We find ourselves at the end of another month, and as ever, the passing phases of the moon leave us asking the same question: What's going on with Haunted Chocolatier?

Knowing all too well how the hungry masses clamor for details about his next game, Stardew Valley developer Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone has posted another of his intermittent check-in blogs to confirm that, yes, he's still hard at work on Haunted Chocolatier. And while he's still not sharing many specifics, Barone sounds like he's satisfied with his recent progress.

"I'm still here, still making progress. Thanks for waiting and sorry it’s taking so long," Barone wrote. "I’ve been very productive on this project lately even though I am busy with many things. Working on Haunted Chocolatier is what I’m most eager and driven to do, out of everything."

While he acknowledged the years that have already gone into Haunted Chocolatier's development—he first announced the game in 2021—Barone said he doesn't "stress too much about how long it’s taking." The ongoing success of Stardew Valley affords him the ability to prioritize his own criteria for quality over meeting any arbitrary deadline. As he's said in previous development check-ins, he's unwilling to release anything he's not entirely satisfied with.

"I won’t compromise on the quality of the game by rushing it or releasing it too early," he said. "Then all my time would be wasted, anyway."

That said, all that effort is apparently paying off: Barone said he's pleased with how the game is coming together. Considering he's on record as being his own harshest critic who inflicts "torture" on himself "over every last detail," that's not likely something he'd say lightly.

"I am certain, at this point, that I will enjoy the game when it is finished. In fact, I already enjoy playing it in its unfinished state, especially after some recent additions I made," Barone wrote. "I hope others will like it too when it’s ready."

Before you get your hopes up: No, we still don't have an idea of "when it's ready" will be. But the developer said he's grateful for our continued patience.

"I feel a little embarrassed writing any of this because you guys probably just want the game at this point, not to hear me yapping about it. I get that," he said. "It can be hard to 'keep the faith' when you are waiting a long time. I really cherish those who do keep the faith, though, and I wish you, your family, and your pets, peace and prosperity through all seasons."

In May, Barone said Haunted Chocolatier is "way bigger than Stardew Valley," as "the amount of maps, the amount of monsters, the depth to the whole item system, and all the equipment slots" have all been "cranked up." Based on that description, we'd better settle in: We've probably got a lot more time politely twiddling our thumbs ahead of us.

In most farm sims, talking to my neighbors is just another chore. Water the strawberries, pet the cows, chat with the rancher next door, who says "Nothing like a cold glass of milk to start my day!" which is the same thing she said two days ago and will say again two days from now. In Fields of Mistria, my neighbors are the reason I get out of bed in the morning.

But first, the farm sim throat clearing: Is Fields of Mistria like Stardew Valley? Yes. You play as a budding farmer new to a rural town where you'll befriend the residents and sell your stacks of cucumbers to fund revitalization of the floundering community. It's the fate of any farm sim in the past decade to get compared to Stardew, which diehards find reductive (yes I grew up with Harvest Moon too), but we can all admit it's the easiest shared reference.

In Fields of Mistria I clear my overgrown farm of trees and rocks, decorate my property over several years, grow seasonal crops, buy and breed animals, fish, forage, donate one of every item to the local museum, pass out at 2 am outside my house because I just needed to run one more errand, collect ores and fight monsters in a mine outside town, unlock passive skills, deliver resources for quests, give gifts to villagers, cook food, *deep breath* and eventually get married and have a baby with the hot local single of my choice after fulfilling a main quest to repair the town where everyone lives happily ever after.

So yeah, It's like Stardew Valley. Also it's adorably pink and inspired by '90s anime. It nails all those farm simming essentials but the thing that truly transforms it from main character to magical is its unexpectedly great writing.

Farming builds character

I don't go into farm sims looking for good writing. Does anyone? The whole genre leans on character archetypes harder than a Hallmark romcom. Mistria doesn't buck the tradition of cute and corny characters: buff rancher Hayden is boisterous and friendly, travelling salesman Balor is handsome and flirtatious, and young town leader Adeline is eagerly detail-oriented. It trades in the same tropes and yet it's the best-written farm sim I've ever played.

