will be able to play together.