Farming games are a well covered area. It’s almost impossible to play a new game without comparing it to its many predecessors on the Switch. Everdream Valley knows this and uses it to their advantage and disadvantage.
Released on PC and PlayStation last month from fledgling developer Mooneaters and publisher Untold Tales, this debut makes its way into the Switch’s crowded farming simulation market (agricultural market?). The game does a lot differently; unfortunately, we’ve found that these differences don’t necessarily add up to a better farm simulation experience. But depending on how you play other farm simulators, your (horse) mileage may vary.
In Everdream Valley, you vacation with your grandparents – they’re still alive! – and helping out on their vast agricultural land. You then start having strange dreams where you take the form of your furry friends. Everything is wrapped in a cute, bright 3D art style that makes your cows round and your landscapes beautiful.
Since you have to be animals for parts of the gameplay (during the game’s dreams), it makes sense that the game favors cows, sheep, chickens, etc. over other farm simulation elements. If you were expecting a delivery bin, a local town or marriage candidates, you might be disappointed. Selling products isn’t the main goal, and you won’t hear the satisfying sound of pouring gold every night. The area around your farm is huge, but it’s mostly just forest and beach. Grandma, Grandpa and the local shopkeeper are the only people.
The game is slightly customized, with a limited selection of furniture, clothes and hairstyles. Still, the space is very fluid with no obvious grid, so if you wanted to randomly place trees, you could. Luckily, there’s a very cute dog, and that was probably our favorite thing about the game. There are 10 breeds to choose from – we were disappointed we couldn’t choose more than one breed! You can pat and play fetch to build friendship with your canine companion. In return, your dog helps with various tasks like bringing the cows home.
The dreams of Everdream Valley are a unique element and we didn’t want to sleep on them. It took us a while to activate them though, which made us wonder if we’d set the farm boot forward in the wrong defection. In some dreams, animals talk to you, helping you solve the mystery behind the dreams in a meta way. This could have been an intriguing story, but it didn’t work for us because there wasn’t enough suspense around each of the dreams. The language was also a little stiff, and we weren’t sure if that was due to a translation problem. Other dreams are mini-games of varying difficulty; hunt or chase other fauna, trot across planks in a 3D platform-like situation, and run or fly to a specific destination. Sometimes dream activities have affected our waking hours; after a dream like a grown duck gathering ducklings, we woke up to a whole flock in our pond.
That outcome was a relief because herding animals feels like, um, herding cats. They often run away, even when we have done the job of calming the creatures down and petting them, and they should have followed us. They would then escape from the enclosure, giving the game a sense of chaos, like when your Sims don’t do what you want. Of course, mild stress is common for driving simulations, but at one stage we became so frustrated that we had to retire from the game. It was a stark contrast to our experience playing “just one more day” in Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons.
And there’s poop. Poop, everywhere! Unlike other cute farm sims that ignore the reality of caring for living things, Everdream Valley doesn’t sweep it under the rug. No, this game makes you pick up poop. You can use it for compost, which helps your crops grow faster, so it’s not complete…losing.
Everdream Valley’s tutorials are like the mushrooms you collect: there are a lot of them, but they aren’t very useful. Many don’t even show up until you’ve already figured out how to complete the task. And as mentioned earlier, the world of Everdream Valley is vast, even though it’s mostly grass, trees, and beaches. You can run around to the bucolic areas in a relatively flexible order, provided you have enough materials to repair the bridges. Skipping and jumping across these plains to the sounds of flutes and strings playing is quite fun. This is when the game does not lag or freeze.
In the vast landscape of Everdream Valley, we longed for fast travel – if it exists, we couldn’t find it – but there are things that make your adventures easier. You get a tent so you can sleep and dream everywhere. And any items that don’t fit in your inventory are also sent straight to your storage crate in your home base, which is handy. The game map is useful, although the UI is pretty poor for such a commonly used item: there are no words or names for the areas, all the pins are the same color, and a bug causes an inconsistency in the size of each pin.
There are also some not so pleasant elements. Whenever we returned to the farm, we would find that our animals had fallen ill and our dog’s friendship level had dropped. It was like when you come back from vacation and realize that you have to run errands like a normal person. And if you venture too far, you’ll have to fend off wolves, geese or bees with a wild swing of your sword (if you can equip it in time). It’s not quite as sweat-inducing as, say, the deeper mine levels of Stardew Valley, but we didn’t expect that. But players averse to combat need not fear, because you don’t “die”. You return home the next morning.
We ran into quite a few bugs and errors while tending to our farm, however, an early patch fixed some. Developer Mooneaters has also made a few changes for other platforms, but they haven’t made it to the Switch yet. We hope it will come to our favorite console in the future. Concerns for us that haven’t been patched include slow loading times, slow task updates, clunky movement, animals getting stuck, and a cacophony of sounds coming from a single alpaca. Often we weren’t sure if we had done something wrong or if a mistake had caused the problem. And overall, the game runs faster and smoother on other platforms than the Switch.
There are more UI hurdles beyond the map. There’s no recipe or crafting log, your aim is awkward when trying to grow crops or interact with animals, and you can’t sort your storage chest or pick up most items after placing them. On the main screen, quests are hard to read and the clock blocks the map. It would also be good to have visual cues such as the wet appearance of the soil after watering the plants. They are small, but as with sowing seeds, big things grow from small things.
Conclusion
Your enjoyment of Everdream Valley will depend on how you like playing farm simulations already on your Switch. If your primary goal was grabbing gold, beautifying your farm, or finding the One, you might not dig it. If you’ve never played a farm simulation before, and you want to get your first tile, we don’t recommend starting here. However, if you love taking care of your animals and want to see life through their bright eyes, Everdream Valley could be right up your alley.