Mistria isn't "well written" like a satire with sharp lines I can point to as superiorly clever. It's just earnestly great in a way you can almost miss if you get distracted by puns and the family-friendly tone. It's like realizing that, wait, Avatar: The Last Airbender was surprisingly insightful despite being a TV-Y7 kids show.

Partly, it's a volume thing. There's just so much dialogue in Fields of Mistria. In other farm sims, you start to hear characters repeating the same lines of daily chatter pretty fast and they'll say "Wow, I love this. Thanks!" whether you're giving them a flower or a chunk of gold.

In Fields of Mistria, it's the specificity of lines that really sells each character. Reina works as a cook at her parents' inn and says she feels nostalgic about how her mom used to make breaded catfish if you give her that meal as a gift. Celine the gardener admires the freshness of gifted hydrangeas. Olric the himbo blacksmith just loves rocks. If you give him a piece of stone he responds with any of eight different lines telling you whether it's grainy sandstone or "nonfoliated metamorphic" quartzite. All that for a single piece of stone. There aren't eight different lines for every gift, but I can feel the care taken in choosing where to create extra layers of detail for each character.

On the surface, young noble Eiland is a history buff with a sweet tooth. The gifts he loves most are all desserts and his personal story revolves around a hunt for Mistrian artifacts. Eiland is also kind of impulsive. He never comes out and says "Gee I guess my problem is I should think things through sometimes," while staring through the screen at me. Early on, though, I watch him take an axe to a tree on my farm first thing in the morning, argue with the museum curator about reopening the mines sooner and, one of my favorite little daily dialogues of his: The one where he bought a whole cake at the Saturday Market and wheedles me into sharing some with him because maybe a whole cake was too much cake.

Classic Eiland. It's cute and cheesy, but layered.

Mistria goes five extra miles with its writing at nearly every opportunity. Every Friday night at the inn I can spectate the banter as my neighbors play multiple campaigns of "Dragons & Drama," start a drawing class, a book club, and a dessert-tasting group, all with oodles of personality from the whole cast. Personal story scenes with marriage candidates are all several minutes' worth of conversation and dialogue choices that reveal details beneath that first layer of trope-y persona. Characters even have their own theme songs like they really are right out of an old JRPG.

Even as I walk around town doing my normal farm simming chores I can listen in on characters talking to each other, like Balor discussing wagon repairs with March the blacksmith or Adeline teasing her brother Eiland over the disorder in his office. Mistria is such a fully imagined community of fun individuals who share memories and jokes with each other. I genuinely love stopping to talk with them instead of just skipping past the same old lines.

Fixes for farm freaks

Farm sims have a lot to live up to now that we've got so many to choose from. There's an expectation that they'll meet the rubric by checking off the exhaustive Stardew-plus-Animal-Crossing features list, but also that the best ones can devise new quality of life features to smooth out common wrinkles in the farm simming experience.

Mistria has some of the newly common niceties like a jump button (because walking around all the fences on your farm is a minor annoyance) and a map that shows where every character currently is so you're not turning in circles looking for that one person you need to talk to for a quest. Oh, and you can use shops without their owners present so you aren't stuck unable to buy a barn because Ryis is chilling at the beach with March and Reina.

Other ideas I've not seen before, like the gossip system where Elsie the town socialite can clue you in on items that other villagers like instead of suffering through trial and error (or admitting defeat and just using a wiki). I'm particularly fond of the craftable big bell I can ring to call all the animals on my whole property out of their barns in the morning and send them to bed at night. It's a lifesaver when I'm cutting it close at 1:30 am.

Don't check out

What's more interesting about Mistria is where it resists the convenience of automation. Most farm sims borrow from crafting games here with refining machines: a furnace to turn ore into ingots, a churn making butter from milk, and barrels for beer and wine. You get to toss your produce in, walk away, and come back later to grab your artisan products and pitch them in your shipping bin at premium prices. You become a glorified conveyor belt, carrying seeds to the ground and produce to machines on a farm that sort of runs itself because you've got an optimized sprinkler layout to boot.

