Elderfield is my home. Only it doesn’t feel very homely. As I walk around the quiet streets trying to navigate the fog that has descended, I feel a weight in my pockets. It’s mainly mystery meat, but it’s also the burden of needing to solve the town’s problems. This isn’t any ordinary cosy RPG and it’s certainly not nestled amongst the whimsical delight of Stardew Valley. It’s more like if Stardew Valley and Graveyard Keeper birthed an offspring doused in Stephen King’s grippingly supernatural mind.
Welcome to Elderfield, the haunting town full of dark twists. A mysterious introduction immediately alludes to the strangeness of this place before I find myself waking up in the woods in the middle of a rainstorm. I do a little searching only to arm myself with a sad-looking can of spoiled rations and a wooden stick to ward off any evil lurking in the foliage. The first thing, not person, that I meet is a tentacle-faced monstrosity up to no good. And then I’m suddenly fighting in some Pokemon-esque turned-based tomfoolery, defending my fragile limbs with as many attack points as I can muster.
This title, from developer Chris Cote, is not horror in a scream-and-hide-behind-your-hands type of way. No, it’s much more subtle, running a very fine line between unease and terror. But I can still comfortably say it isn’t scary enough to put your regular cosy gamer off. I should know, I wouldn’t touch a ‘regular’ horror game with a barge pole. But, fair warning, you will have to fight off some weird-looking creatures that’ll make your skin crawl, just lightly mind, and that’s where Welcome to Elderfield stands out from any cosy RPG I’ve played before.
In fact, from the get-go you can choose between five difficulty types ranging from cosy to nightmare, a question I never thought I’d be asking myself. This choice will make the enemies easier or harder, depending on how much of a turn-based RPG you actually want this to be. And while I set it as normal to begin with, I opted to change the difficulty setting as I played, trying out something a little more dangerous for size before embracing a cosy experience that laid bare how much this game had to offer if it wasn’t for the turn-based mechanism. It turns out, quite a lot.
It almost feels like an old-school text adventure the way it reads and narrates what you do around Elderfield. You have your home, that’s surprisingly big. Your farm, based on the west side of the map rather than at your homestead. Your bike, immediately available to whip around town. And your friends… Wait, you don’t have any of those. You can make friends, of course, with the residents of Elderfield, but this isn’t an easy task. What they’d like you to do instead is fulfil their requests ranging anywhere between retrieving laundry from the almost-definitely haunted laundry room to removing the disturbing and threatening tentacles seeping out of the doorways in the back rooms of the Mall (and a whole lot in-between).
And if there’s one thing I really love about any cosy RPG it’s how surprisingly busy you are while still being allowed to take it at your own pace. Completionism is in full flow here, preoccupying you with tasks while you try and ignore the strange creatures lurking at almost every turn. 10 hours in and I was haphazardly juggling general tasks, job board tasks and long-term tasks all in one go, alongside a creepy foray of nightmare creatures. The demands didn’t seem to be letting up anytime soon and neither did the monsters (of which there are 190 different types, according to the Beastiary).
As you make your way around the map from the Local Joggers Club to the Greystone Estates to the Sewers, you come across these different enemies. They’ll appear as little black, innocent-looking blobs, until they chase after you and loom upon you as a haunting black shadow. Or, they’ll just jump out at you from absolutely nowhere. I mean, God forbid you pickaxe a stone a little too aggressively. And weirdly, mining in the game is actually less confrontational than the likes of Stardew Valley. It turns out underground tunnels are less scary when the world above you is a much scarier proposition.
The turn-based battles across Elderfield are incredibly well thought out. Not only do you spend your attack points on the basics, but you’ve got rituals, skills and unleashing certain items in your arsenal. By doing so, you earn combat points, which can help you dodge, execute critical hits, or defend yourself by regaining HP and MP. The more points you earn, the more chance of a special effect being triggered. And luckily, fuelling these fights is vast, whether you craft, cook, or loot your treasures to use in these numerous battles.
Some attacks will even apply Blessings and Curses to you or your opponent. From Hex to Weakness, you’re only affected temporarily in battle, pushing you onwards to beat them fast. And how to make yourself feel better after a particularly tough brawl? A good ol’ shower. When you shower in Elderfield, you not only reset yourself, but you also reset parts of the world like regenerating monsters you’ve already slain or mysteries you’ve already unraveled.
