A Stardew Valley-inspired horror safari on its surface, Welcome to Elderfield is in fact a surprisingly crunchy turn-based RPG. There is no deep point to Welcome to Elderfield’s pastiche; it is neither a parody nor sendup of Stardew Valley, but simple mimicry. Welcome to Elderfield is not interested in gesturing at the possible dark underside of a place like Stardew Valley is. Instead, its horror element is a theme park of mishmashed scares and references, borrowing here from zombie fiction, there from Lovecraftian mythos, everywhere obsessed with 90s-adjacent hauntology divorced from the real material basis of the lives we live.
The town of Elderfield itself is eyerollingly stereotypical without being subversive. There are no cars about, the school is somehow closed for good but the library is still bustling, and the town comes together in shared communal events on a frequent basis. The game lacks a social thesis. It is an idyllic town even with the horror layer; dilapidated services and morose citizens are a result of a dark underground cult, not anything from the real world. It is a place out of time. In that sense, it is quite similar to Stardew Valley, both intertwined with the desire for that holy imparted word, “coziness.”
The search for coziness out of necessity declaws the horror. Early on in the game, my character finished a quest to construct an effigy of a wife for a lonely man. It reanimated, with the construct proclaiming its love for the man. The man returned this love. No twist or bittersweet ending, just a quest completed. Another happy customer in Elderfield, and not the first. The darker and deeper secrets to find are typically just more intimidating health pools for the enemies you encounter.
One of the few interesting lore bits is not at all cozy: the skeletons are strange and horrible. At some point in their lives, undead residents of Elderfield feel the need to dispose of the flesh. Many even migrate into the catacombs, a labyrinth that reminded me of nursing homes with all the neglected promises to loved ones aging out of usefulness to the labor force.
An NPC named Edwin makes one of the more striking remarks of the game, saying he had to put his skin back on since nowhere in Elderfield was hiring skeletons. It was an ominous line, delivered with a shrug of inevitability that gave me one of the few shivers playing the game. The city is replete with attempts at flavor, with some hitting the mark more effectively than others.
Welcome to Elderfield has four long seasons, each with its own holiday celebration, seasonal crops, supernatural events, soundtrack, and so on. I found the seasonal events I participated in to be a bit lackluster. They barely changed my war chest of goods and left no lasting impact on my relationship with NPCs. A special supernatural event occurs every calendar day, which the TV news program will relay to you. Although they do eventually repeat, there is a nice variety. They give the city needed character, but I ignored them as I got deeper into the game.
If the town itself is a bit generic, the radio stations you gain access to on your journey lend it the unsettling air it is almost cringing for. In the end though, you will feel much more connection to your inventory than any named character or place.
Unlike many of its peers in the genre, Welcome to Elderfield is a feature-complete, turn-based RPG. Like Look Outside from last year, I think this is a brilliant choice for resource management-horror RPGs.
Welcome to Elderfield’s borderline obsession with imparting RNG into every interaction also works to throw a wrench (or an angel) into every bit of planning. Searching the garbage? Roll a d6. Looting a monster’s corpse? Roll a d6. Trying to see what’s up with that haunted ATM? Roll a d6. Gonna go to sleep after a hard day? Roll a d6 and hope rats don’t come to nibble your earlobes. A little bit of time to think is often all you need to begin to panic, to sweat your situation. Will I have enough healing to delve deeper? Should I pick up this item? Should I interact with this random event?
Welcome to Elderfield, in putting battles front and center, also makes the interesting decision to replace almost all time pressure with combat. There is no real “energy” economy as you might know it from other farming sim RPGs. There is no tool or equipment degradation either, and only your ranch animals require much daily handholding. Early on, you acquire a warp spell that takes you to your bed with no MP cost or downside besides monster regeneration. You can reliably even skip sleep, with dire consequences only occurring after more than a couple of days.
The Tax Man is one of Welcome to Elderfield‘s few attempts at adding a time imposition on you. He requires certain crops within 2 weeks, or ELSE (I tested to see what the penalty was and it’s -10% to physical and magic attack until the next tax fog, not insignificant). Welcome to Elderfield mostly wants to add friction in its deep dungeon delves or in acquiring currency for its many money sinks. That being said, combat walls necessitate diving back into the crafting trees to figure out how to accrue more power, whether it be for equipment or more efficient healing items.
Itemization is robust and offers two clear build paths: a focus on less versatile but resource saving melee, or the powerful but sometimes fragile mage. Great items can be painstakingly forged but I mostly discovered them in the world, to the point where by the time I could forge something advanced, I already had something superior.
Every major “dungeon” has a group you have to do tasks for to progress deeper. For example, The Local Joggers Club are the only ones who know the winding paths of the dark woods. I have my problems with Welcome to Elderfield‘s setting, but it is always at pains to marry its quaint take on small town American life to its larger RPG ambitions. Using niche community activities as a way to uncover deep mysteries and occult secrets is just fun.
Speaking of community activities, do not neglect your churchly duties. At one point, only my loyalty to Kaal (one of a dozen old gods you can pledge your mortal soul to in the game) helped me surmount a difficult boss. I was able to access a door only for Kaal followers deep inside a mine I had discovered, and inside was a maul that both upgraded my attack and lowered MP spell requirements. It was exciting serendipity that Welcome to Elderfield’s RNG loot and decision-making allowed.
Raising animals goes hand-in-hand with tending to your farm, and it requires significant monetary investment and daily check-ins with your feed troughs and fields. Rather than the game letting you loose from the start, every inch of land you till has to be cleansed with a semi-rare item called Cleansing Balm. Monster infestations are common and lucrative for your business if you have been keeping up with the game’s difficulty curve.
While not a throwaway aspect of Welcome to Elderfield in the slightest, farming and ranching can feel less hands-on than the combat. It is not too difficult to have a thriving estate even with minimal care towards min-maxing, as long as you pay attention to your small deadlines and what crops can be produced in a given season.
As all farm and ranch products go towards the removal of the seal barring the door to the Stone Tower, the game’s central mystery, you will want to keep your thumb green. The money sinks are no joke, including in the late-game dungeon. To descend all the way to the game’s final challenge and see credits, you will have to do everything.
As satisfying as smashing sentient pumpkins or evil deer to bits is, navigating Elderfield’s social link system is an unrewarding chore. All of the main human romance options are uniformly uninteresting partners at the beginning and do not evolve at all as you “get to know them” (aka, struggle your way through trial-and-error gift-giving for small incremental increases in the 10-heart gauge). Tasks that might intersect with them do not increase their relationship meter and are never commented upon again.
Perhaps most odd is Welcome to Elderfield’s notion of diversity. Skeletons, ex-skeletons, and goo monsters are all available to woo, but no person of color. In fact, the entire game is devoid of non-white human NPCs throughout its entire runtime. In a game that exalts Lovecraft, that is perhaps a little too darkly ironic.
Welcome to Elderfield will be an interesting case for fans of the genre who flocked to its revival with Stardew Valley. What the hell is cozy? Much of the enemy art has clear inspirations from Junji Ito. The sheer density of the town’s supernatural happenings and resignation also feel akin. However, it never feels as hopeless or helpless as Ito’s most famous works. Welcome to Elderfield is a game where you can summon the unearthly and smash it with a big hammer.
Maybe that is what cozy is all about.
