The Home County

I love this game. I can't wait for it to develop over time. You really should try this game.

Very cute & cozy game! Love the combination of life sim and village building, and that you can decorate everyone's homes. Also really enjoyed fishing and collecting all the different fish. The game develops at a nice pace so far!

Charming and funny! I love it very much already and it's not even finished yet! :D

So far, I have a positive opinion of the game. There’s nothing groundbreaking here, but it’s enjoyable to play. The game is engaging. At the moment, the downside is the combat mechanics. They’re not very smooth and can be frustrating. Since this is early access, I’m hoping this will be improved.

Really enjoyed this one. The decorating is great. Your “farm plot” is actually a whole town within the town. You can decorate inside and out, there are plenty of nice items. I was sad to hear it didn’t sell that well, but it was a very enjoyable time anyway. It’s still being worked on albeit at a slower rate now. Romance update is still in the works. It really takes a lot of what I normally dislike about life sim games and makes it actually fun (or less annoying).

Blimey, its a good game!

Really love this new take on the life sim genre. The setting, music, and sound effects are perfect and really add to immersion. The humor is top notch, I’m really enjoying all the little stories sprinkled around town. There is no map or mini map that I’ve seen but for once don’t feel I need it. I can also save in in the menu, thank goodness, because who has time to make a long trek to their in game house to go to sleep when you need to log off with no warning. So far my only complaint is it seems like on the Steam Deck the game doesn’t always want to let me navigate the menus in controller. I had to map my right track pad to left mouse click and that made it a lot easier. This is really what an early access game should be, I appreciate the effort put in all the details of the game, achievements, and controller support before launch.

I had fun and the mechanic to play is pretty easy. Looking foward for more items to decor my area.

If you’re looking for a new cozy game this might be it, with the caveat that it’s still very much in development and there’s currently not a lot of content (I managed to finish the Crystal Garden by day 75, at which point I’d already reached two hearts with everyone in the game and there wasn’t much else to do). Pros: - Music is nice - Map is easy to navigate - Each character seems fairly distinct personality-wise from each other (except maybe Daisy/Marian) - Main character walk speed is great! - Building/decorating system is pretty good - Animals are cute I don’t think the game is shy about ripping off Stardew and I don’t think it really needs to be considering how many other similar games are out there these days. Currently you can fish, mine, forage, paint and cook yourself. Fishing and painting are the only ‘skills’ you can currently have, maxing out at 10 without too much trouble, while you unlock cooking recipes through your villagers’ skills. The fishing mini game is refreshingly easy, the painting mini game however is pretty repetitive and I didn’t really enjoy it. My least favourite part of The Home County as it presently stands though is mining. There are three different mines to get the three different ores, filled with monsters that you can only attack with your pickaxe. I was playing on MacBook with a trackpad so I’m not sure if it’s just an issue with that but I found it really annoying to try to target the monsters, and ended up just totally ignoring them while they slowly chipped away at my health towards the later part of the game once I’d fully upgraded my pickaxe. I’m not sure what violent ghosts and snowflake monsters etc. are really doing in this game, possibly more effort could be made to justify their inclusion from a lore standpoint. The idea of there not being fixed seasons but rather random weather like cold snaps, heatwaves and storms is kind of cute and quirky but I think having predictable seasons would make the game feel more charming and cozy (I really like how you can find most of the townies in the church every Sunday, for example). During the end game when there’s not much else to do I’d love to decorate my village for halloween and Christmas each year. Maybe the town could get a new annual festival added each time you complete a Crystal Garden goal—like a beer festival when you do the beer one, or a cult ritual in your honour for the cult one? Most of the characters seem very shallow and stereotypical e.g. the ditzy maid, the cockney barkeep. Most if not all of them also talk exclusively in platitudes and sometimes what they say doesn’t really seem to make sense! I would’ve liked some more character development during the cutscenes that you unlock one you reach certain relationship thresholds; I can tell some of them were trying to be a bit more emotional but it didn't really feel earned or successful when they're so short. Some of them are fairly charming/cute... but I think the sheep’s second scene would work better if it could be reconfigured without captions. I think we could also have a pretty emotional scene where Jon finally connects with his son and finds out [spoiler]he’s been selling poison and lock picks from his little kiddy black market (!)[/spoiler] but again, that’s only because I think it’s weird it was never really addressed. I feel more could be done with the Edwardian theme too. Some of the speech, especially from your own villagers, is very modern. I’d love if Daisy your florist maybe talked a bit about the Victorian language of flowers, or if Elsie in the antique store (who’s also the seamstress and runs a tea room) talked about the current fashions like corsets and big hats. Would also love more clothing for women available there but I’m sure that’s not a current priority with the game still in development! I encountered a number of bugs while playing, nothing game breaking except one in Marian’s home which froze my game. The game saves each night and there doesn’t seem to be a way to save progress during the day except to save and quit. The dev seems to be pretty active in the Discord though. Also—achievements are currently broken/inconsistent so if you’re planning to 100% this game like I was you’re going to be disappointed.

The only issue I really had was with the lack of tutorial/instructions. The game just puts you in the middle of it and doesn't really have an direction in the beginning. It makes you kind of figure it out yourself. other than that I liked it pretty well.