Author: Lil (Darlinganddeath)
Date: 05-30-2023
It's been no secret how many hours we've put into Everdream Valley over the past week. We just pushed into hour 30 last night as we were finishing up the final story quests and we have to say... it's fantastic. You don't get many 3D farming sims that allow you such an expansive world to explore that's also packed full of content. The world was far from empty and the story matched the game graphics; cute and silly at times. From the adorable Pink Alpaca to the fact that I can customize my farm down to the very trees and bushes, or perhaps the seemingly endless inventory for hoarders like me, there's just so much to love about the game. This review is going to highlight the best parts of Everdream and what kept us coming back even 20 hours in, but also talk about the fact that the animals refuse to obey the laws of wall physics. It's bound to be a fun one, and yes, we do recommend the game, so we'll get that out of the way first. Not many games have me wanting to play after 5-10 hours, let alone 20-30, so I can't not recommend the game based on time played alone.
With that... let's jump in!
Don't want to read? Watch the shortened version instead:
Story:
Let's start by talking about the Story that follows you around the entire game. From the beginning it seems like your typical, "go fix up the old family farm and call it a day", storyline, and it is in a lot of ways. You're on your Grandparent's farm for the summer, originally bummed about being there, but by an hour in you're chasing down cows, stealing bushes from the wilderness, and having your cat jump through golden magical hoops. None of that was an exaggerated statement, you can do all of them in Everdream Valley.
Now, before we get into the silly gameplay aspects I just mentioned, I want to say this game has a pretty unique and engaging way the game progresses through its story. Unlocking other areas and progressing further into the game to improve your farm does require you to complete the main storyline quests. We always get this false sense of, "I can do whatever I want", in farming sims, and a lot of the time you can, but there's always a limit to what you can do until you naturally put some hours into it. I'm going to be the one that says I appreciate this. Sure, I can spend hours decorating a farm, but if I have no real reason to progress, I tend to get bored pretty quickly. I want a game to make me feel like I'm progressing through something, unlocking stuff as I go.
It's probably my filthy MMORPG mindset. I want a new piece of shiny gear and my stats to go up by 10 points otherwise I'm not satisfied. I can never fault a Farming Sim when it fails to incorporate such a mindset, but Everdream definitely gave me that feeling of wanting to do the quests and gain that extra bit of progression. With each quest we completed, a new animal joined our farm, or our chore time was cut in half due to the fancy new farm fixture we added (like sprinklers), to even the small quality of life improvements that had us putting up shelters to keep our animals dry in the rain. Each one felt worth doing and it was a fun change of pace from the usual side-quests that just grant some extra coins and nothing else.
There are some fun twists to the story of Everdream, this being the animals that haunt your dreams, or the supposed magical witch that protects the valley. I won't say any more than this on it but it's a cute story that had me laughing at parts due to how silly it was.
Gameplay:
There truly are so many things we could highlight in this article about the gameplay of Everdream Valley. I'm going to be focusing on the main, larger ones and as we're also creating a, "Tips & Tricks to Survive Your First 30 Days in Everdream Valley", so we'll save some of the smaller ones for that article/video.
Chasing down and caring for animals...
Let's talk about one of the biggest features, which is obviously the emphasis that Everdream Valley puts on the animals. In fact, you can't progress through the main parts of the story without first saving the animals scattered around the outer areas of the farm, so they're quite literally the star of the show, and rightly so. The animals in Everdream are adorably hilarious with their cute art & animation styles and refusal to abide by physics (more on that in the bug section). There are a total of 8 animals you can have on the farm: Chickens, Cows, Sheep, Goats, Alpacas, Pigs, Horses & Ducks
Now, I'm still not sure if Pigs or Ducks are really used for any type of animal by-product (aside from poop that you'll have a fun time cleaning up), but the rest of them give either eggs, milk, or wool, and obviously, in the horse's case, a friend to make journeying infinitely easier.
You also have the farm cat and dog, who, if you train up, will assist you in finding the animals around the world or provide you with some extra bugs and mice in your inventory. We found the farm dog to be the most consistently useful as they have a wonderful herding skill that makes bringing animals back to the farm a lot quicker and... for the most part... easier.
