At Summer Game Fest, I attempted a recreation that was daring sufficient to ask: Why would not Stardew Valley have extra homicide? Grave Seasons, due out subsequent yr, is a comfy farming sim with a morbid edge: It is about all the chums (and romantic companions) you make alongside the bloody solution to stopping a serial killer.
A little bit bit into the brief demo of Grave Seasons, I took to the fields to scrub up the run-down farm I might damaged into and determined to undertake, solely to discover a severed hand. It is becoming for an indie title revealed by Blumhouse Video games, a division of Blumhouse Productions, which, with the gaming unit, started increasing past its work in horror movies to publish titles like final yr’s Fear the Spotlight.
Grave Seasons is a comfy horror recreation that looks as if it should deftly combine the serene and ugly, interesting to followers of Dredge and different calming video games tinged with the sinister. Gamers tackle the position of a jail escapee who breaks into, and adopts, a farm within the city of Ashenridge, solely to search out that it is riddled with darkish secrets and techniques.
But it surely wasn’t simply occult labs within the basement and physique elements unearthed from the fields that made the sport really feel delightfully grim. After I might made some early buddies, my demo ended with a stunning twist: One among my new buddies, who requested me to affix them for a midnight stroll within the close by woods, received ambushed by a hideous monster and brutally murdered. Even the sport’s charming sprite graphics did not spare my eyes from the ick of dismemberment.
“We’re large followers of video games that mix that type of coziness blended with a way of unease,” stated Emmett Nahil, narrative designer at studio Good Rubbish, which developed Grave Seasons (Blumhouse is the writer). Nahil cited video games like Dredge, Into The Woods and Cult of the Lamb as inspirations.
In Grave Seasons, these murders occur seasonally, stated lead programmer Nicky Armstrong. However you’ve gotten sufficient time between sowing crops and cleansing up your farm to determine what could be taking place. You may attempt to befriend the many individuals you meet round city, and even uncover who the killer is.
However if you happen to’re enjoying Grave Seasons alongside real-life buddies, don’t fret about them spoiling the killer’s identification for you — the sport’s impressed design randomly assigns the assassin from a subset of the roughly 40 characters you encounter within the recreation. Like several good cozy farming recreation, you may romance lots of them, together with the hunky Hari that I met first within the demo. And in a good higher twist, the individual you are romancing would possibly find yourself being the killer, too.
Past video video games, Nahil cited people horror and monster movies as inspirations that led to Grave Seasons’ distinctive tone.
“The unique Wicker Man is definitely an enormous inspiration for me,” Nahil stated. “We now have some actually cool occasions [in Grave Seasons] that inform you a bit extra in regards to the lore of the world. Clearly, creature options like early Hammer Horror are an enormous one for me, the place you get to see completely different monsters, completely different creatures, and there is a type of sense of pathos that goes together with these creatures.”
One other design quirk that units Grave Seasons aside is beginning the sport with a protagonist on the lam from jail — a departure from Stardew Valley and different farming sims the place it is good vibes from the get-go. As a substitute, on this recreation gamers begin with a way of pressure, since they can not go to the cops in regards to the serial killer prowling round city.
“It helps place the participant in the concept they’re on their very own and have to make use of their wits, and actually give attention to their expertise to assist the city and themselves — or hinder the city and assist the killer,” Nahil stated.
In different phrases, a playthrough of Grave Seasons can go a number of alternative ways relying on the randomized killer and the alternatives gamers make. That was a design selection for Good Rubbish, which needed to divert from the indefinite playtime of Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon video games to be able to inform a narrative.
“We actually need you to expertise the narrative that we have crafted and play the sport to its conclusion … whether or not that could be a constructive or a unfavourable conclusion,” Armstrong stated. “We nonetheless need you to expertise it to its finish and have a very good time with one playthrough of the sport, after which we might love so that you can play it once more and expertise a unique story, a unique killer, a unique final result.”
That storytelling applies to the killers, too. Whether or not romanceable or not, all characters have a backstory to find as you befriend and get nearer to them. The potential murderers have motivations and storylines that the participant can dig into, which can change components throughout the world that they may uncover and ask round about.
However in closing, I requested Armstrong and Nahil maybe crucial query: Which of the sport’s 40 or so characters would they date?
“Oh, my boy Hari is correct there within the demo, yeah,” stated Armstrong.
“He is not within the demo, however Noah, truthfully,” Nahil stated. “Our buff fisherman is my romance of selection.”
That is amusing to know, nevertheless it additionally reveals that the sport comprises multitudes. Many different farming sims have the comfy half down, however Grave Seasons looks as if it’s going to let the discomfort of morbid results and homicide be a counterweight pressure that complexifies the comforting monotony of farming. Amid alternating between rising life and fearing in your personal, why would not you discover somebody thus far?
Grave Seasons is scheduled to come back out on PC, PS5, Xbox Sequence X/S and Nintendo Swap in 2026.
Watch this: Arms-On: Grave Seasons
