Code provided with many thanks to Untold Tales.
Everdream Village is a cozy farming simulation game, where you’ve just become the fledgling mayor of a new island. With the help of your family and magical cat, you’ll have to build up the village by working together with your human and animal neighbors.
A New Mayor’s in Town
Upon entering the game, I was given a simple character customization menu with a pretty limited set of options, but I was still pleased with the character I created. After a short backstory, I was free to explore the world and work on building up my new island.
Several family members also accompanied me on this journey (which was good, given that I still looked like a child) and assigned me various tasks to fix up the village. In addition to the typical farming tasks, like watering crops and milking cows, I was also asked to fix up the animal pen fences and dig for rare fossils.
My human companions weren’t the only ones who needed assistance, as my magical cat kindly reminded me, so I set off on a scavenger hunt to retrieve the golden eggs for my chicken neighbors. Animal requests generally needed me to change into my dog form, which gives you the ability to sniff out specific items and herd animals around the island.
As my quests piled up, I made good use of the map, which starts blank but fills in the more you explore the island. The toggleable markers for human NPCs and animal NPCs were a big help in keeping track of my various quest locations.
Pros of Everdream Village
I really enjoyed the art style of Everdream Village. The colors of the environment are relaxing, and the animal models are especially cute. I also appreciated the fact that I could harvest wood from trees, and as long as I waited long enough, it would regenerate health, so I wouldn’t have to worry about replanting it. While some games allow you to craft and cook with the press of a button, I enjoyed the mini games (a 3D jigsaw puzzle and a simple Fruit-Ninja-like) that I needed to first complete before I could autocraft and autocook each item.
Cons of Everdream Village
Unfortunately, some aspects of Everdream Village are still noticeably missing. Certain dialogues are still using placeholders, such as my conversation with a bear who replied with, “generic_bear_dialogue.” There is a clock in the UI, but no change in the environment to signal any day-night cycle. Instead, my island is in perpetual daytime. I was also never prompted to sleep despite the clock showing past midnight. I had tried going into my home too and received a message that interiors would be implemented in the final release.
While most of the gameplay was relaxing, I found both the dog sniffing and terraforming mechanics to be frustrating. While following the scents of specific items as a dog, the scent trails would be quite faint, winding, and hard to follow. With regards to digging for fossil pieces, I had to utilize the terraforming tool to lower the ground. The camera had difficulty keeping up, so I oftentimes wouldn’t know how far down to go, and my character would glitch on the screen as I searched for the buried bones. There is also a glaring bug with the tutorial menu, which causes the screen to flash rapidly and makes the text a pain to read.
A few of the quests were also a bit difficult to follow and had misleading directions in the journal. One task had me follow a bison, but after I took too long clearing an area of bushes, the bison was long gone with no marker on the map. The fossil hunting quest was confusing as well because the quest giver had instructed me to use the treasure detector item, while the quest entry in the journal directed me to transform into dog form to sniff out the fossil locations.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I found the early access version of Everdream Village to be a cute concept with a visually pleasing world, but the missing dialogue and gameplay mechanics make the experience feel a bit unpolished and incomplete. Still, I look forward to giving this game another try once more of the game features are implemented in future updates.
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Thank you for that insight. That’s very helpful 🙂