I genuinely did not anticipate enjoying this game. I was under the impression that I owned it, which, in retrospect, was an utterly delusional assumption because apparently I had never purchased it purely to let it rot in the digital equivalent of a junk drawer and had to pick it up on sale (I call it a sale, but in reality I returned Michael Meyers Halloween the Game because it was pure ass, and they removed the Dr. Loomis sex scene, which is the ONLY reason to get it at all!) Meanwhile, my insomnia was actively eviscerating my circadian rhythm, so I figured, whatever, let me frolic around in the little pixel countryside and see what happens.
And unfortunately for my dignity, this game is fu&$@g excellent???! HUH?!
It is aesthetically precious, mechanically satisfying, narratively charming, there's dragons, and somehow it manages to be both profoundly relaxing and sufficiently stimulating that my rancid little nocturnal brain can actually engage with it. The art direction is adorable without becoming saccharine, the characters have actual personalities and dialogue that doesn't make me want to claw my eyes out, and the gameplay loop is so diabolically well calibrated that I kept telling myself “just one more day” like a pathetic laudanum addict.
Then I discovered the maid outfit and headband.
Guys. Gals. Non-binary pals - LISTEN! I have never experienced such an abrupt ideological transformation.
I put that s&FT on and suddenly my life acquired structure. My posture improved. My skin was dewy. My ancestors appeared before me and nodded approvingly and I flipped them off and reminded them my bloodline ends with me bc I am child free and the closest thing they'll ever have to carrying on their DNA is watching as I 'waste' (enjoy) my life on pixely games like this (haha, a crying baby would distract me from this, no ty IDC my womb is barren soon ok, gtfo). I understood the fundamental architecture of femininity. I was no longer playing a farming simulator; I was participating in a highly sophisticated domestic fantasy of servitude and agricultural prosperity. The headband alone increased my GDP.
And now I understand why this game has overwhelmingly positive reviews. I have been spiritually rehabilitated by pixel agriculture and an aggressively adorable wardrobe.
Frankly, playing this immediately afterward has made Stardew Valley and Terraria feel somewhat... pedestrian. Low brow. Lame. Like, congratulations on your little crops and your little caves, I suppose, but some of us have evolved. Some of us are wearing the maid outfit now. Some of us have dragon friends in our fountains. Some of us are growing marijuana in Mistria. And enjoying the smoke.
