Everholm
Game Title: Everholm
Released: November 11, 2024
Game Length: N/A
Grade: C
Development
Early Access: For a lot of these games, there doesn't seem to be a point when a game is considered completely done when it officially releases. Waiting at least a year for all the bugs, optimizations, and controller support is usually the smart move. However, more and more games are pushing the envelope when they announce Version 1.0 with a lot of missing features. Even big games such as Disney Dreamlight Valley and Palia seem to offer exclusive content for playing the game from the beginning when it releases to the public.
Release: Everholm is no different in this situation. The opening sequence of the game holds strong with a nice introduction to the story, a few tutorials that encourage you to explore, and a few time-gates so not to overwhelm you from the start. You are chasing after a lady, coincidentally receive amnesia, and have gone missing for a couple weeks. Your tools are returned to you by someone who borrowed them once you step out of your house and the game functions similarly to any other farming simulator. After a couple of weeks of playing, you will gradually receive more tools like a fishing pole and a butterfly net. The dungeons appear soon after that as you complete a few objectives.
Support: There are a number of settings that help smooth over gameplay. While the day length is about as much as you expect when starting out, you can extend that to longer or longest if you want to make it in time before the stores close or you are having a good day. While the game provides you an indicator that shows you which tile you are highlighting, that feature can be hidden (pressing the H button) if the option is too distracting. Unfortunately, there is still a bit of work to be done for the controller. The game still applies moving sound effects whether or not you are pressing the stick far enough to trigger movement with your character. If you have a slight misalignment in your controller like mine, this causes the sound to trigger endlessly until you come to a complete stop.
Systems
Morning: Your game only saves when you sleep in your bed. The calendar is setup right there on the wall to see your monthly activities. You will receive mail as a reminder the day before a festival. You'll also receive mail whenever an upgrade is available for your fishing rod (made available after you fish for awhile) and your backpack (for more inventory). On your front porch is a newsletter with some bare bones news and hints that will mostly repeat as you play the game. However, there are times where you will receive a random two-day quest from one of the villagers. The most important part is the luck of the draw where you either receive misfortune (chance to receive less or no items), neutral, or fortune (chance to receive more or rare items). This can include items such as stone, wood, enemy drops, and the number of times little blue spirits appear on the ground.
Farm: You can place items anywhere within your space, even on the grass, as long as it doesn't interfere with areas that require the space to upgrade. Structures such as barns and silos can be done simultaneously since you receive blueprints in your inventory that can be used to coordinate their position on your plot. Construction takes a few days. The greenhouse, and a number of other areas on the map, do not become available until you donate a number of items to a series of star stones. Three will become available in the early days and shown on the map. There is one (along with a chest) on every final level after completing 20 of them in a dungeon for other exclusive items. One thing to note is that your tools will upgrade length-wise for the first two tiers and then widen the next couple tiers. For example, your bronze hoe will dig three slots or iron hoe will extend five slots. Same rules apply to your watering can. You can eventually obtain sprinklers with bronze only watering four directions and the iron watering in all eight cardinal directions.
World: The map itself is rather static. The townsfolk will open up their stores during certain hours of the day and take off for relation during the weekends. You can choose to sell items to them directly (only when they are related to their profession) or have anything deposited in the shipping bin sold overnight. These are the only times you can see the sell value of your items. People will appear on the map (even when it is a festival) when they are not at home or attending a store. You can only enter their home when they are there or if your relationship is high enough. Although there are only a handful of bugs that fly around, they will change according to the season. Different kinds of berries will appear on bushes periodically late each season. Other resources like mushrooms, flowers, and reagents off animals will also spawn every once in awhile. You can set objects anywhere in the world that do not require physical dirt and loot that is not picked up tends to stick around for a day. This means that you can place a chest next to a specific location and keep items inside without worrying about them disappearing the next day.