Yes, be prepared for many hours of walking out into the world with your trusted Pup and chasing them back to the farm. Some of the treks for the animals are long and exhausting, and the horse will be the last one you find, so you'll be walking the entire way through the story (we'll get there).
Be warned of the geese around the world. They'll chase you down and bite you, leaving you unable to regenerate your stamina. The first time it happens you'll get a quest to learn about Band-Aids... you're going to want to have them on you at all times for fear of whenever a Goose might strike. You think I'm joking. I'm not.
Lastly, there are Wild Boars, Beavers, Deer, and Bees in the wild as well. The Boars and Beavers serve to be nothing more than a questline later into the game, but the Deer are more of an annoyance. If you leave them unattended around the farm they'll eat your crops and trees, so... to counter this I just put them in my giant pasture with the rest of the animals so that they could graze the grass instead of eating all my raspberries. It was a solid solution and I didn't have to worry about them after that. In regards to the Bees, you can catch them with a net and bring them back to a Bee Hive to collect honey. Be warned though, if you get stung it'll permanently reduce your stamina.
With great stamina comes great responsibility...
Speaking of Stamina, let's put in a quick section about it. Stamina can be gained and lost in Everdream Valley in unique ways. To permanently gain a boost to Stamina, you can eat any type of food. Different foods give you different level gains, but it's a bit hard to tell which ones give you the most stamina as there aren't any actual stats on the food, but regardless, it does provide that extra boost.
In contrast, if you get stung by a bee, you'll permanently lose Stamina until you're down to only one bar. This came as an extremely unwelcome surprise to me when I went and got the bees for the bee quest, not knowing what they meant by "careful not to get stung" and as I just walked up and started swinging my net... I quickly realized that it was a mistake when my 5 bars of stamina dropped to 1. Considering how long it takes to actually cook enough meals to grow your stamina bar up to 5... well, let's just say I opted in for less stamina after that because I didn't feel like re-cooking everything at the time.
Also, the more stamina you have, the longer you can sprint around, and trust me, you want a lot of stamina... however... make sure you manage it well when running around. If you run out of stamina completely and you have 5 bars of it, you'll have to wait for all 5 bars to fully recharge before being able to sprint, swing a net, or any other tool that requires stamina (most of them do). It's not so bad if you have 1-2 bars of stamina as it won't take too long to fully recharge, but the more you have, the less true that is. The trick is to never let it hit absolute 0 and it'll recharge fairly fast from just standing still a few moments.
Is this entire place ours? Aka exploration...
Segueing from Stamina, let's talk about the World and Exploration. The map is huge. It feels even more massive when you've spent half the day exploring and realize you have to walk back before the wolves come hunting you down... no... really. If you stay awake too long, wolves will come to attack you and you'll be spawned into the next day. Of course, they're labeled as just a bad dream, but they're creepy nonetheless.
A little way into the game you're actually given a tent so that you can sleep out in the wilderness at night... that's how big it is. I found myself using it a lot more than I thought I would as going out on exploration missions are fun all by themselves. I'd go out, chop a bunch of trees, dig up any fruit trees and bushes to take back and locate some far-off animal to coerse back to my farm. They were 2-day treks but still incredibly fun. Exploring is made infinitely easier when you get the horse, but I will say that you're not going to get the horse for a while into the game so don't count on that in the early days. You can choose to ride the pigs around too once you've found them, but they can't be controlled nearly as easily as the horse and if you run into anything, you get knocked over in a hilarious fashion.
The ease of farming...
Farming in this game feels much more like a relaxing pastime, and less like, "I have to participate in every farming competition during the year and if I don't grow good crops, I'll be kicked out of town". I will say there were some moments that the farming felt like an afterthought to the animals, something the devs knew should always be in a farming game. This is mainly because there's no clear distinction between high-quality crops and low-quality crops which just leads me to question why you should bother to fertilize them. It does increase how much yield you'll get, but it's fairly easy to just plant a huge field of crops and get high returns anyways. Especially when crops decide to double-spawn (bug?) in a day.
Watering crops doesn't take much time at all either, so there aren't huge penalties for having a ton of plots. You have a standard watering can but it rocks a large capacity and refilling it at the well is easy. Unless of course, you're in a drought, but that's why you rig up a watering system with sprinklers and an electric pump so that way you don't have to worry about anything at all. Just run through your crops once a day and gather everything up (including the weeds) and call it a day.
