Everholm

For when you want a cosy game that also gives you nightmares

When the player character, Lilly, wakes up from this nightmare, she's on a messy farm in a cute town where everyone knows her name… and she has no idea who they are. You start to get caught up in the activities that connoisseurs of this genre know well: planting seeds, gathering wood, learning blueprints to craft, and so on. Then you speak to an NPC and they say something haunting or slightly alarming, and you remember that this isn't your average cosy game.

With its focus on a mysterious storyline, Everholm brings something fresh to an oversaturated genre—but it does so while also learning bucketloads from its predecessors. You can see what the developers at Chonky Loaf must love about the champions of the genre, as you can see the fingerprints of their inspirations all over things like the fishing minigame and bug catching collection. But Everholm also expands on these mechanics, approaching old classics in exciting new ways. For example, I adored the newspaper that's left on your stoop each morning; you can read about current town mysteries, accept requests from townsfolk, and learn your daily fortune.

The world of Everholm offers more variety than I remember ever seeing in a farming sim. It was difficult to know if I'd purchased all the seeds for Spring during my first year because there were just so many available. While exploring the town on my first in-game day, I saw cows, sheep, chickens, bees, butterflies, frogs, rabbits, ducks, racoons, foxes, squirrels, crows, owls, and fish. I received a quest early on encouraging me to find all ten varieties of the world's forageable mushrooms. The world is alive and diverse, and everything is drawn in an adorable isometric pixel style that is simultaneously familiar and unique.

Beyond the sheer number of items, there's so much to discover in this game. The main story alone takes 25+ hours to complete and the Chonky Loaf team expects the average player will take 50-100+ hours to reach the end as they engage with the other farming, relationship-building, and collecting mechanics. The first year is filled with surprises as Lilly builds up her friendships with the townsfolk, navigates layers of the underworld dungeon, and starts to unravel the mysteries of her spooky new reality. Starting Everholm reminded me of the early days of playing Stardew Valley, when I didn't know all the NPCs' schedules off by heart, didn't know what day of the month I'd receive my first sword, and had no way to check what might be needed for the bundles I hadn't revealed yet. During your first playthrough of Everholm, you are going to miss things, forget things, and do things in the wrong order—but that's the whole point. If you have the patience to learn and explore a new farming sim world, then Everholm feels like reading your favourite book for the first time all over again. I think this is a feeling many new additions to the farming sim genre are trying to capture, but Chonky Loaf really pulled it off.

Still, if you're the kind of person who likes to play farming sims once and optimise your run, you might want to wait to pick it up. There isn't a robust online wiki and set of guides for the game yet, and there are still ample free content releases being planned by Chonky Loaf, including items and events every month and story updates every quarter. Everholm seems like it will be getting ongoing dev support and is already establishing an enthusiastic community, so there's lots to look forward to.

I'm okay with taking my time as I potter around this mysterious island. I'm slowly earning enough money to unlock everything I want for my homestead, improving my various money-making enterprises while I agonise over the best order to purchase the items on my wishlist. I also found myself slowed down by the combat at first. Although it's theoretically optional, you do need to explore the underworld if you want to unfold the game's main story. Learning where to find new weapons and experimenting with different combat styles made it a little faster though, as did investing time in making meals that give useful status effects. Somebody more coordinated than me might manage fine without those extra perks, but I found them necessary to make it through more than a few levels at a time.

Overall, Everholm is a slightly spooky farming sim packed full of content and adorableness. I've already dedicated many hours to decorating my isometric homestead and solving mysteries in this beautifully crafted environment, and I'm not done yet.

Originally posted on Player2.net.au →