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When I first saw Welcome to Elderfield, I didn’t register that this farming sim is actually an RPG Maker MZ game. Instead, I got lured in by the promise of another unconventional take on the genre that injected some horror into the concept. Only after I saw the combat did it click. While some of the limitations and grinding elements do come up almost immediately, I appreciated Chris Cote’s commitment to a “dark” farming sim and RPG.
Welcome to Elderfield begins in the titular town, a place where the old gods interfere with human lives and our protagonist grew up. Something is interfering with the natural balance and making things even stranger, more unsettling, and hazardous to people’s wellbeing. After awakening in the Old Woods and happening upon a Xxarteck Cultist ritual involving a mass of tentacles, we catch the attention of the worst kind of people(?) and are attacked by their Imperfect Creation (and introduced to turn-based combat). While we wake up at home, we’ve now caught their eye and the suggest we’ll meet “him.” And so a new phase of life that involves farming, interacting with Elderfield’s various residents, investigating “happenings,” and perhaps getting pulled into the town’s destiny begin.
While RPG Maker MZ was used to create Welcome to Elderfield and there are turn-based battle encounters that can pop up if you investigate suspicious happenings you hear rumors about or when you draw their attention while performing chores like mining, this is primarily a farming game and life sim. It’s just extremely spooky while you do so. There are definite Cthulhu and Welcome to Night Vale vibes. Your loop becomes working every day at the farm, caring for animals, gathering materials from visiting the forest or doing some mining, socializing, cleansing, and crafting. All of this generally works. However, it feels clunkier than dedicated farming life sims like Story of Seasons or Stardew Valley. No context-sensitive responses! No depth to cultivation. It’s much more limited and straightforward. But it’s fine enough, especially when you get accustomed to the fact that it is more rudimentary, and the real priority starts to become surviving the supernatural.
Because oh, boy, will you be trying to survive. Those cultists in the introduction? They weren’t the only inhuman entities. Some of them are friendly, like Alice, aren’t bad! Others are. Your actions outdoors can attract the mean ones. So, say you need to gather some wood for crafting. Well, something might hear you and decide to attack while you’re distracted. And there’s a good chance it will inflict status effects or be generally kind of strong and kill you! Which is fine. Because since Elderfield has issues, it’s perfectly normal for you to occasionally die, then revive the next morning. But then, even going to sleep involves a roll of the dice and chances that you’ll have a Bad Night if you get between a 1-3.
Speaking of luck (probably not) being on our side, there are a lot of elements at play to make Welcome to Elderfield feel as tedious and harrowing as it looks. This isn’t just about a dark story and scary visuals. Chris Cote is trying to beat a player down and, while that might mean a bad time for those not prepared for that, it’s also incredibly thematically on-point. There are attempts to insert elements of a routine, such as needing provide what the Tax Man asks (or be punished with temporary attack debuffs), things like the ability to cook and relationships with individuals like Old Gods, there’s also a lot left to chance. So it does feel like a dismal, dangerous town, but I do wish success didn’t feel so fleeting when there’s such a grind to meet objectives and craft certain things.
Especially since there’s a massive difficulty spike. I got to Deep Mall, and I struggled so much with it. Fortunately, I had been prioritizing building up my physical strength and worshipping Kaal, so I had the defense bonuses from that and had crafted a Bone Shield to help my guarding. (If I remember right, I also had a Strange Moon Favorable Glow effect that maybe provided some Blessings too.) But while that piece did prove helpful and we can forge equipment, like we do in Fields of Mistria and Stardew Valley, the items I found while actually going into unsavory spaces ended up being so much better that it was never worth wasting the resources.
The thing is that, while Welcome to Elderfield can be devastating, some of the narrative sorts of choices to set up challenges or tasks can be pretty great. I mentioned the Strange Moon earlier. It’s possible to get rolls that could do things like restore all resources, make monsters respawn, give us a Bad Day with a Curse affecting our stats, or perhaps give us a Blessing or two. The tasks tied to places like the Catacombs and Deep Woods show how other people in town are affected by these terrible forces. The News Events are essentially urban legends brought to life (and that might hurt or kill you if you don’t make good choices.) There’s such a level of commitment here. However, I do think that the relationship elements could have been a bit better. That element of the game doesn’t feel as deep and fleshed out as the romances we see in games like Fields of Mistria, Stardew Valley, or the Story of Seasons series.
Chris Cote fully committed to the bit with the horror farming sim Welcome to Elderfield by creating a haunting game that embraces tedium and terror. It is a grind, and that’s because actually trying to survive in a place like Elderfield would be a miserable experience. You’ll probably die a lot, and that’s due to this being filled with beings beyond our ken. A lot is going to be left to chance since normal rules do not apply here. It isn’t for everyone, but those who do like horror games and creative RPG Maker experiments may want to put this on their wishlist.
Welcome to Elderfield is available on PCs via Steam.