Mistria requires, and even incentivizes, me to do everything by hand. Watering crops and feeding animals gives me essence, an experience-like resource I spend on buying passive perks like randomly getting free seeds when watering my crops or higher chances to hook treasure chests instead of trash when fishing. There are no wine barrels at all so the best use of fruits is making jams or desserts in my kitchen. Refining dairy products and ores takes time out of my day (until I unlock perks to reduce that time) which I've initially got to do at the mill and blacksmith in town.

There is a magic spell to call a rain storm to water my crops but I can't abuse it too many days in a row without waiting to regenerate mana. Late in the game there are a few automation tools like sprinklers and a machine to pet your animals, but they're quite late game so I'm never taught to really rely on them. In fact, if I let the machines work for me I've got to expend essence to power them instead of earning it as I would by just using my watering can. At best, the automation tools let me displace my effort from elsewhere but never replace it entirely.

Mistria doesn't want me to set up a farming empire and then mentally check out as I ship 500 bottles of wine without ever leaving my property like a reclusive billionaire. There are plenty of players posting immaculately designed farms on social media with optimally laid-out greenhouses. I've been envious of many already. Even those players, though, are encouraged to invest care in checking on their cows and picking berries by hand.

Mistria's pastel colors and Game Boy Advance-era "blurp blurp" sound effects grabbed me by the nostalgia and squeezed. There's sparkles and frills, sky high waistlines, muscle-y guys in sleeveless shirts and pink-haired girls wearing capes. It's like I'm 11 years old, sitting in the third row of a minivan next to a sketchbook full of Fruits Basket doodles while I mash the A button through "just one more" Final Fantasy Tactics Advance battle before my mom parks at the grocery store. Except now I'm a grownup and I can play just one more day at 1 am and suffer the consequences at my desk in the morning.

Fields of Mistria is the first farm sim in a lot of years that's made me want to spend time in town visiting with its cast even after I've gotten rich off shipping berries to the capitol. It's a fresh lease on farm sims in a shojo manga fever dream.

Fields of Mistria romance walkthrough

FAQs

• Can you date multiple people? Yes! You can date all 12 marriage candidates simultaneously until you choose one to propose to.
• Do they get jealous? No, characters will comment on who you're dating but in a sort of parallel universe way where nobody realizes you're in multiple relationships.
• Are there rival marriages? No, marriage candidates don't express interest in each other, regardless of who you are or are not dating or married to.
• I heard there are breakups? There are breakup letters, yes, but NPCs only send these if you have proposed to someone else while dating them. See the breakups section below for info on turning these off in the settings.
• Divorce? There is no divorce in Mistria (so far) so be extra sure before you lock in a spouse with a ring!
• How do I choose who to marry 😭😭😭? I dunno, but tell me when you figure it out because I'm still torn and rocking multiple save files.

See also

Friendship points

Friendship points are essentially experience points for your relationships that you earn by talking to characters or giving them gifts. In the heart tab of your journal you can see your current heart level with every NPC and the pink meter showing friendship points earned towards the next heart. You cannot lose friendship points with NPCs. They do not decay over time (animals are a different story) and giving someone a gift they dislike or hate does not subtract points.

All NPCs have friendship points for you to earn, but only marriage candidates (listed as "single" in the relationship tab) have heart symbols and heart events.

How to earn Friendship Points

*The total friendship points earned by going on dates will likely be uncovered by modders and dataminers soon. For now, 70 points is my approximation based on an embarrassing amount of pixel counting and math in an image editor. It sure sounds like a lot but it's definitely worth more than a loved gift!

If you give a gift to an NPC after midnight on the in-game day prior to their birthday they will react as if it's a birthday present. When I tried it, this didn't appear to give the friendship points bonus for a birthday gift though, so it's only superficial.

Gift giving

Each character can receive one gift per day. Most items are giftable (flowers, produce, ores, food, etc.) and you'll be able to intuit some preferences like how Celine likes many types of flowers, March enjoys ores, and Balor likes expensive gems. Refresh your memory on what they like or love in the relationships panel of your menu.

There's no penalty for repeating gifts, so if you want to grind Friendship Points with a specific character, just keep giving them something they like that's easy for you to stockpile. There is a Steam achievement called "Thoughtful Gifter" for giving any one character all of their different liked and loved gifts. They react differently to gifts they like, dislike, love, or hate, with some pretty cute character details often coming from loved gifts, so that's a little motivation for seeking out all the different things your favorite singles love most.

