No Small Roles celebrates the RPG experiences being created by small teams in the indie space.
We’ve all got stories about our hometown. The dark and dirty lore alien to any outsider, the gory gossip of something terrible that happened. There are threads to be pulled at, ones that might take you down a road toward unsettling truths about the history of even the quaintest of towns. But honestly, who needs that kind of hassle?
But of course, discovering the darkest corners of your town may be unavoidable. For the protagonist of Welcome to Elderfield, it’s a historical fact that almost nobody born in the secluded town of Elderfield gets to leave. The townsfolk are shifty sorts who get pretty active when the sun goes down, and the local news doesn’t provide any encouraging updates about what’s going on out there.
You, as the protagonist, have a lot of time on your hands. You’ve finished school and found the options for your future both infinite and finite. There’s a farm you could tend to, people to chat with, cosmic horrors to unearth, and a few mysteries that might be worth solving. But one thing is plainly true – everything seems to funnel you toward delving deeper into the own itself, whether you like it or not.
Welcome to Elderfield is going to look very familiar at first glance. It’s one of several titles inspired by Stardew Valley, but there are a few more shades of red in the color palette for this game. Right from the off, Welcome to Elderfield exudes an oppressive atmosphere that taints every acre of land. In Elderfield, every day looks like Halloween, minus a lot of the decorations. It’s a permanent fall vibe, and given that’s my favorite season, there’s something weirdly cozy about how Welcome to Elderfield looks. That might just be me, though.
As with Stardew Valley, farming is the most prominent task at hand, but here, the game drives home the sinister undertones as being a compelling force to make you investigate beyond that. So all the other odd-jobs, dungeoneering, and people-pleasing you’d expect from a Farming Sim RPG are present, just with much darker consequences.
This is just a vertical slice of what aims to be a larger game, but there’s still plenty to explore in this embryonic version of the game. You have your ranch, the farm, and a mall that acts as the opening dungeon. As tasters go, it whetted my horror RPG-loving appetite. The accepted reality of weirdness and dread you can witness around this portion of Elderfield sells the whole ‘Town with sinister secrets’ schtick beautifully.
A notable difference from its evident influence is the turn-based combat, which showcases the sketch-style character art nicely. The key way this changes things is battles can’t be avoided or walked away from that easily, so every step needs to be considered. It’s otherwise pretty simple stuff, but it at least comes out swinging with a delightfully messed up-looking rat as your introductory battle.
The horrors of Welcome to Elderfield evoke the gnarly monstrosities of J-horror Manga, and given the cosmic horror flavoring that’s also present, that’s a comforting style to adopt over the overexposed Lovecraft-inspired style.
The structure of Welcome to Elderfield leaves an existential dread air wafting across it. From the protagonist’s own aimless life that you must shape, to the twisted townsfolk and cold, monstrous creatures. It may not be as cozy as other farming sims, but it’s compelling in the way this kind of horror should be—a siren song of Autumnal dread.
Welcome to Elderfield’s demo is available on itch.io and Steam.
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