The other notable thing is the Orchard trees and bushes, which consist of a few different types of Fruits. You'll find them all over the world, dig them up, and plant them on your farm to easily collect them every day. Though, as someone who has way too many Orchard trees and Shrubs, it gets so monotonous kicking down fruit for half the day that most of the time I don't even bother doing it more than once a week. You get such an overwhelming amount of fruit from it anyway, that you'll quite literally just become the richest kid in town when you finally realize you should sell some.
I will say that if you do want to get rich quick, fruit is the easiest way to do it. Although it's a tad annoying to gather fruit from the trees, if you have an Orchard the size of mine, you can make enough coin to buy anything you want and then some from the shop, so props for it being a great way to sustain your bank account.
I will comment that I wish there was more to the farming and orchards. Either implementing crop quality or perhaps embed a better reason for going through the trouble of collecting all the different types of crops and trees, other than to just cook some food or sell the excessive amount you're bound to have to the trader. Even some side quests that provide different rewards would be cool... perhaps new crop types? Anyways... Don't get me wrong, it's fun going out and finding them all over the world and bringing them back. The bliss I feel when running through my dense, shady orchard is why I love this game so much, but there could be more depth to it.
All comments aside, the fact that you can pretty much put your farming plots and trees down wherever you want has me appreciate the farming regardless. The simplicity of how it works is at least brilliant, so while I'm left wanting a bit more to the crops themselves, the system is wonderful.
Animals possess your dreams...
This feature was the one that made me laugh the most and one I didn't experience during the demo at all. This is because it takes a few quests to unlock the animal dreams. Finish putting together the scarecrow and you'll go to bed every evening only to find a mini-game waiting for you, each led by a different animal.
I'm going to be honest and say as someone playing this on the PC, the mini-games are often a struggle and more frustrating than anything. It took me a few nights to get used to some of them and even still, they aren't "optimal" by any means. It absolutely feels like they were designed for a controller and that's usually the way you want to do it, but it does leave us filthy keyboard & mouse players feeling like we got the short end of the stick. It's almost as though we're becoming a myth in the gaming world now that PCs are compatible with all kinds of controllers (lol). But, alas, we still exist, and we still notice when controls are not designed for keyboard / mouse input.
Aside from the control clunkiness, the animal dreams are fun and honestly made me laugh. From hardcore Goat parkour to laying eggs as a chicken, to flapping around as a magpie bird and collecting cooking recipe ingredients. Each one has a different effect on your farm the next day and we loved it. I'm always curious how a game is going to throw in something different from every other farming sim in the genre and Everdream Valley definitely nailed it on the head with the, "talking animals that haunt your dreams", aspect. They're a huge part of the story too and how you progress a lot of the time so extra props for making them relevant and not just a thought someone in the office had to keep people from getting sick of virtual farm chores.
The Hoard-able things you should probably sell but won't...
Fear not, you can expect a decent random assortment of things to do that'll keep you occupied in the game, and these are the hoard-able... excuse me, rather "Collectibles".
From fish, frogs, dung beetles, and butterflies, there's a list of things you can collect. Whether you're using your Net to chase down butterflies, catching frogs or beetles with your bare hands, or finding a pool of fish and seeing what you can reel in, there's plenty around the world to do. The added bonus is there are quests that reward a few different items for completing achievements related to the Collectibles, so it gave us a reason to do it. That warmed my heart due to the fact that I love to 100% a game but if I don't feel like there's a reason to do it, I oftentimes get deterred halfway through the game and... just stop doing them. Once again, props to Everdream for awarding us with something for doing said monotonous hoarding activities and encouraging us to keep every single bug and butterfly for fear of needing it later down the line.
I can confidently say you won't need these items past your original quest for them so, sell them to the Trader if you want, he'll take anything you have to offer. Even the weeds off the ground next to you.
Your Grandparents aren't your typical NPCs...
