Grave Seasons Is a Cozy Farming Sim With a Dark Side

On the surface, Grave Seasons might look like any other nice, cozy farming sim like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon: you’re a stranger who’s come into a farm in the small town of Ashenridge, full of seemingly friendly people. You plant and harvest crops, craft items, and make friends. But there’s a mysterious, unnerving sense that tugged at the back of my neck during my half-hour playing Blumhouse Games and Perfect Garbage’s not-so-cozy farming sim. One that kept me much more engaged than your garden-variety farming game, with its impressively intriguing threads that added a little drop of poison to the well.

After a brief intro to the player character, who’s escaped a prison sentence in search of a new beginning, things start getting weird. Hari, a neighborly caretaker who’s maintained the property since falling into ruin, greeted me with an incredulous (but charming) hello, which doubles as a quick tutorial. At first glance, the stuff he introduced me to wasn’t that strange. I had the standard tool wheel, complete with a shovel, pickaxe, watering can, and so on. But I also had a crowbar?

That’s because Grave Seasons isn’t just a grim or slightly spooky take on farming: it’s also a mystery game. And while I didn’t have a chance to use a crowbar during the early section I played, it sounds like you’ll need to use it to break open locked doors later on in the story. But given the mysterious circumstances under which my character came into their new home, I’m curious to learn about their motives and means.

After working my new land, picking some chilis, cabbage, and tomatoes that Hari so neatly planted – and doing a little planting of my own, burying some carrot seeds my new friend offered as a welcoming gift – I did some exploring. To my shock, I found a severed hand and a bloodied ring amidst the weeds and garbage littering the far reaches of the property. I tugged at this new thread immediately, taking it to Hari to see what he had to say about it, rendering shock and horror from my musclebound, tutorial-dispensing neighbor.

Nothing really came from this interaction, beyond that reaction, and the revelation that I could talk to Hari about other stuff, and even offer them a gift. Obviously, I’m sure there are opportunities to spend more time with them (or any character, as I met later) and figure out what he might actually want. But a half-hour demo isn’t exactly designed for that kind of long-game mindset. So I gave them the chocolate ice cream cone in my inventory as a sign of friendship (and maybe more). Unfortunately, he reacted to the frozen treat about as well as he did to the hand… I didn’t get another chance to try my hand (no pun intended) at offering them something else, but given Grave Seasons’ dark, slightly comedic tone, I’m curious to see what winds up tickling their fancy in the full game.

Then I retreated to my shed, where I found a pickling and fermenting station a while earlier to put my chilis and cabbage to good use by making some kimchi. This highlighted one of my favorite parts of Grave Seasons. Although it’s decidedly horror-focused, Grave Seasons doesn’t skimp on the stuff that makes farming games great in the first place. With a diverse menu, well-realized in a sharp, pixelated art style, this demo made me hungry as I marveled at the pixel art of garlic, hummus, pickles, and salads. Kimchi in hand, I set back out to my house to find a new character sitting on the edge of the well in my yard.

Pilar, a fashion designer with a passion for vintage clothing, greeted me with another warm welcome before telling me about their plans to forage for some rare herbs that night. After agreeing to explore my new home a bit, I tried talking to them more, again about the hand, getting another shocked response. I gave them my fresh kimchi to see what they thought about it, but just like Hari, no dice.

Here was another favorite part of the demo: just talking to Pilar and Hari. Their dialogue was consistently engaging, funny, and distinct in a way that conveyed loads of personality and life. I would’ve sat there for the entire demo just gifting them every last radish, head of lettuce, and cigarette in my inventory if I could. Based on the trailer and other materials Perfect Garbage has shared, I’m excited to see what other characters I get to meet. And I’m eager to watch them play out their roles in this mystery, which deepened at night.

After cleaning up some trash, mining for some minerals and iron, watering my carrots, and putting some crops into storage to be sold, it was time to take a walk in the woods with Pilar. Upon walking into the gulley, something was immediately off. Then, a pair of bright red eyes opened behind them, claws emerging at Pilar’s ankles, illuminated by their lantern. In the blink of an eye, some kind of eldritch beast mangled Pilar. It took me about a minute to refix my dropped jaw after seeing that… I can’t believe how expressively gory Grave Seasons would get, or that they just killed off Pilar like that.

That was the end of the demo, but it absolutely left me wanting more. Setting up a story that blends in all sorts of seemingly disparate threads like this – from small-town murders to bloodthirsty creatures beyond comprehension lurking in dark woods – created just the right kind of intrigue. I’m sure I’ll wind up investigating my now-dead friend’s witchy ways, make more friends (and enemies), and grow crops to make tasty food while doing it.

I’ve had a lot of trouble sticking with most farming sims because they lacked a certain sense of intrigue; that hook to keep me looking forward to the next day for something other than fresh crops. This is exactly what the developers at Perfect Garbage are looking to remedy with Grave Seasons; I’m sure this first day was a condensed version of the kind of pacing we’ll see in the full release, but I love the balance of visual novel-like mystery with the more relaxing pace of farming gameplay, ensuring that fresh crops grow in time with the narrative and dramatic tension.

Grave Seasons promises to inject something sinister into the farming sim genre with a compelling horror-mystery that seems on track to deliver personality, fright, and charm in spades. I’m interested to see and learn more about Grave Seasons’ community of charming townsfolk and the secrets lurking underneath Ashenridge’s small-town veneer when it ships on PC and consoles sometime next year.