What is Everdream Valley?
I would describe this as a farming-life sim. With the normal elements of farming, animal care, decorating, and quests. There may be relationship building, but I didn't get far enough into it to find out. In total, I have played this game for about 4 hours. I will be writing about my experience with it during that time.
First thoughts;
When deciding if I wanted this game, I liked what I saw. The farming, decorating, and animals looked interesting. Although the reviews weren't the best for it, I thought I could give it a try. Due to the negative reviews, I got it at a discount.
How it feels and looks;
The game looks nice overall, the graphics aren't bad and the animals look quite cute. When I first loaded up the game I tried to use my PS5 controller, my preferred one. However, it wouldn't work properly. Buttons were wrong, and it was nearly unusable. After this, I switched to using an Xbox One controller, which worked fine.
Controls in the game are janky, to say the least. It is hard to know exactly what you are interacting with and at times I often clicked the wrong thing.
What did I like?
I enjoyed how the animals looked, especially when I was holding a chicken.
Although I didn't end up doing a lot of farming I didn't mind the bits I did. I couldn't farm straight away, I had to wait to get the tools, but once I got them it was fairly simple. To grow crops you need to plant the ones you harvest. Watering them was easy; you just hold the watering can, hold the action button, and run around the crops that needed water. Harvesting them at first isn't too hard, you have to do them individually but that's normal. Eventually, you get a basket which allows you to just run over the crops and they auto-harvest. I preferred doing it this way.
I made a little orchard too. I couldn't line them up accurately as I had to do it by eye; due to there being no snapping function when placing things. Harvesting the trees felt a bit like a chore. Having to kick them each 3 or 4 times to get all the fruit became tiresome.
I got a dog as part of one of the quests. After training the dog to full, I had to use it to find a missing cow. This was an interesting feature. Eventually, I also figured out how to train a cat that was roaming around. The cat was more difficult to train, and I'm not sure it was actually worth it.
What I didn't like;
The quests seemed slow, the controls got annoying, the animals got annoying, and there just seemed to be something lacking. I was excited to play this, but it fell short. The days were long, and I finished all my 'daily' chores within the first hour of the day. After doing these chores I had to decide what to do for myself. Creating my own quests isn't usually an issue, but I found myself not wanting to do anything as I felt there was no need. I wasn't compelled to decorate, go out of my way to explore, or do more than what was necessary around the farm.
Overall thoughts;
Not worth even the discounted price I paid. I'm sure some people would enjoy it much more than me, but I got bored of it far too quickly.
Want to try Everdream Valley for yourself? Purchase it on Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403650/Everdream_Valley/
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