I actually love Everdream Valley for making your Grandparents do something in the game. You can oftentimes see your Grandma cooking, or your Grandpa running down to visit the local trader, but... to top it off, they'll collect things for you too. Yes... gone are the days where you have to do everything yourself and in are the days where your loving Grandparents collect a huge random assortment of items and give them to you each day. How much you receive is determined by how lazy you were (or weren't) during the previous day. For example, if you chopped down an entire forest, you can wake up expecting a huge amount of wood from them. Collect a field full of poop from the animals? Well... you get the point.
It seems like a silly feature at first thought, but the additional resources actually helped a huge amount when it came to crafting all the fences I needed to surround the entire farm down to the river and craft the ultimate pasture. I'd gathered about 300 pieces of wood one day and knew it wouldn't be enough, but was delighted to wake up to my grandfather passing me another 100 to add to the collection. 100 pieces of wood translates into about 33 fences so it was a decent boost to what I had.
This pretty much concludes the major gameplay aspects of Everdream Valley... so let's move on to the Visuals & Audio.
Your Tree House...
I really don't want to spoil this feature as it was something I got to later in the game and thought, "this is actually so cute and cool", so all I'm going to say is that you'll have a customizable tree house and it's fun. It's a feature that feels true to the story too, considering you're a grandkid on the farm and a place to escape the watchful (or not) eyes of your Grandparents is absolutely necessary.
That's all I'll add about it... but enjoy this feature as we know we did!
Almost everything is Free...
I'm putting in a tiny section about this because I adore the fact that everything you need to fix up your farm (with only 1-2 exceptions) can be found around the world in old buildings or rundown areas. From new types of produce and fruit trees to parts for our irrigation system, and of course all the animals. It was exciting to know that we could avoid paying someone for our stuff and rather find it ourselves. Sure, it took a while, but still fun regardless.
If you would rather just farm the heck out of produce and sell it to pay for everything, don't worry, there's an option for that too.
Endless Inventory...
One particularly perfect feature is that you have not only an expandable inventory that you can upgrade every 7 days through the Shop, but also a storage container with 100 slots that I doubt you'll be able to fill. Everything stacks into itself up to... well we had 2000 raspberries at one point so I don't know how far it goes, but there's no need to fear dozens of stacks. To top it all off? If you run out of space in your inventory, the game will auto-transfer whatever you pick up into storage, so no having to cut adventuring trips short due to lack of space. It's pure genius.
Visuals & Audio:
Everdream Valley offers some wonderful gameplay and story aspects, but it truly shines in the visual and auditory aspects.
Fantastic Visuals with some performance issues:
I can happily say that the visuals are fantastic. From the immense detail on the grass to the textures of the expansive world, it was so colorful and beautiful that I couldn't help but be in love. Their lighting is also particularly appealing, casting light into the trees in aesthetic ways that had me wanting to sit and take screenshots all day.
There's only one thing that made me laugh and it was the fact that when it's raining, the lighting doesn't change. It'll be perfectly Sunny all day, then rain will just pour from the sky above and leave you chuckling at the unnatural phenomena. I almost feel like this should be in the bug section, but it's here.
I do have to play devil's advocate and say, as pretty as the game is, I did run into some performance issues. I have the game on the lower side of graphics and that's highly unusual for my PC. I'm rocking an Intel Core i9-11980HK with 3.3GHz, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 with 16GB. It's a beefcake of a Laptop, one I received from school to handle creating and rendering 3D art for video games. It shouldn't really be struggling with a game like this, but it did. I don't know if it's poor optimization or if Everdream Valley really just has intense graphics, but nonetheless, expect a few stutters. For obvious reasons, someone with my specs saying this will likely cause some concerns as my PC is not out of date by any stretch, so those that are rocking older tech might struggle. I will say that I wasn't on the lowest possible settings, so it's likely you'll be able to run it decently on lower specs. Also, if you're unsure, the Demo is still up so download it and see how it runs prior to purchasing.
I do want to say that the only point I really experienced any performance issues while on lower settings was when placing items in the world. I'd go to place down a fence and I would be thrown back in time to playing World of Warcraft at 10 FPS, skipping frames and seemingly popping all around the world. Now... it wasn't that bad, but it was running at under 30 FPS and extremely noticeable so, it's worth adding.
Sadly, the entire reason I turned the graphics down was due to this stuttering happening on the higher settings out in the open world, so I reluctantly took my graphics slider past Medium and down closer to low. It always hurts my soul to do it, but the game was still gorgeous regardless. I do think I missed out on some of the better lighting and shading due to it though and that bums me out as I'm a lighting nerd.
