Grimshire

This game is the perfect mix of cozy cute and dark and challenging. If, like me, you've been feeling like some cozy games lately have lost their spark give this one a try, the contrast of sweet and sad really makes it feel more interesting to play. On the other hand if all the talk of heartbreak and punishing consequences is making you hesitate don't let the grim part of Grimshire scare you off! It's not an edgy gore-fest or anything like that, it has soooo much charm and heart and cute critters, plus you can adjust the difficulty to your gaming ability. To relate it to things that I've read or played it would be older Harvest Moon games like A Wonderful Life and the Warrior Cats book series. It's still in early access so of course there are some bugs but the devs are active and keep adding more stuff. I've already played for 50 hours on one save file (I think only the first year is available so far but I haven't even gotten to the end of one yet, I know a lot of people do multiple save files to try and do better or go up in difficulty.) so there's plenty to chew on.

I'm almost to the end of Fall at this point and I absolutely can't put the game down. There is certainly a little rust and crust here and there that is inevitable with an early access game - a bit of balancing that could be used here, a little fine tuning on the controls there. But overall, the gameplay is solid, and really scratches that itch of wanting to play a farming sim game while still twisting around the severity. I'm playing on Unsteady mode - this was the mode the game defaulted to, and I figured I'd stick my toes in before I stepped off the deep end. And the entire time I genuinely felt like my actions had consequences. This game works really well in finding a balance to the inevitable farming sim habit of just hoarding every item you come across until you have enough excess to squander. This is achieved with a decay system - nearly all food can rot. You can't just stockpile the highest value crop for spare cash or in case of a quest, you have to strategize your growth patterns and how you address certain types of crops to ensure optimal use of your hard work. Not paying close attention? Those apples you spent all day harvesting are rotting. They can even rot in the preservation task of your choosing if you don't make sure the timing is right. Throwing everything you have in the drying racks without checking for storms first may lead to you having nothing but mush on your racks once your next sunny day arrives. Each method has a cost that balances its effectiveness - drying racks have no resource cost after construction but they take a full day in the sun to work. Smokers work faster but cost valuable burnable resources. Kegs allow for foods that are potentially eternal, but at the risk cost that they only process product in 3s and each processing cycle is 12 hours. It really challenges you to think and assess what is the best use of your time and resources, while having decently paced chaos that suddenly throws a wrench in your plans but not in a way that's inherently frustrating. If I had any complaint, I just wish the coding for determining what resources were used in the root cellar was a bit more optimized. I've had several instances where I was dropping off my daily cured or dried goods only to find 70 smoked fish were a day away from rotting and the system was instead using the smaller stacks of odds and ends that had a longer expiration. I can appreciate implementing some randomness - both since it's implied that the citizens of Grimshire are able to choose freely what they select and because our resident racoon mayor definitely seems like the type to not follow first-in-first-out protocol, but its current implementation essentially punishes the player for getting ahead, when the game already has challenges and setbacks programmed to do that organically. Other than that, though, I've been having a blast. It'll be hard not to finish out this first year only to start a new file at a harder ranking to run through the other scenarios I missed. It looks like the next step of development is still a ways away, but I look forward to biting at the bit for updates on this game.

10/10 The second most communist game I've ever played.

这游戏还可以，就是太肝，纯燃烧自己为了他人。游戏好在物产丰富，不是特别容易无聊，但是中后期可能会断层式失去兴趣。另外这个游戏的意识形态值得思考一下，其实我觉得有点像公社，玩家是全生产队唯一的驴……

Chore simulator.

I love this game so much. This game is cozy with a dark twist! The story has me at the edge of my seat!! I can not wait to be able to play year 2!!!

Have you ever wanted a nice, relaxing farm simulator, with no combat at all (so far and I feel I'm pretty deep in), with a fun set of adorable characters. But, also, wanted the stakes of your actions to be unimaginably high and the consequences of failure to be both dark and deeply personal? This is the game for you.