Don't think I've heard much about it on the site, so thought I'd kick off some discussion. This game came out last week after a brief beta period and is basically a darkly humorous version of Stardew Valley. While ostensibly the game is about building a nice graveyard, it quick branches off into a ton of different activities and sidequests. Tons of different things to craft and do, huge sprawling tech trees, and lots of weird NPCs with small quests and stories to push you along.

While the game is very rough at the moment given that they've already put out nearly a patch a day on everything from performance to balancing, there are actually lots of aspects I like better than Stardew Valley. There are lots of little "chores" you have similar to Stardew or other crafting-based games - chop down some trees to get some firewood to power your forge to smelt some iron to make nails to build a new pew in your church - but there's very little time pressure around any of them. Every NPC is on a weekly clock for appearances, but there's no penalty for just waiting till next week, and there's no real daily upkeep. Even things like forging or gardening just work a timer and you can check back in on them and replant or refuel when they finish with no penalty. Nothing goes bad if you ignore it.

So you never get into the time pressure loop like in Stardew where you feel like you have to water your plants, feed your animals, check your shrooms, etc., then maybe have an afternoon to fit in other things. If you want to spend a day or a week working on your stonecarving skills, upgrading your church, writing new books, or going into the dungeon, you're never penalized for doing what you want and ignoring the rest. Plus nearly everything you do gives you experience bubbles which can then be used on your tech tree, so you're always making progress to advanced perks or items. It also is pretty clear on the goals and tasks it sets forth, along with a pretty open tech tree to follow, so if you like to have the game set goals for you it does a much better job with that than other life sim type games.

The one big negative is that, along with the game being rough, it also has some real issues with explaining some of the mechanics or telling you what you will need for certain tasks. There's no way to pin recipes or otherwise see what you need to fix a bridge, craft an decoration, or build a new crafting station, so it pretty much needs you to have the wiki open at all times to keep you from having to run back and forth between your crafting area and your research area or something else to see what you need. But if you're looking for with a ton of weird intersecting crafting systems, upgrades, and side tasks, then give it a look.

Looked intriguing when it popped up on Steam. Hope they give it a quick look. Might grab it.

I would love to hear Dan's thoughts on this game since he loved Stardew so much. I found this to be a much better version of Stardew. Chiefly due to a lot of the notes that Deathpooky raised in the initial post.

This post sold me on giving it a shot. Nice job, you!

I downloaded it for free on Xbox. I've only played about an hour, but I enjoyed that hour. I think I turned it off when my next task wasn't obvious, which says more about me than the game.

It's very chilled out and the visuals are easy on the eyes.

This sounds neat. Stardew is one of the best recent indie games I've played, I'd love a neat variant on that sort of thing. Do they have plans to come to Switch?