• Price: $19.99 USD (currently on sale for $17.99 until July 4th)
• Developer: SquareHusky
• Publisher: Akupara Games
• Release Date: June 20, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by Akupara Games on behalf of SquareHusky. We thank them for being able to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

As a longtime fan of farming sims, I was more than ready to check out Everafter Falls, which has farming, mining, fishing, and fighting, but also some fun twists. You play as the only human resident of Everafter Falls, and the others are all anthropomorphized animals of different species.

Before Everafter

When you first start up the game, there are some nice accessibility options to choose from:

• Tone down colors
• Disable Background UI animations
• Disable screen shake
• Disable dungeon torch and lighting flicker effects
• Disable all weather effects
• Colorblind assistance

There’s also an Easy mode, but you can’t switch back to Normal mode after that; Easy mode “significantly” reduces monsters’ Attack and HP. Next up, play the game with 1 or 2 players, then decide on your preferred farm type (Standard, Mini, or Moat). Split-screen co-op is an option, but I was unable to test 2 player mode.

The developer estimates an approximate playtime of ~30 hours.

Before you can really get started, customize the following aspects of your character:

• Gender
• Skin color
• 9 hair styles + hair color
• Clothing colors and motifs
• Pet color

After you’re done setting up, the game opens with a startling incident. But don’t worry – you wake up and are told that the event didn’t actually happen – you were merely inside of a simulation set on Earth. That’s a relief! However, you don’t remember anything about Everafter Falls after exiting the simulation.

So you return to your home and get right back to work. Your home is located on a decent sized – if not slightly overgrown – piece of land. The objective is to clear enough of the land to start farming again. But instead of doing the heavy lifting yourself, your pet tills the land and waters your crops!

You can designate the squares you want them to modify, then leave them there to work as you continue about your business in other areas. It’s also possible to craft watering drones later on. All you have to do is plant the seeds. I really, really appreciate the lack of stamina bar, as you can squeeze in as many tasks as you want to in a day.

One thing to note about the daily routine: time seems to pass fairly quickly. If you’re out past midnight, ghostly creatures called “Spooklets” grab you and force you to go to bed. I did not love this, especially as it causes you to wake up a bit later in the morning as a result. At the same time, they’re kind of cute, and their self care messages were sweet.

There’s more than just farming to keep you busy. You can craft tools and machines that will help you gather materials or turn them into something new. While some items require you to use stationary machines, you can craft other items by hand anywhere you go in town. That was certainly convenient.

Leaving your farm, you’ll encounter the other residents of Everafter Falls, who run facilities such as a general store, livestock and seed suppliers, bakery, blacksmith, and more. These adorable characters will give you tasks to complete in exchange for different rewards and/or advancing the story.

Something I especially appreciated was the ability to instantly track a character or facility on the map; character icons are displayed on one side of the map, with the facility icons on the other. When you highlight one of them, the map highlights their current location. It’s a much better experience than having to spend time looking for them yourself.

I also like how the quest tab lets you know when there’s a new one becomes available. Besides the main story quests, you can eventually unlock a job board that provides you with additional money-making opportunities. These tasks generally consist of waiting for a material to grow and then using it to craft the requested product. Other minor quests involve fishing, mining, or gathering resources X number of times.

Farming Sim Strengths

As you run around town, there are a few ways that Everafter Falls improves on some standard farming game features I’ve seen. The general store owner implemented a fun prize system in every shop, and once you earn enough points from shopping you can purchase different tiers of keys to unlock special items.

I really like how we can place a hold on one of the farm animals if we really like one of the supplier’s rotating livestock. Another interesting change is that players can purchase animals they don’t have a barn for yet, as the animals can be kept in “suspended animation” in your inventory until you have a place to put them.

Each animal has an item they love, and giving it to them supposedly grants you an extra byproduct from them for the day. However, I never seemed to get any eggs from my poultry at all – or from some other animals – unless I gave them their favorite item.

The seed supplier also sells potted crops that don’t need to be watered, and you can keep them in your house to provide you with out-of-season crops every few days. Funnily enough, you can harvest them from your neighbors’ houseplants if you’d like, but their furniture is sadly off limits! 😔😂

You can purchase cooking equipment from the bakery, but every once in a while you can participate in a cooking mini game quest and try to win prizes for serving higher numbers of customers. The blacksmith facility is pretty standard as far as these games go, as is the fishing store, but the Penguin Post and Print Shop facilities give you access to better abilities for your pet and drones.

The precious penguin siblings run a pigeon mail delivery service. You’ll receive letters in the mail, and after reading them and removing attached items you can recycle them. When you have enough recycled paper to combine into one item, you can turn them into cards with improved abilities for you and your pet. (And the activation method is oddly hilarious.)

One of my favorite features in these games would have to be upgrading and decorating the house. Everafter Falls delivers on that, with construction projects including barns, greenhouses, and home improvements. Thankfully, the builder seems to consider you trustworthy enough to complete projects before you pay her!

