A decade on from theindustry-shifting release that was Stardew Valley, you would think that we would have seen just about every new tweak and angle on the farming sim sub-genre. But thanks to developers like Perfect Garbage, we can still be hopeful that this saturated genre can still produce the occasional standout.
One such standout is their upcoming farming sim, Grave Seasons. A game that hasall the staples of a classic farming simulator, but with a dark twist. You see, things aren’t as chill as they first seem, as the town you’ll be tasked with restoring to its former glory is alsothe setting for a murder mystery,which you inadvertently find yourself right in the midst of.
You’ll need to tend crops, chop trees, and craft tasty meals, as usual. But, with a certain occult underbelly to proceedings, you’ll need to go about things a little differently. You know, unless you want everyone to die.
Frightening Farming
As I started playing Grave Seasons, it wasn’t long before I had to exercise my ability to suspend disbelief, as mere minutes into my role as resident farmer, I dug up a severed hand.
But, being the min-maxing farming simulator aficionado that I am, I made sure to harvest all my crops and ship them in the nearby bin before dealing with the mutilated appendage before me.
That, in a nutshell, is what is so cool about the balance that Grave Seasons strikes. You’re not asked to farm a certain amount of crops or gather firewood for the local carpenter. Nor are you pointed toward suspicious areas or clues in the environment.
Instead, the game gives you the room to play around with these mechanics, make your own discoveries, and gradually reveal that this cozy town might not be so idyllic after all.
The farming, gathering, and crafting are all boilerplate stuff, and any veteran farming sim fan will be able to jump right in and start shipping crops without missing a beat. However, the real standout aspect here is the horror that bubbles just beneath the surface.
Harrowing Harvesting
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect in terms of horror from this game. After all, Blumhouse has garnered a reputation rather quickly as a publisher that supports some pretty dark and sinister projects. But, in the early stages, the murder mystery, perhaps aside from the severed hand, had a bit of a Scooby-Doo feel to it.
With the old farmer going missing, it felt like a classic Scooby-Doo tale, akin to old man Jenkins vanishing, only to be unmasked as the culprit at the end of the episode. However, it didn’t take long for Grave Seasons to burst that bubble.
After meeting the local punk rock chick in the town, we were invited to join them in the nearby forest. Perhaps a little get-to-know-you, with a view to some light romantic themes, was on the cards. But a nighttime stroll soon turns into a bloodbath.
In seconds, a murderous wolf-like monster appears and tears this unfortunate pixelated dame limb from limb, and mutilated in a pool of blood, she lies there as you need to frantically scramble to get back to your farmhouse alive, which, with your heart racing, is where the demo ends.
It’s a little snapshot of the duality that exists within this game. It’s undoubtedly a cozy title, but it’s one that has a bit of bite to it, quite literally.
Closing Comments:
Grave Seasons looks like a promising tweak on the cozy farming formula that will really test the tensile strength of what can stretch to meet that cozy game criteria. The farming aspects of the game, at least from what we saw, weren’t anything to write home about. But the occult and sinister tone that violently rears its ugly head is enough of a novelty to get cozy and horror fans alike excited. It remains to be seen if this one can stick the landing and blend the horror and farming simulator mechanics seamlessly for the entire run, but considering the literal gasp the game got from me, a game journalist who has seen so much horror he’s borderline dead inside. It does seem that Grave Seasons could have the chops to follow in the footsteps of Dredge and serve as a weirdly cozy horror title.
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