Everdream Valley Review (Switch eShop)

Farming games are well-tilled territory. It’s near-impossible to play a new one without comparing it to the many predecessors on Switch. Everdream Valley knows this, and uses it to both its benefit and detriment.

Released on PC and PlayStation last month from newbie developer Mooneaters and publisher Untold Tales, this debut squeezes its way onto the Switch’s crowded farming sim market (farmers market?). The game does a lot differently; unfortunately, we found those differences didn’t necessarily make for a better farm sim experience. But, depending on how you play other farm sims, your (horse) mileage may vary.

In Everdream Valley, you’re summering with your grandparents – they’re still alive! – and helping out on their vast expanse of farmland. Then, you start having strange dreams where you take the form of your furry friends. It’s all wrapped up in a cute, bright 3D art style that makes your cows round and your landscapes pretty.

Given you have to be animals for portions of the playthrough (during the game's dreams), it makes sense that the game prioritises cows, sheep, chickens, etc. over other farm sim elements. If you were expecting a shipping bin, a local town or marriage candidates, you may be disappointed. Selling produce isn’t the main aim and you won’t have the satisfying sound of gold pouring in every night. The area surrounding your farm is vast but it’s mostly just forest and beach. Grandma, Grandpa and the local merchant are the only humans.

The game is a little light on customisation, with limited varieties of furniture, clothes and hairstyles. That said, the space is very fluid with no obvious grid, so if you wanted to place trees haphazardly, you could. Fortunately, there is a very cute dog, and it was probably our favourite thing in the game. You can choose from 10 breeds – we were disappointed that we couldn’t pick more than one breed! You get to pat and play fetch to raise your friendship with your canine companion. In return, your dog helps with various quests like bringing home cows.

Everdream Valley’s dreams are a unique element, and we didn’t want to sleep on them. It took us a while to trigger them, though, which left us wondering if we’d set a farm boot forward in the wrong defection. In some dreams, the animals talk to you, helping you solve the mystery behind the dreams in a meta way. This could have been an intriguing story, but it fell flat for us as there wasn’t enough suspense built around each of the dreams. The language was also a little stilted, and we weren’t sure if that was due to translation issues. Other dreams are minigames ranging in difficulty; you chase or herd fellow fauna, trot on planks in a 3D platformer-esque situation, and run or fly to a specific destination. Sometimes dream activities impacted our waking hours; after a dream as an adult duck collecting ducklings, we awoke to a whole flock in our pond.

That kind of outcome was a relief because herding animals feels like, erm, herding cats. They frequently dash away, even when we’d done the creature-calming job of petting them and they were supposed to follow us. Then they’d escape the enclosure, giving the game a chaotic feel, like when your Sims don’t do what you want them to. Of course, mild stress is common to management sims, but at one stage we got so frustrated we had to step away from the game. It was a stark contrast to our experiences playing “just one more day” in Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons.

And there’s poop. Poop, everywhere! Unlike other cute farming sims that ignore the realities of caring for living things, Everdream Valley doesn’t sweep it under the rug. Nope, this game makes you pick up poop. You can use it for compost, which helps your crops grow faster, so it’s not a complete…waste.

Everdream Valley’s tutorials are like the mushrooms you collect: there are a lot of them, but they aren’t very useful. Many don’t even appear until after you’ve already figured out how to do the task. And as mentioned earlier, Everdream Valley’s world is expansive, even though it’s mostly grass, trees, and beaches. You can run around to the bucolic areas in a relatively flexible order, provided you’ve got enough materials to repair the bridges. Skipping and jumping across these plains to the sounds of lilting flutes and strings is pretty fun. That is when the game isn’t lagging or stuttering.

In the huge landscape of Everdream Valley, we craved fast travel – if it exists, we couldn't find it – but there are things that make your adventures easier. You get a tent so you can sleep and dream everywhere. And any items that don’t fit in your inventory get sent straight to your storage chest at your home base too, which comes in handy. The game’s map is helpful, although the UI is fairly poor for such a frequently-used item: there are no words or names for areas, the pins are all the same colour and a bug causes inconsistency in the size of each pin.

There are also some not-so-cosy elements. Whenever we returned to the farm, we found our animals had gotten sick, and our pooch’s friendship level had dropped. It was like when you come back from holiday and realise you have to do chores like a regular human. And if you venture too far, you’ll have to defend yourself against wolves, geese or bees by wildly swinging your sword (if you can equip it in time). It’s not as sweat-inducing as, say, the deeper levels of a Stardew Valley mine, but we weren’t expecting it. Combat-averse players needn’t fear, though, because you don’t “die”. You get placed back at home the next morning.

We encountered quite a few bugs and glitches while tending our farm, however, an early patch has addressed some. Developer Mooneaters has also made a few changes for other platforms but these haven't come to Switch yet. Here’s hoping they come to our favourite console in future. Concerns for us that haven’t been patched include slow loading times, slow quest updates, clunky movement, animals getting stuck, and a cacophony of noises coming from one alpaca. Often we weren’t sure if we had done something wrong, or if a bug had caused an issue. And on the whole, the game runs faster and smoother on other platforms than the Switch.

There are also more UI snags outside of the map. There is no recipe or crafting log, your aim is fiddly when trying to raise crops or interact with animals, and you can’t sort your storage chest or pick up most items after placing them. On the main screen, quests are hard to read and the clock blocks the map. It also would’ve been good to have visual cues like wet-look soil after watering the plants. They're small, but as with sowing seeds, from little things, big things grow.