Vitals: The game has three main bars you need to watch: mana required for casting spells, energy for using your tools, and health. Whenever your vitals become low, a tip on which item you might be able to consume will appear on the screen. If your energy becomes too low, you become exhausted and can only move at half speed. If at any time your energy or health reaches zero, your day will end and you will wake up in your bed the following day with half your maximum energy. The same happens if you don't make it to bed before 3am. You will not lose any material. The amount you expend when using spells is not listed. Certain spells can take more than half of your mana and energy. There is no safeguard in place if you accidentally use all your energy with a spell and pass out. Missing a target will not use energy, according to a recent patch. What's also interesting is how your weapon does not use energy at all. The sword is only available from the secret market that appears every Friday in the deep forest (shown next to the stone on the map and mentioned by the nearby statue). Unlike the club, the sword can break vases and slice grass.
Resources
Trees: This requires its own category to explain. Trees don't suddenly grow back like other games. You cut it down, it's gone for good. Instead, trees occasionally drop seeds that will grow new trees in its place. You can pick up these seeds and plant them in a new location. Two types of seeds can be crumbled together into a granola bar. Smaller trees, that become opaque when you step in front of them, will only provide you wood when chopped down. Larger trees, that will reveal a stump when walking in front of them, will drop a number of different items such as sap when cut down. A stump will not regrow and remain indefinitely until you slice it into pieces of hardwood. Logs of all kinds will appear on the ground randomly across the map. You will need a better axe before striking down the bigger trees. The trees with little notices on the front cannot be interacted with at all. Do not cut down the trees that provide dark apples in the deep forest. While they do provide you darkwood and eventually respawn, you won't be able to get more apples until then. Chop down the trees through the dungeons instead since they automatically respawn after exiting a level. If all those options weren't enough for the game, the developers have also implemented a way to get random supplies of twigs and seeds by shaking down the trees. Fruit trees will require purchasing both the box and seed from the store. They take a full month to grow and bloom every five days during their season.
Materials: Before you can craft an object, you need to collect their blueprint. They appear in your inventory and need to be used like any other consumable object. Only then will you know what resources are required for each item. They can be found in the store, festivals, stones, and the secret merchant. The same needs to be done whenever you receive new wallpaper. New items will appear every season from the man in the forest every Friday. Harder to obtain items required for objectives such as fish or those found in the ground will also be listed. While the majority of games will provide you convenient features from the beginning, guides to show you where to obtain them on the map, or make gathering supplies easy early on, Everholm decides to do things a little differently. As an example, you will need to spend thousands of gold from a secret vendor to obtain a better weapon. In order to craft chests, you will need to first buy blueprints from the blacksmith. Upgrades will require you to have some patience as things like sparklers will require a number of bars to craft. It makes you ask the question - Why does everything have to be so complicated? I'm not sure but figuring out how you obtain such basic resources can be quite frustrating. For example, within the first few weeks, you'll be informed of a broom that allows you to move around faster that requires some hay. A silo can automatically provide you with that resource if you cut down grass (as long as it isn't during the winter). Unfortunately, the only way to retrieve the hay from the silo is through building a chicken coop or a barn. These buildings will only provide you enough to fill the trough inside each day. At some point, you discover that the farmer will sell you a blueprint for a hay machine that converts grass into hay as long as you keep dumping in wood. Once you do get a broom, it becomes a physical object you must click on in the world (not something you can toggle or use in your inventory). In case you do lose your broom, it will automatically be placed by your front door each morning. What's also pretty rough is how changing the decorations in your house requires a magic brush that also needs hay to craft.
Armaments
Weapons: This might seem a little odd but most weapons you obtain are designed to be more entertaining in their functionality than beneficial in their execution. This might be because unlike your melee weapons, range weapons consume energy and wands consume mana. The Slingshot you receive way late in the game during the Christmas Festival is merely a way to participate in the event and does half the amount of the other weapons. The bow makes a good early weapon and the blow darts slowly poison enemies. The bee cannon consumes energy per bee, three are launched to the location you click and do not follow you around, are so slow that they can't chase down a bat, last about 15 seconds before they disappear, and deal about the same damage as your bow per strike. Perhaps the most ridiculously overpowered weapon of them all is the bazooka as it does about four times the amount of damage, can be shot to anywhere on the screen with a click of the button, and does not harm you in the explosion.
