Have you ever wanted a cozy, Stardew Valley-inspired farming sim game with a darker tone and higher stakes? In the newly released Early Access title Grimshire, there is more on the line than maxing out relationships and building up your farm. Players must prepare to contend with a devastating plague that is ravaging the land. Careful management of their farm and food supply is the only thing keeping them and their fellow villagers alive. The game, developed and published by Acute Owl Studio, released into Early Access today on Steam.

Currently, the Steam Early Access version of Grimshire allows players to experience Year 1 of the game, adapting to the changing seasons before repeating the same day over and over once the 28th of Winter arrives. During this time, players grow crops to prepare for the plague in an isolated village located in the mountains. They must also find ways to store their bounty to prevent it from rotting away with the seasons.

In addition to farming, players can enjoy the typical farming sim fare of other activities, such as fishing, cooking, foraging, mining, and animal husbandry. The player’s home is customizable with different decorative items, and village projects can be completed to help the community prepare for the world’s harsh realities. Players will also befriend the villagers in the struggling town of Grimshire, but these attachments may become sources of pain as residents can perish if not adequately provided for. 

This game is the second release from indie developer Acute Owl Studio. Their first game, Bone’s Cafe, was a quirky, slightly darker medieval fantasy spin on co-op cooking games like Plate Up and Overcooked. Players assume the role of necromancer cooks who work together to raise skeletal staff members to satisfy an increasing horde of fantasy creature customers.

This latest game release, Grimshire, strikes an interesting balance between adorable, cozy aesthetics and the dark consequences of surviving in an unfriendly world. Player attachments to NPCs feel more meaningful because they can be severed as the seasons go on. Also, the glut of resources typically accumulated mindlessly in these games is given a greater purpose here.

In a Steam community post celebrating the launch, the developers established a clear plan and features that players can expect to experience once the game hits 1.0. These features include:

• Localizations
• Year 2 content and story
• Romance/Relationships/Marriage
• Children
• Rival relationships
• Remappable controls
• Festivals (improvements to the current and maybe add more)
• More stations (Seed maker, kiln, mushroom log, etc)
• Greenhouse
• Player species (more choices)
• Decor (more decor items)
• Multi barns and coops
• House/barn/coop exterior color customization
• Pets
• Mounts

However, while the Early Access version lacks these specific features, there is still plenty of playtime to be extracted from its current offering. The developers estimate that just this first Early Access release version contains 40-50 hours of content. Priced at only $15 upon Early Access release, this is a generous amount of gameplay hours for the cost. Currently, the game has been released with an additional discount to celebrate the launch of Early Access, which ends on July 29th.