A killer soundtrack that stayed on the entire time:
So, if you've read a few of my other reviews, you'll know by now that I always score a soundtrack for a game based on whether it earns a mute, or just being turned down to mere background noise. I'm quite happy to say that the music for Everdream Valley was louder than I usually keep game music at as it was peaceful and highly enjoyable.
The ambiance absolutely complimented it with decently realistic sound effects for everything from shaving the sheep and watering the plants to the incredible rain sounds when it did finally storm. Nothing beat the pure aesthetic of their fantastic bird sounds though. You could absolutely lose time just sitting there enjoying the raw visuals and sounds of the game, so... it's a win for this category.
Bugs & Improvements:
Now, despite how much fun we had in this game and the fact that it comes highly recommended by us in terms of Farming Sims with creative new takes, there is a lot to be desired in a few areas, so let's get started with those here.
The Bugs:
Let's start with the things that just didn't work properly...
Animal heads don't obey physics...
As silly as the title line above this is, it's true. I often found my animal's heads through fences or barn walls while they slept. It made for a funny experience where wandering the farm late at night and skipping through the barn only to find an invisible hole that Betsy, our cow, put her head through. Thankfully it wasn't something I had to worry about repairing, but we shouldn't overlook it just because we like the game.
This did actually affect my gameplay later on as one of the pigs I was attempting to bring back to the farm got stuck between a rock and a hard place... literally. He was half-bugged into a rock and couldn't move from where he was. Thankfully after the day ended he reset and I went back for him the next day, but it was something you can consider game-impacting.
The trader gets a little down sometimes...
This one was purely funny and had no game impact at all, but sometimes the trader would ragdoll over and just be in a forward fold yoga pose going about his day. What's even funnier is that his head will follow you in the pose so ... what starts out funny ends a tad creepy (lol). I have to comment that he also has a passive dance action which is hilarious. I can't count how many times I've walked up to the Trader to see him doing the boogy. He's probably hoping he's going to sell something, but alas, I was there only to sell him 2000 apples.
Fruits & Farm respawns are quacked...
So, I can't really complain about this bug because it benefits us and doesn't hinder us in any way, but oftentimes, not only the fruit but the vegetables on the farm would respawn twice a day. Yes, I got to pick my plants in the morning, or stroll through the bushes collecting berries, only to go back just a few hours later and see everything respawned and ready to pick again. I usually left everything till the next day as I didn't really want to waste an entire day just picking fruit, but if that's your thing, you'll love this bug in particular.
Quality-of-Life improvements:
Now... on to what we truly feel should be improved in some way.
Walking Simulator...
I cannot and will not overlook the fact that this game feels like a walking simulator about 10 hours in. As I stated earlier, you don't get the horse until you're reaching the end of the questline and by then my pinky was sore from holding down Shift to run everywhere. Couple that with the Stamina system being a bit of a hassle to improve and oftentimes easy to lose when interacting with your bees? Well... it didn't feel user-friendly. I get that we're a kid venturing around our Grandparent's farm, but I've never waited so long to get a mount in a game since the Vanilla days of WoW when it took you 40 levels to get a mount and another 10 to have them be of negligible speed. It didn't feel good. My suggestion to them was to simply implement a toggle-run function where you can press the run button once and it'll hold that state until you repress it. This is the simplest solution if we're going to be forced to run everywhere. I also would like to see the horse be a lot earlier on in the quests. Maybe just reverse the quest order and placement of the horse with the Alpaca. No offense to the adorable creatures, but, I needed a fluff monster that would help me around the place, not just add to my chores list.
Also, there's no fast travel, and that sort of sucked. I realize there aren't always fast travel points in farming sims, especially as of late, but you either need to have an intuitive and user-friendly traveling system or a fast-travel one. Having none is what keeps me from saying this is the best farming sim I've ever played. Honestly, just one fast travel point at the farm to allow us quick access back when we've gone too far from home would be fantastic. You could just stay up late enough and have the wolves get you... that will teleport you back to the farm, but why not make it a choice rather than a haunting experience?
Unable to Interact with certain tools equipped...