Gift hints and lists

• If an item is mentioned with pink text during a conversation, that's something that character likes or loves.
• You can also get in-game hints by asking Elsie for "gossip" starting from the request board in your first summer. She'll reveal a liked or loved gift for a character once per day which is added to your gifts list in the game menu.
• Check my Fields of Mistria gift list for a guide to the easiest gifts for each marriage candidate.
• For gifts to give everyone else, I recommend the Fields of Mistria wiki!

Heart events

Heart events are special cutscenes with marriage candidate NPCs (other characters have friendship points but not heart events) that you can attend after reaching heart levels 2, 4, 6, and 8. After reaching the appropriate heart level, a character will send you a letter inviting you to meet them somewhere. You can check the details in the quests portion of your journal.

Heart events are scenes that explore each character's personal story and each new scene with a character will build on the ones before. Heart events don't award any friendship points, so you don't need to worry about choosing specific dialogue choices during these scenes to gain more points. Just roleplay how you like!

Heart event thresholds

*Friendship point totals via the Fields of Mistria wiki. Point totals are not visible in game, so these are just info for doing your own math, if you're curious.

Exceptions:

• Juniper's 2 heart event begins at the request board outside the general store, not from a letter in your mailbox.
• The secret bachelor and secret bachelorette (revealed by story spoilers) begin with 6 hearts unlocked, so you'll only have an 8 heart scene and, if you choose, proposal and wedding scenes with them.

Speedrunner math:

• Mathematically, you can reach 8 hearts by Summer 14, Year 1 by talking to an NPC and giving them a loved gift every single day. If this is possible to achieve at all, it would likely be with Celine by foraging spring flowers.
• (Slowrunner math) You can unlock 4 hearts with a character on exactly Summer 28 (to attend the Shooting Star festival date) just by talking to them every single day without giving any gifts, if for some reason you want to do that.

You must unlock the summit to take a date to the Shooting Star Festival. Unlock it by completing Adeline's town beautification quest which comes after you've repaired the bridge, stocked the food stores, and restored the mill in town. Get that done before Summer 28.

Dating

You can begin dating any (or all of) the marriage candidates by reaching 8 hearts. During their 8 heart event you will choose between becoming best friends or confessing your feelings. You must confess your feelings if you want to date someone. You can't be best friends and start dating later, sorry.

After confessing your feelings, Elsie will come to your house the next morning to give you a tutorial on dating. Basically, you can only go on dates on Saturday and Sunday and you can only take each person on one date per weekend. After each date, you get a commemorative photo that you can hang in your house.

Initially you'll just have the meal at the inn as a date option but you can find or buy other "date inspiration items" (unlock by using the same way as cosmetic items). You can only find date inspiration items after you've begun dating at least one person.

How dates work

On any Saturday or Sunday, walk up to a character you're dating and press the button (same button as giving a gift) to invite them on a date. You'll choose from a list of date activities you've unlocked and they'll have a couple short lines of dialogue to accept. Each date is a tiny little scene without dialogue (unlike a heart event) showing you and your date on your outing.

Afterwards, you'll get a photo of your date showing the day and the setting. You can hang the photo on the wall like other pieces of decor in your home and interact with it to view the picture any time. You'll only get one of these photos per date type for each character, so think twice before taking them on a park date in the winter! Unless that's the aesthetic you're going for. You'll also receive an item from your date like a flower, gem, or a meal, depending on the activity.

Dating around

You can date all 12 of Mistria's marriage candidates simultaneously if you want to. Reach 8 hearts and confess your feelings to absolutely everyone. I'm not judging; that's what I did. Here's what happens:

• Two dates per week: You can only take each character on one date per weekend but Saturday and Sunday are both valid date days. So if you have multiple beaus you can invite two on an outing per week. Gem cutting for March and a picnic with Reina, maybe!
• No jealousy: Characters will all comment on who you're dating but none of them acknowledge you being in multiple relationships. (So Adeline may comment on you dating Eiland without referencing that you're dating her as well, for instance.)
• No player-initiated breakups: There are breakup letters initiated by NPCs (see breakups section below) when you propose to someone else, but you cannot choose to end a relationship with a character you've confessed to otherwise. Sorry, you're dating forever until they say so.