Everything you do, is a bit of a risk, which is true for sleeping as well. Instead of regaining HP while you rest in bed at night, your bed becomes a bit of a gamble. While you can avoid sleeping for the most part, eventually you’ll begin to suffer from your lack of shut-eye. And every night, you roll the dice on whether it’ll be a good night’s sleep, or a horribly bad one.
I mean that literally, by the way. A big part of life in Elderfield is leaving yourself open to luck. Your night’s sleep hangs on a dice roll. Looting a corpse, roll the dice. Searching the garbage, roll the dice. Trying to unleash an attack while afflicted with dizziness, roll those godforsaken dice. You can try all you might, but roll yourself a one or a two and you’re in for a bad time. A five or a six and you’re laughing. Anywhere in between, neutrality is your middleground. Although, you’ll pretty much always find yourself with a cheeky bit of mystery meat even in the worst luck.
This unique concept is a real boon for Welcome to Elderfield. Your strategy will only take you so far. And the Moon has a part to play in this, too. Every night when the clock strikes midnight, that evening’s moon will dictate what sort of day you’re going to have. It also unlocks the potential for new tasks in your journal and a new story on your old television set, revealing something strange about the town for that day. One day, you’re calling for a silly dog to come and play, the next, you’re searching for big eggs in the monstrous flats akin to the Upside Down. And while these events make each day that little bit more interesting, the calendar of events, I fear, is severely lacking (or maybe I’m just greedy).
The seasons in Elderfield are not typical. Surprise-surprise, nothing is typical in this town and it’s certainly not light-hearted. Instead, they’re divided into Rebirth, Harvest, Witch and Death. Aside from the odd visit from the Tax Man and the travelling salesman, there’s only one event in Rebirth that mixes up the days. There are also no birthdays because who really knows how old the residents of Elderfield are, I suppose, considering some of them are ghouls and skeletons.
You can keep yourself busy regardless, thanks to all the basics of a RPG being sewn in like squares on a disturbing quilt. The fish you catch have a taste for leeches and bugs. The cattle you rear aren’t cows, but giant crows. The people you meet aren’t your ordinary townies, like Farmer Hans, a massive skeleton with scary teeth and red eyes. He’s friendly enough. He just shed his skin because that’s what the people of Elderfield apparently do to give their lives longevity. You know, just cute and cosy town things. Living as a skeleton doesn’t seem like much of a life though, if Funnybones taught me anything in the 90s.
But you really should speak to everyone you meet, regardless of their appearance. I avoided a skeleton on the road out to the farm through fear of a squabble. Turns out he was a simple fellow that disappeared shortly after our chat. Yes, you’ll feel on edge approaching someone or something you don’t know, but nine times out of ten you’ll be rewarded for your curiosity, feeding into the game and what it has to offer.
Despite its dark nature and ominous tones, there are flourishes in Elderfield that scratch a real cosy RPG itch. Your primary storage container, for example, exists in multiple locations throughout the map, easily accessible and full of the same loot in every place. The fridge next to your cooking pot at home, another place to store loot, like cooking ingredients that makes your time over the stove that little bit easier.
The equipment you wear is extensive, offering you custom loadouts for any particularly aggressive battling you’re planning. And the town of Elderfield keeps on changing. After a particularly refreshing shower, you’ll notice the mines have shifted their layouts, the wretched Pipe Cleaners and Drippers are back in the sewers, and copious amounts of Bitter Herbs and Red Mushrooms are ripe for a good foraging.
A lot of Welcome to Elderfield may feel slightly out of reach to begin with, especially when you’re just trying to keep your head down hoping not to provoke another altercation with some slimy nightmare. And to that I say, get stuck in. Like any good cosy RPG, it’s only as good as the hours you put into it. Playing it doesn’t feel like a chore, considering most of what you’re doing are chores. Yes, there are monsters, but they’re not the gory yucky kind you may be expecting. In fact, thanks to the hand-drawn artwork heavily inspired by manga, it actually makes it weirdly delightful to look at.
Your time inside Welcome to Elderfield is dark and mysterious, but unravelling the mysteries in this disturbing town is worth your while. I wouldn’t hate it if the farm was a little closer to home (make that literally outside my home) and the quiet town, at times, is almost a little too quiet. It’d be a disservice to call it Stardew Valley at Halloween because it’s so much more than that. If you’re up for a challenge, take on your position as a spooky task-doer who woke up on the wrong side of the bed and you’re in for a real, if a pretty disturbing, treat.
