It's fantastic from what I've played of the demo and full release thus far but MAN are the permanent stat debuffs from sleeping just tedious. It doesn't really add anything and early on (especially in higher difficulties) you can just become substantially weaker because you happened to roll badly during something you can't really avoid forever

I'm sure in the grand scheme of things -1 defense or luck or whatever isn't game breaking or would ever invite a softlock but MAN is it unfun to deal with, it just encourages save scumming until you get a favourable result, or at least something that doesn't set you up for a fall in the long run.

Sleeping is optional sure, and that's fine, you can go a decent amount of time without sleep without any MAJOR debuffs but eventually you'll begin to struggle, and the fact that you have to deal with this and, in other cases, instant death if you roll unlucky enough just adds a layer of unfun RNG to bothering to sleep, meaning it's generally best to just save, sleep and if you get a stat debuff, reload, if you die well, if you are in higher difficulties you will need to reload anyway so it's effectively the same thing.

Everything else in the game is fantastic, the atmosphere, the mechanics, the ui (though I feel some button presses don't register in the menus sometimes though that might just be me) but I feel the RNG needs some polishing in a few areas.

Edit: As a response to the dev note under my review I respect and agree that this would almost definitely not be a great concern later in the game, my issue is that as a new player or someone starting out, going to sleep which you generally would want to do when unsure of the game's difficulty and mechanics you would feel pretty horrible doing so and suddenly being hit by a permanant stat minus, and even if it isn't something you really care about in the long run it still incentives save scumming anyway as there's no real reason not to, it's just too big of a hit to let go without reloading really, even in the situations where you ARENT losing stats I don't imagine losing 5% or more of your max money in the non death game modes because you rolled badly is very fun

It's nice in theory that you can end up with more gold, or even increased stats from sleeping too, I was blessed with some increased stats myself but it just seems to even further incentivise reloading until you get a good outcome, and in all honesty I'm not really sure *how* you would deal with that. Maybe less punishing debuffs (something like waking up with an intense feeling of hydrophobia for a day not letting you bathe as much?) rather than just an rng chance to die or be debuffed for the rest of the game. Sure you could still reload in those scenarios but you would definitely feel less like it's necessary to.

To anyone starting out who for some reason is reading this review I would recommend just taking a day or two without sleeping, the debuffs you get for being awake aren't THAT punishing early on and it lowers the odds of being hit too hard by sleep, oh and save often.

my most anticipated game of the year. been waiting for full release for a while. i poured so many hours into the demo and i had so much fun. amazing music and vibes. this is my life now.

There is a thin semantic line separating weird and beautiful. And that line is covered in jellyfish... While Elderfield is the one holding the net.

Every aspect of uncertainty, strangeness, and gothic/Lovecraftian horror of Welcome to Night Vale is turned into a Saturday night "cozy" farm sim. Something I never imagined there would be a massive cult following many years later, let alone a game that takes so much inspiration from it but I'm pleasantly surprised by how well Welcome to Elderfield made it work. The setting has that same uncanny feeling of living somewhere where bizarre things are just treated as mundane everyday life. It doesn't constantly try to scare you. It lets the weirdness sit there in the background and treats it like a completely normal part of everyday life.

I think a huge part of why that contrast works so well comes down to Elderfield's art direction. The combination of hand-drawn ink, pencil and oil-paint horror aesthetics across both its illustrations and sprite work. Especially how it pays homage to a wide range of horror illustrators. You'll may immediately recognize Junji Ito, but there's also more equally iconic figures that massively influence the art direction, such as Kazuo Umezu, Hideshi Hino, Suehiro Maruo, Shinichi Koga, Masaaki Nakayama and Gou Tanabe are just a few I managed to recognize. I'm sure there's plenty more I'm missing but suffice it to say, there's an surprisingly large influence of '80s and '90s Japanese horror manga. What's particularly interesting though, is despite he illustrations and in-game sprites having fairly different art styles. I think that contrast actually helps elevate the horror aesthetic Elderfield has going for it.

As for music, I've always considered it to be Chris Cote's forte. Before becoming a dedicated solo game developer, Chris was well known for producing lo-fi hip-hop/synth-horror music under the alias Dated, as well as founding the independent record label Ill-Advised Records. That experience, in my opinion, shines brightly through this game. The blend of hazy lo-fi, eerie synths and melancholic melodies gives Elderfield an atmosphere that is simultaneously cozy, nostalgic, dreadful yet deeply unnerving. My one real criticism of the soundtrack is, ironically, the lack of additional tracks, more specifically, the lack of battle themes.
There's only a single dedicated battle track and while it's an alright track, considering how frequently you're going to be fighting in the same dungeons for possibly hundreds of hours, it'll become repetitive fast.
However, despite my gripes, the soundtrack is still a massive highlight of this game's identity. If you're a fan of lo-fi/downtempo music as well, do yourself a favor and check out Chris's previous work. There's plenty more of it in his discography that's just as good.