Now this one was more of a mere annoyance, but depending on what tool you're holding, you can't interact with the animals, crafting benches, or NPCs. Yes, if you have your watering can, you can merely stroll up to your Grandfather and water him, but not talk to him. Whereas, if you're holding the basket, apparently you're deemed safe to talk to. I'm not so sure what was scary enough about my watering can that would deter everyone from talking or interacting with me, but having to scroll through my toolbar to equip the right thing in order to interact with the world definitely spoiled some of my immersion.
Animal Leads...
I mentioned the fact that you'll be dragging animals back to your farm, however, the only way to do so is with the herding option from your dog, or petting them and having them walk back with you. Now, I've seen some hints at leads in game trailers so I'm not sure if this is just something they forgot to explain entirely, but to me, if I'm 30 hours into a game and have no clue about a function, you failed to implement it properly. We have things like rope, and I've never tried equipping it and walking up to an animal as it was never explained as a possibility. So... my suggestion is that if this is a feature, please make it more clear, and if not, consider implementing it. It would be infinitely easier to just sprint back to the farm with our animals tailing behind us on leads rather than stopping every half mile to pet them again so they continue following, or mess around with the herding. I will say that herding is the easier option but still clunky enough to get frustrating on longer treks with multiple animals.
I will say that I attempted to go back into the game and see if leads were in fact an option, however, as of last night the game has been crashing on me anytime I try to load my save, so I'm a bit terrified that the save has been corrupted. Thankfully, I did complete 90% of the achievements and experienced all the quests, so I feel confident with how much time I put into the game prior to writing this.
Poop Pickup machine...
To those of you who weren't at our stream of Everdream Valley, you won't understand the joke about us becoming poop hoarders, but it's a real thing. Mainly because I had so much animal poop and not enough composters to turn all of it into fertilizer every day... and at the end of the stream, I fixed that to redeem myself and not be a "Poop hoarder". Though, I want to make a quick note that if you have a lot of animals the way I did by the end of my 30 hours, cleaning up poop every day is a serious chore, especially if you have a gigantic pasture. Also, the animals breed like rabbits. I started out with 6 sheep on day 5 and by day 30 I was at 15. I actually wanted to sell my animals and reduce my herd due to the sheer annoyance of cleaning up after them. As ridiculous as it sounds, an item that allows us to pick up poop as easily as the basket allows us to harvest produce, would be fantastic.
Quality added to Produce & Byproducts...
Item and animal quality are quickly becoming a standard in the farming sim genre and I'm hoping Everdream will implement it in future patches. The farming system is great but it's extremely lacking in any reason to continue doing it past cooking up your favorite meals. I'd love to see something done with at least the produce to bring more depth into it.
This goes for the animals too. I got no sense of developing a relationship with my animals. Sure, I can pet them and they'll follow me around, but seeing a little trust meter would add a sense of closeness that I really need because at this point they're about to go to the trader so I don't have to keep cleaning up their poop. Now, you can name your pets and develop whatever mental attachment you want to one specific animal, so that's good, but again, even just a trust bar would do worlds.
Saw and Animal Mini-games...
Now, while the animal mini-games such as milking and sheering aren't horrible, they do get awfully repetitive when you have as many animals as we do. Maybe the mini-games are Everdream's way of deterring you from being an animal hoarder, and if so it does a good job, but having an option to instantly sheer or milk your animals would be fantastic. Maybe give double yield for if you decide to do the mini-games to encourage us to do them, rather than requiring it.
Nothing, though, was more repetitive and annoying than the sawing mini-game. I'd spend a good 5-10 minutes sawing through 100 logs to mass-produce fences and beautify my farm and by 50 logs in I was getting dizzy from watching the little sawing bar go back and forth. I don't care if they make this something that you have to wait an allotted amount of in-game time for, please make this an instant function and have it act the same way the fertilizer and hay drying racks do. I get the idea of mini-games, but they're definitely a tad oversaturated in Everdream.
More NPCs...
I actually can't believe I'm saying this but... we need more NPCs. To our knowledge, it's just Grandma and Grandpa, joined by the trader in this huge open world. There are ruins of old buildings and even a ruined town, and while it's fun to go explore the world and steal every plant around, it leaves us wanting interaction.
