Village in the Shade offers a peaceful farming life in rural Japan, where your new home harbors dark secrets.
Village in the Shade. Credit: Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. / NIS America, Inc.
Village in the Shade, originally released in Japan in late July, is getting a localized English release tomorrow. I’ve spent a dozen hours or so with it so far, and I’m really enjoying it.
The best way to describe the game is “horror Harvest Moon.” It opens with your death as a child after a horrible accident. You reappear ten years later in rural Kagatsu Village with no memory. The mayor welcomes you on the condition that you contribute to the community by caring for an abandoned farm and follow the strict rules that ensure their god’s protection. The most conspicuous is that you can’t be outside after 11 p.m. You’ll slowly form bonds with members of the community and discover the town’s secrets as you begin to break the rules.
Most of your activities will be familiar if you’ve played farming sims like Stardew Valley. You’ll plant crops and care for your livestock. You’ll also gather materials, fish, and mine on the outskirts of the village. You’ll craft tools, amenities, and decorations, and build relationships with your neighbors.
Some upgrade materials are only found at night, so collecting them means risking encounters with scary creatures. It takes a little while before the game lets you venture out after dark, but the buildup is worth it. The unsettling things you see along the way hint at how genuinely frightening things can get.
Village in the Shade. Credit: Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. / NIS America, Inc.
Village in the Shade. Credit: Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. / NIS America, Inc.
The hand-drawn environments have a beautiful watercolor look that suits the setting. They’ll look familiar to fans of the Yomawari games, since the same team is behind this one. During the day, Kagatsu looks like a postcard of rural Japan. Fields are soft and green, the houses are warm, and the villagers are charming. The music stays quiet and gentle while you tend to your farm.
At night, your idyllic surroundings become cold and empty, and the quiet that felt peaceful becomes oppressive. The spirits that wander the village are drawn from Japanese folklore, and they’re the best part of the art. Their designs are strange, sometimes terrifying. So far, the game hasn’t relied on gore or jump scares. The shift in the art and soundscape creates palpable dread as familiar surroundings become alien. For anyone who wants the farming without the horror, “Village in the Sunshine” mode leaves you with a cozy farming sim.
I’m not going to spoil what I’ve seen so far, because I don’t want to rob anyone of discovering it for themselves. Even the trailers have avoided showing much beyond the daytime gameplay. I still have a lot of the game ahead of me, but finishing it will take some time, and I wanted to share these impressions ahead of release.
Village in the Shade
A dozen hours in, Village in the Shade’s mystery is compelling and unsettling, and the contrast between idyllic days and foreboding nights gives me chills.
Village in the Shade offers a peaceful farming life in rural Japan, where your new home harbors dark secrets.