Unless you plan on playing on "Cozy difficulty", this is where I think Elderfield will alienate a large portion of players who are used to a more casual, low-stakes farming sim. Obviously the game takes a lot of ideas from games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley: growing crops, fishing, raising animals, gathering resources, time management, etc.. The basic structure of Elderfield will feel pretty familiar. However, this is precisely where the "cozy gaming" illusion breaks.
It isn't that the farming sim elements are an afterthought, more like, they take a backseat to the various hardcore RPG mechanics that are heavily reliant on RNG. Quite literally.
Games like World of Horror and Look Outside, but most notably the Fear & Hunger series (that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dice-roll mechanic), are major influences on Elderfield's overall difficulty and presentation. A large number of important decisions, combat actions and events are tied to dice rolls, with bad rolls ranging from minor inconveniences to downright rage-quit-inducing penalties. If you roll poorly, you can easily stack multiple curses that reduce your stats, some of which can even permanently reduce your attributes. Even mundane actions like mining ores, talking to farm animals or looking into garbage bins can potentially curse you. The only way to remove some curses is to take a shower, but doing so also removes your accumulated buffs and respawns every normal mob you've killed. And like a gambling addict, you can't even go to SLEEP without the game tempting you to roll the dice again. We love gambling! Made a bad roll? Well, ♥♥♥♥ you, enjoy a "permanent" stat-reduction curse first thing in the morning. You do get a free pass on your first sleepless night, but every night you skip afterward comes with progressively worse debuffs until you finally go to bed.

The game really starts to show its teeth once you start exploring dungeons, as they aren't simply places you enter, clear out, and leave in one go. Since you can't save the game unless you're at home, dungeons should be treated more like a roguelike than a traditional farm sim with RPG elements tacked onto it. Tending your farm can net you a sizable profit but also provide valuable food ingredients. When crafted with materials you find across dungeons or your farm, they can provide some pretty significant healing effects, powerful buffs or buffs with healing properties. Finding the balance between which of these to prioritize (selling your crops or hoarding them for crafting recipes) can make or break whether causal players want to keep playing this game. Because as I said before, combat itself can become a constant resource drain, raising crops is a massive grind as it's also tied to resource preparation and RNG is constantly working against you if you're not spec into a luck based build. If you're not sure what to do, that frustration may slowly eat away at your resolve to keep playing.
You can flee from any battle but it should be treated as a last-resort panic button. Successfully escaping, if you manage to roll a lucky number, will teleport you back home, but it'll also reset the enemy spawns for every dungeon, to prevent cheesing. This comes with a major risk. If you fail the dice game, right before an incoming multi-attack, while you're on low HP? Then say GGz to all the progress you made during that run.

I've played plenty of RPGs over the years that are way more punishing than this, so I wasn't really bothered by the difficulty. It's really easy if you do a bit of pre-planning and stock up on health items. Personally, I have a conflicted relationship with RPG Maker titles, I find far too many of them to be lazy cash grabs. However, I really enjoy Elderfield's unique twist on the farming sim formula. There are so many interconnected systems and mechanics here that I honestly didn't expect to see in an RPG Maker engine and considering how notoriously restrictive RPG Maker generally is, Chris obviously put a lot of care into this game.
I was on the fence about whether or not I should've subscribed to the Patreon early-access build last year, but after experiencing the demo for 50+ hours, seeing the dedicated work that goes on behind the scenes and constantly being showered with weekly/monthly updates for three years straight? Well, putting 100+ hours into the Patreon early-access build made the leap that more faithful to the worth.
It's been a few months since I last touched the game, I wanted to wait until 1.0 finally dropped on Steam. So there's tons of stuff that's changed since then. Plenty of things I wished had been ironed out (that I couldn't mention here because of character limit) but considering how much content was jammed into this build, the cheap price point and the developer reassurance that even more content and QoL changes are still on the way, I can safely say that, at the very least, this game deserves a place within the genre.

I recommend any like-minded souls to give it a shot. After all, death is only the end if you assume the story is about you. Otherwise, it's just another day in Elderfield. But listen... it's probably nothing.