Wands: A number of wands seem to be also designed to be fun distractions. The hex wand momentarily turns an enemy into a chicken or a frog for about 5 seconds. You cannot harm them in this state. The enchanting wand charms an enemy to go attack others if they manage to reach them in the 5 seconds the spell lasts. Cane of Time slows down an enemy for the same length of time. The Inferno Wand was perhaps the most useful with the addition of the ruby haircut, despite the cost of health to cast. Most of these wouldn't be so bad if certain enemies remained ever-present on the field. Unlike how you anticipate the chance to strike certain foes when they are hidden away, bushes in particular seem to be untouchable with anything unless they are attacking you.
Spells: To differentiate between wands used for combat and those used for your farm, the developers listed these in a different category. I would have liked to have the ability to summon magic hoes that dug the ground or a rain cloud that followed me around for a few seconds if I discovered that rusty cups and red balls were available at the exclusive traveling merchant before Spring ended. There are three other abilities that require tough reagents to create rocks, destroy rocks, or turn them into gold. Thankfully, the swift sprout spell was much easier to obtain. The enchanted shovel that requires poor rewards from fishing is actually quite clever how you can cast it once and it digs up miscellaneous stuff all day long. Unfortunately, I'm not too keen on the building spells. Construction mover requires one ash rose and ten souls each time you cast it. This includes moving tree planter in addition to buildings. Construction demolisher spell is a one-time use as well and like many of these are considered objects that must be selected in your inventory and do not stack. The enchanted broom that is supposed to clean up spare objects on your farm was better explained to be limited in a very tight radius in a recent patch.
Confusing Components
Relationships: The game starts out strong with this conviction of finding out who you are and where your sister might be located. There are a number of achievements and objectives that pour out from the start of the game. Then it seems you never hear about them again... at least that is how it felt with my experience of the game. Your quests and achievements were either there to introduce an element or give you a number of how many things of something there were in the game. They don't quite inform you that rusted cups can be found from the ground or the very important merchant with weapons and flower seeds appears in the corner of the map every Friday. So when do you get to chase after this villain? I had to look it up! Every time you fulfill 8 hearts from four villagers, you will open up a boss fight in the Underworld. This means that to see each chapter of the game, you will have to do this for every town member. Completing dungeon levels, unlocking every space on your farm, and obtaining spells has no correlation with the story. Do not fight a boss unless you intent to end the day early. For some dumb reason I decided to do this before a festival and missed the whole event. The reason why discovering this took so long was because of how the progression with a character was a bit skewed. You can only give a character two gifts a week and converse with them once daily. I provided one character 14 different presents for two seasons and only reached a total of three hearts. That's because according to the wiki disliked presents subtracts 10 points, neutral presents and conversing with them adds 20 points, giving them a liked present adds a whole 80 points, and completing a quest provides a whopping 150 points. I was only able to accomplish 8 hearts with three villagers after a course of a whole year. What's more confusing is that gifts either do not reset on Monday or only reset a full week after giving them. I'm not sure what benefit birthdays give and you can't give them one that day if you fulfilled your weekly quota.
Haunted Items: As you progress in the game, you'll occasionally see an item that is labeled as haunted. Most of the time they will drop in dungeons but can be obtained in other ways like the haunted carrot from the Easter Festival. There are no clear instructions on what to do with these items until very late in the game that spooky shrine just above your farm suddenly starts glowing. You place down a haunted object in a slot and a ghost will appear. This little guy will need you to feed him. There doesn't seem to be any requirement or alternative outlook on which items you slot. Depending on the number of items, the ghost will act, wander, and advance through various phases of life from infancy to teenager to adult. Once you can't feed him anymore, they will come over and water every single buried plot on your farm. No more will you need your watering can, rain spell, or sprinklers. As a bit of a warning, they are interactable and can block a tile.
