Grave Seasonsis a farming simulator with a supernatural, murderous twist from Perfect Garbage and Blumhouse Games. This year’sSummer Game Festgave us some of our best information yet about the upcoming title, with a brief hands-on as well as an interview with the development team, which has solidified the title as one of my most anticipated upcoming releases. Even in my brief time with the title, I was able to get a great sense of its general tone, gameplay, and how the overarching plot will play out.
Grave Seasonshas many mechanics thatcozy farming genrefans will recognize: players canplant and harvest crops, craft, fish, romance the townsfolk, and more. However, a shadow hangs over the town of Ashenridge - the farmer who owned the land the player moves into mysteriously disappeared, and in my harvesting, I came across both a severed hand and a piece of jewelry buried on the property. There’s a supernatural killer on the loose in town, and players will be piecing together clues on how to save future victims and find the murderer as they go about their daily routine.
I spoke with narrative designer and Perfect Garbage co-founder Emmett Nahil, lead designer Nikky Armstrong, and studio director and co-founder Son M. to learn more about the game’s biggest inspirations, a typical gameplay loop, and how players can impact the town of Ashenridge.
A Typical, Terrifying Day In Ashenridge
Quaint Farm Life With A Sprinkling Of Eldritch Horrors
Grave Seasonsis largely inspired by afan-favoriteHarvest Moongame,Save the Homeland, as well as titles likeCult of the LambandDredgethat “have really strong loops that take you through really cool narratives,” according to Son. The loop in question I got a bit of a taste of via my short demo, exploring my farmland and seeing things like a busted greenhouse, buildings that could eventually be for livestock, and how my shed was stocked with typical crafters like a forge and fermentation machine.
All the things players would generally be looking for in the genre can still be found, there’s more at play than usual. “You’ll have your normal daily loop,” Armstrong says, “but then sometimes, on certain days, a special event will happen, or there are weekly events that might happen. There’s lots of things for you to be engaged with across the course of the month. It’s not always just the investigation itself - sometimes it’s just nice to be involved in the town.”
The use of things like crops and fish is also more vast, potentially helping solve the crimes. According to Nahil, “Things that you harvest in Grave Seasons are always going to have some kind of utility, whether it’s eating them yourself, gifting them to another villager, or perhaps crafting something that helps stop the murders. Everything that you farm, fish, harvest in the game can be used in that way, and,” he teases, “some of them definitely have a more occult use, shall we say.”
The Art Of Being A Nosy Neighbor
Try Your Best To Not Get Everyone Killed
In fact, according to Nahil, “The supernatural is a core part of our world in Ashenridge. There’s always going to be supernatural elements lingering around, but with the killers, you get sort of an added glimpse into their supernatural identity.” Though the team couldn’t go too much into the supernatural specifics, we did talk more about how the murder investigation in general works, as I only got a glimpse of it in the demo when I looked around a crime scene following the surprise death of a friend I’d just met in the woods.
Instead of agame likeStardew Valleythat can technically go on forever,Grave Seasonsis designed to be played for a year. At the beginning of the game, the murderer will be chosen randomly from a select pool of characters, meaning that there’s still a lot of incentive to replay after solving the mystery once. “The idea is that the game does end,” Armstrong says, “so we’re asking you to engage with the story of the year, and then we’re asking you to maybe play again and uncover different things that might be going on the next time you play.”
“We have seasons across the game, she continues, “so across the whole month you’re going to be uncovering clues, talking to villagers, learning about them - maybe their past, the past of the farm, the sort of town that you’ve come to live in that you’ve come in as an outsider. It’s across that month that you are finding out who the killer is, who might be the next victim, what you’re able to potentially do to stop that, so the clues are going to be drip-fed across that month.”
With regard to the pool of potential murderers, Son says not just anyone in town can be a murderer. “The thing that we really wanted to nail,” she explains, “was a really strong narrative, and so we hyper-fixated on a few very interesting dynamics that we can then tell a full story from. Our big goal is that even though there’s many potentials you can have, your playthrough will be full: you’ll have a full narrative, full experience, you’ll have motivations for the killer, you’ll have storylines that are branching from that killer, and reasoning you can dig into.”
Grave Seasons Has An Ever-Evolving World
It Turns Out Neighbors Dying Isn’t Good For Morale
Though death is frequent, the world of Ashenridge as a whole is still very alive, with things like dynamic character schedules and events having a lasting impact on residents. “We really want to emphasize the consequences for the town if you fail to save people, or if you intentionally choose not to save people, too,” Nahil says. “Different things will happen if people die than if they don’t.” Though the world starts with over 30 characters across several different biomes, this number fluctuates based on how well the player does at thwarting crimes.
It’s not just the numbers that will be impacted, either. “The fun part of letting people die in Grave Seasons,” he continues, laughing at the absurdity of the sentence, “is that the actual characters have not only relationships with you, but have relationships with each other. The dynamics between family members, friends, acquaintances will dramatically change based on who is alive and who is not with us anymore. The condition of the town will change based on that, and the tone of your seasonal events will change as well.”
Sun highlights that the killer will change over time, too, joking that, “You can fix him, or you can make it way worse.” Personally, after a long time spent in games likeStory of SeasonsorStardewwhere romancesalways have a happy ending, I love this as a twist. Players can see the consequences of their own actions in other ways as well, whether it’s angering friends by doing too much breaking and entering - another main investigation mechanic - or being put in what Sun calls “very tight, unhappy situations” by their unsuccessful solving.
The game has been in the works for a long time, with the project first beginning around July 2023 and the collaboration with Blumhouse starting soon afterwards. Armstrong describes the partnership as a “perfect fit” because “obviously, they’re really into horror, but they’re also really big farming sim people, so they’re really loving that genre mash.” I think there are definitely many more people for whomGrave Seasonsmay very well be a perfect fit that are fans of both cozy farming and murder mysteries, and I can’t wait to get my hands on the game.