I know I get social anxiety when there are too many NPCs, but you do need to have a few to make a place feel alive. Currently, it feels like we're on some thousand-acre ranch in Montana where only one townsperson is brave enough to trek out to our farm and sell us whatever he had available that day, but considering it literally says "town-ruins", I'm just more concerned that the magical animals somehow chased all the people away and our Grandparents were just too old and stubborn to leave.
This might be something Everdream Valley has planned for the future, but just know that it's not present in it yet.
A lack of purpose to fishing...
Okay, maybe you know how much I enjoy fishing by now if you've been around the block a time or two, and maybe you don't, but fishing is important to me so I appreciate when games do it well and notice when they don't. Everdream Valley is somehow awkwardly in between.
You are able to fish in Everdream, and there are achievements for collecting all of the different kinds and even a cute aquarium to add to your tree house to keep and admire them, but beyond that, they really serve no purpose. I'm not sure if I just haven't found a recipe that uses them yet, but it seemed highly odd that there were no recipes using fish. Of course, we can always do what we typically do and sell them to the trader, but it's not the most economical choice when choosing how to get rich in this game (that's what fruit is for), so there's not really even a purpose there for it.
I'd love to see fish be improved the way Produce would be. With a quality level and maybe even some recipes for them thrown in. I want to also note that you cannot fish anywhere. You'll need to find a pool of fish if you want to catch anything. I'm actually fine with it existing this way. You can't throw your bobber into a lake in some random spot IRL and hope you'll catch something. Well... you can... but it probably won't work. Just as it didn't in Everdream.
Speaking of Cooking...
Now, the cooking itself is fine and the mini-game is easy and sort of fun, however, I hope Everdream decides to implement an option to cook multiple of the same meal at once. A quantity option, essentially. As it stands right now you can cook one meal at a time, and only one quantity of it. That means, if you have enough mats to make 50 of a type of meal, you'll have to do the mini-game 50 times. I don't think I need to explain why that would kill someone's desire to want to cook.
I feel it would be fairly simple to incorporate the option to choose a quantity of an item prior to starting to cook it. This would immediately remedy the issue of a repetitive mini-game. I'm fine having to play it each time I make a different type of food, I just don't want to do it 50 times for the same one. I mean, heck, if we're being realistic here... If I'm making a large amount of pasta and sauce for a dinner party, I'll pull out my biggest pot and saucepan and up the amount I throw in. I don't sit there and cook 3 small pots of pasta. So... yes... quantity addition, please!
Conclusion:
So, by now you know that this was another typical long Darlinganddeath review. Full of details you could've lived without, but as it's impossible for me to form a review without highlighting all the main parts of a game, I'm not going to apologize.
I will happily end by saying that Everdream Valley will probably place Top 5 for me by the end of the year in terms of Farming Sims. That's a big accolade and you might be questioning why after the seemingly long list of improvements, but I assure you, any game that gets me to play 30 hours of it is one I have to recognize as being pretty fantastic.
The exploration is incredible and I found myself wanting to go explore new parts of the map, even if it took me forever to get there. The story is engaging and I would oftentimes hurry through a day's chores in order to sleep again and progress through meeting a new animal in my dreams to unlock new parts of the map. The world is beautiful and full of life. From butterflies you can collect, to running away from angry geese, it's silly and fun. You absolutely get the sense that the world is alive and the animals are running the show, you're just along for the ride.
Yes... there are a few things that can be improved upon... but let me state that the base game is incredibly fun as it stands and it comes highly recommended as its jam packed full of content. While it's our job to point out the flaws, flaws don't necessarily make a game "bad", rather, just not as good as they could be. That's the case for Everdream. With a few updates, it would be near perfection for the farming genre and I can absolutely see anyone that's a fan of such games enjoying their time in it. To top it off... it's a 3D Farming sim and we rarely get those in such good quality and style as Everdream Valley, so we're not going to look a gift horse in the mouth here.
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Disclaimer:
Please note that while we did receive this game for free, we have not been paid or promoted for this review, and are not affiliated with Everdream Valley or its developers officially in any way. All thoughts are based on our own genuine experience of the game. All footage is based on the Game in its current state as of 05/30/2023 and is subject to change or be completely omitted in future patches at the developer's discretion.
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