Furniture and other decorative items are available for purchase in several stores, and they can also be won as prizes in festivals or using the store’s prize system. They probably could have used a bit more variety in the tables and shelves, and the wallpaper is ungodly expensive, but I was a huge fan of the character plushies and wall art!

Critter Catching

When you leave the house, you can’t take too many steps outside before you run into a bug of some sort. Catch those bugs, frogs, and fish and donate them to the museum; completing individual “collections” will earn you credits to exchange for ability cards or furniture. There’s an additional ongoing task to work on in the museum, which has its own prizes.

You can use terrariums to breed caterpillars, butterflies, dragonflies, and frogs. I’m not sure how you can manipulate the offspring results, but it’s a neat feature. I’m not much of an insect or amphibian person, but the little frogs are pretty darn cute!

The real draw for me is the aquarium, though. We can craft and place terrariums in our house, but not aquariums. Passing by the massive tank containing fish donations in the center of town made me smile. Although I love the fish, the mechanics of fishing were initially a little confusing.

Finally, we get to arguably the most important creatures to catch: pixies! I could have used a more detailed explanation on how they work, but I figured it out eventually. You build pixie shrines and place food offerings to potentially lure one in. If a pixie appears the next day, you can capture it in a pixie bottle and attach it to a tree, machine, or mineral deposit to speed up the harvesting cooldown time.

They also automatically harvest materials from the object they’re attached to every day. Pixies come in 4 different colors, which correspond with the type of work they’ll perform. And as you may have guessed, there are rewards related to pixie catching as well.

Dungeon Diving

As soon as you’ve established a routine on your farm and in town, you’ll find yourself tasked with removing a curse from a rune and unlocking a portal that takes you to a dungeon full of enemies. You don’t have to grind for levels, as you don’t earn any experience points for defeating monsters.

You’re limited to using the same type of sword, and there are no other weapon options. A larger selection of weapons may have made the combat more exciting; you don’t even have any spells in your arsenal. I did like how our pet and drone(s) can attack enemies and heal you. Unfortunately, we don’t get the option to bring a villager with us to the dungeons.

Each dungeon has a map full of different rooms, including several rooms with rewards, mini boss rooms, and the main boss. (The dungeons are also your primary source of ore.) To continue to the next rooms you’ll need to defeat every enemy in the current room to remove the barriers.

I wouldn’t say that the combat is difficult, but if you aren’t vigilant you may run into environmental hazards or be overrun by a mob of enemies. If you die in the dungeon the Spooklets rescue you, but charge you an (actually reasonable) fee depending on the level of the dungeon you’re in. The day comes to an end afterwards.

Story Time

Completing each dungeon is the main way to see the story content. I liked the basic premise of the plot, but didn’t feel like we get much explanation on what’s going on – or direction on how to advance the story. Many story scenes take place without your character there.

As far as the characters go, I adored the art style. Everyone is so cute! There isn’t a romance system, which I didn’t mind at all. I wish we had a friendship system where we could increase affection and see more events with each character, though. While the characters lacked depth, a lot of their dialogue still made me laugh or think, “Wow. That’s a great quote!”

I really liked the festival events. I think it’s hard to come up with fun, unique festivals for farming sims now, but they did a good job with them. The prize selection for the critter catching contest was great, and the Snow Fest was probably my favorite event because you can spend small amounts of money for additional plays when trying to earn tickets. I appreciated the way the game reminds you of the events several times on the day of the festival.

Tutorials & Technical Troubles

I consider myself a Story of seasoned farming sim player. So I recognized most of the mechanics implemented in the game. However, there were still quite a few things that I didn’t figure out until I was about a year into playing. The fishing mechanic was something that confused me at first, but I caught on after a few tries.

I didn’t figure out how to get white wood for a long time; only after going through my screenshots did I realize that a character mentioned where to get it one time. The description of “unordinary stones” says something about breaking them in the “workshop,” which confused me until I realized that they meant the blacksmith.

Note: The developer has indicated that they’re aware of the technical issues and are working on a solution.

While I still enjoyed a lot of the gameplay, sadly the game in its current state on Switch has a variety of technical issues. Besides the initial startup, loading times are almost instantaneous, and the frame rate seems fine to me. The main issue is with the dungeons.

The game auto saves at the end of each day; there isn’t a manual save option. This makes the frequent crashes while in the dungeon extremely inconvenient. I experienced a few other glitches here and there, but the crashes were the most frustrating issue.

I persevered and managed to make it through the four main dungeons. Everafter Falls is not without its flaws, but some of them are admittedly subjective. I wanted better tutorials, and the story/character development and combat could have been stronger.

That being said, I really loved elements such as the colorful and cute art style, pleasant soundtrack, house customization, and festivals. The rewards systems were a great feature, too. If they can resolve the technical issues, I do think that it’s a decent game in the simulation genre, as I enjoyed the gameplay loop enough to want to play it again after an update.