Don't get fooled by the cute optics, this is a pretty difficult survival game, not a cozy farming game. And if you ask me, that is fantastic.

The game is still in early access, and it currently ends after the first year.



You arrive on a small island, unconscious and injured. A merchant rescued you, apparently the capital has been attacked? You don't remember what has happened, but the local villagers take care of you and even offer you a small dilapidated farm to stay.
The village mostly trades for its food, so if you could get the farm running again, your produce would be a welcome addition to the local food supply. Luckily, the capital is far away, and nothing that is happening there has any impact on this lovely island.

For now.



I played on 'grim' difficulty, the way it is intended to play, according to the devs. They must be the type of people who can't sit still for more than a minute.
For a first testrun or if you prefer a less intense experience, you can choose the 'gentle' or 'unsteady' difficulty, and if you are insane and hate animal people, you can play on the 'challenge' setting. You can change the difficulty at any point during the game, too.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3669210974

The character creation allows you to choose between nine animal types, each with a few subclasses. As a feline, for example, you can take your pick between lynx, cheetah, caracal and sand cat. You can be a cute bunny or a deer, a racoon or a squirrel, a bear or a pig, the list is pretty long. Each type has a specific perk, and depending on if you are a carnivore, omnivore or herbivore, you receive extra stamina from meat or plants, and less from the opposite type, or an equal amount from both.
There is no specific skill tree but each action does earn you a bit of experience that grants you skillpoints, which you can then spend to buy additional perks.

The beginning of the game is pretty much like every other farming game. Get to know the villagers! Clean up your farm! Bring new items to the museum! The latter is the main path to progress in the game, every so often you get a new blueprint for your farm as a reward. The villagers also have quests for you that sometimes reward you with new items.

Villagers with available quests have an exclamation point next to their name, and you can find them via the map. You get alerted about important new quest options via mail, as well. Fullfilling quests increases your friendship with the villagers, and at higher friendship levels, you'll get occasional presents.

It is not absolutely necessary to take on every quest, but especially in the beginning, you'll get some usefull rewards, and you can sell presents for additional gold.

There are also a few community projects over the year that require your help, as well.


No, you do not need to eat to stay alive (thankfully). Eating refills your stamina bar.
I'm usually not a big fan of stamina bars, but in this game, I found it well-balanced. There are a few easily obtainable meals that fill half or more of your stamina bar, and there's a perk that increases it (easy first or second pick for perk). It hardly ever was a problem for me.

But you need to produce enough food to keep the village alive, and that becomes increasingly difficult. When it rains, it pours, as they say.

Unprocessed food spoils pretty quickly, only after a few days to a week for some food types. There are different ways to preserve food, which will extent their shelf life or even preserve them indefinitely. But all that takes time and material, and for some methods you first need to acquire blueprints.

This is where Grimshire shines. You need to manage your time and resources carefully, use all sources of food, and plan ahead to make it.

Finally, you can romance some of the villagers. Theoretically. Maybe as an actual rabbit, you'd have enough time for that. I barely managed to wave at people, occasionally, while running past them. Honestly, I don't even know if it is fully implemented, yet.

There are also quite a few furniture options for decoration, and you can upgrade your hut to a very nice little farmhouse.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3669209831

Or not.



Grimshire really hits the spot for me. The balancing is incredible. In a lot of survival games that include farming, balancing is ... manure. The first two, three hours are hard, but once you've got some basics done, it becomes easier and easier, until you don't know what to do with all the food.

Here, it's the other way around. The first couple of weeks are easy. You have time to get used to the mechanics, do a few villager quests, go fishing for the museum collection, and get your farm running. Then the actual fun starts, and it doesn't let up. I barely ever reached the point where I was fully confident that we'll all survive the year. Each week was a small triumph, immediately paired with the planning for the coming days.

At least on grim difficulty, there truly is not much time for anything else than what is necessary for success. Could I have put in a bit more work on decoration? Probably, but don't expect to spend a whole day rearranging the furniture. I mean, you can, but there'll likely be consequences.

I enjoyed the game mechanics a lot, for the most part. Fishing is simple but enjoyable. Mining is a bit grindy, maybe, but the rewards make it worth it.

The only aspect that I found in need of improvement was caring for animals. In principle, it's easy. Build a shed and seed a bunch of gras for them to eat, and you are golden for most of the year. But if you want them to be happy, you have to pet them, and for some types of animal, you want to sheer or milk them. But if they bunch up, some of the animals can't be interacted with, and you have to wait until they separate. In a game in which time is incredibly important, that was at times frustrating. That was the only bug I encountered, though.

As I said above. Grimshire has friendship and dating mechanics, but I hardly had time for that. I expect that the second year, once it is implemented, will leave you more time for it, or maybe you'd need to choose an easier difficulty if you want to explore the social aspect more.
I was impressed by the amount of different dialogue options the villagers had. As I said, I didn't spend too much time socializing, but I tried my best to speak to people every so often, and I hardly heard the same dialogue twice.

All in all, I was thoroughly impressed by Grimshire, and I am very much looking forward to what they'll come up with for the second year. It is an early access game, but, imo, it is easily worth its full price.