Hidden Features: A part of me likes when the developers incorporate little secrets and hidden messages inside their game. What I don't like is when those mysterious parts are necessary to advance or so elusive that a player might miss out on some important feature. The merchant that appears every Friday in the far northeastern corner of the map is only one example since reagents such as tulips and initial weapons can only be found there. Though, I don't mind how Alice states a sequence during the Christmas Festival that indicates which mushrooms you need to touch for a special statue up there. One such area is a hidden alcove that was hinted at from a beginner video guide of all places. In the northwest corner of the map, there is a place you can visit and another hidden place to the far western side of that one where you can throw a random object into a fountain and receive a number of other random objects, including a decoration not found anywhere else. During a festival, Dominique mentions a color sequence - red, green, purple, blue, yellow - that indicated the types of potions you need to throw in the fountain. I was unable to confirm what you might receive after doing so for each day.
Coming Soon: Like Coral Island, there are obvious places where the developers intend to add more features. For example, there was a stand during Halloween with an actual "coming soon" sign placed on the booth labeled "boat ride." There is a sushi stand at the docks that doesn't sell anything and no one attends to. The kitchen upgrade for your house doesn't actually provide you with a means to cook food. That's right - a notification will inform you after inspecting the new appliances in your house that cooking is not yet implemented into the game. As a consolation, you will receive a few meals like pizza and ice cream. What does the green door do? I'm not sure. I never got to a point that it did anything. Other than what is present in the star stones and quests, there isn't like a museum or need to keep all those fish or artifacts from dungeons. Although, the developers are working on a way to exchange them through Alice the archeologist. The newsletter seems to only have one story available. Since their release, they have been trying their best to sort through concerns of the game's future like how updates will be free and the price will never increase. There are currently no character customization.
Balance
Bugs: While the game is functional, there are a large number of little technical intricacies that sneaked into the game. If you have an empty slot selected and pull something that you need from the chest into that slot, you will not be able to insert that item into a machine until you select another slot. You can't preview or place decorations down onto the ground while moving. Not all objects become opaque when you walk behind them. While it might not necessarily be considered a bug, being able to buy the same blueprints you've already learned is definitely a concern. Once you complete the Halloween maze and open the chest, you are unable to collect and more rewards you earn from repeating the maze. You can be given achievements and quests for items that are not available during that season. The fishermen required 5 jellyfish that can only be caught during the wrong season.
Cheat Codes: This game has a very odd way of providing you the ultimate gift once you advance all the levels in the dungeon. There are a number of items you can obtain from the star stones outside or in the Underworld. They usually supply you some kind of benefit in exchange of a downside for your efforts in bartering unique or a large number of supplies. Unfortunately, everything doesn't seem to matter when you receive a necklace after reaching the 80th level. The Master Necklace adds 3 luck, 5 regeneration to both energy and mana, +20% damage, and 5 health each time you strike an enemy (not during a boss fight). The most heinous bug I discovered was a way to infinitely grow crops, which means infinite supply of currency since there is no limit on how much money you make from the shipping bin. Once you receive your rapid growth spell, select a weapon and wait until the triggered crops can be harvested. Hold down the right button in the middle of your character to automatically pull them when ready. If the seeds are able to regrow, the spell will continue for another harvest. You can do this all day long. Another odd cheat is how reloading your game alters the game flow for the day. This allows you to reset your energy to maximum if you passed out the day before, recollect your consolation prizes from your kitchen or teddy bear, and change the newsletter. Another odd cheat is how quickly you can accumulate soul currency through the plant enemies. Since touching enemies does not harm you, you can sit on top of a mother plant as they sprinkle their babies around her. Depending on your position, swinging your sword will not harm her but will provide you an abundant supply of souls by destroying all the little ones.
Summary
Review: Everholm is a game that has the potential to be something great. Unfortunately, the content that was presented upon launch is still much in an Early Access state. There are far too many problems, missing features, confusing mechanics, and balance issues to recommend the game. While the dungeon system and town in general are great to explore, all of its story is oddly gated behind building relationships with the townsfolk and simple features that should help expand the farm are a bit too complicated to figure out. If they would have simplified some of their systems like making it so you don't have to equip spells in your inventory, hay can be obtained directly from the silo, or allowing you to decorate your house without the need of crafting a magic one, the gameplay could have been a lot smoother. Being able to customize your character, doing more with the items in the world, or adding more cutscenes would have made the long absence of story bearable. The game needs more time to cook.