Marriage

You can propose marriage after reaching 10 hearts with someone you are dating and crafting an engagement ring. Elsie will come to your house to give you the engagement ring recipe the morning after you reach 10 hearts. Be warned: You need to have reached level 100 in the mines in order to craft it, so don't neglect those quests!

How to get married TL;DR:

1. Earn 10 hearts with any marriage candidate you are dating
2. Craft an engagement ring
3. Offer the engagement ring to your partner to begin a proposal scene
4. In your proposal scene, choose the heart dialogue option when offered
5. Choose your wedding date when prompted
6. You won't be able to miss your wedding, the day begins with a cutscene

Proposals

You can begin the proposal heart event by offering an engagement ring to a character you are dating and have 10 hearts with. During this scene your partner will give you a gift to show their feelings for you—March forges a shield, Ryis gifts you a potted tree, etc. You can reciprocate by choosing the red heart dialogue option to propose marriage. You can also choose to put the conversation off by saying you want to wait and discuss things later and then come back to initiate the scene again later.

You can cheese wedding proposals by offering the engagement ring and then, during the cutscene, telling your partner you want to discuss things later instead of proposing. You can do this with multiple characters to get all the proposal gift items before committing to just one person. The recipe for an engagement ring disappears from your blacksmith station after you've completed a proposal, so you can't go craft another ring after getting married.

Wedding planning

The first day after you propose, your partner will have a cute little line about being excited to get married. On three other separate days leading up to the big day, they'll ask for your input on details about the wedding. For each decision, all fiancees offer three choices: two that are the same among all spouses and one choice that reflects their personal preferences.

• Flowers: Red, white, [spouse preference]
• Cake: Vanilla, chocolate, [spouse preference]
• Meal: Harvest plate, Mushroom steak dinner, [spouse preference]

Wedding day

On your wedding day, you don't get to do anything other than attend the festivities. Pro: Watering your crops and feeding the animals is handled for you, Elsie and Josephine promise. Con: You lose an entire day, so avoid scheduling your wedding for a Friday or Saturday so you don't miss the market or the night at the inn. You may not want to schedule it on the same day as another NPC's birthday (or your own!) either because you won't get a chance to give them a gift.

Wedding gifts

The morning after your wedding, Elsie sends you a letter with furniture unique to your spouse as "wedding gifts." Juniper has a desk, cauldron, chair, and a bed for Dozy, for instance. March has a desk, chair, and a forge station. You also get a wedding photo of your spouse that you can hang in your home like other date photos.

Breakups vs "Polyamory"

If you date more than one character and do want to marry one of them, one of two things can happen: Your other partners break up with you and become your best friends instead or you go on dating everyone alongside your spouse. Aside from getting engaged, NPCs will not autonomously break up with you since there is no friendship point decay if you ignore your partners for a period of time.

There are two toggles related to breakups in the "gameplay" section of the menu. Here's how the three possible configurations work:

Default settings

The day after you propose to someone, any other characters you are dating will send you a letter in the mail saying that they want to end your relationship but remain friends instead. The next time you talk to them they'll ask if you got the letter and how you felt about it. They're all pretty much bittersweet but leave you on good terms. In the relationships menu you will still have the same number of hearts with that character but their label will change from "dating" to "best friends."

Breakup letters off

If you toggle breakup letters off, any characters you were dating outside your fiance will still revert to "best friends" status the day after your proposal. You just won't receive a breakup letter or see any dialogue related to ending the relationship. So you get to have your cake and eat it without the sting of consequences.

Breakups off entirely

If you turn breakups off entirely, you will continue to have the "dating" label with all other characters you'd been dating. You can continue taking those characters on weekend dates, kissing them whenever you want, and having daily chats with them that refer to your being in a relationship even after you're married. Like with dating multiple people, no one references that you're married while still dating. It's not really polyamory and more like plausible deniability non-manogamy.

I can turn an overgrown property into an industrial vineyard in a single year no problem. I've done it in the valleys, islands, and fields of countless farm sims. Usually it's just as easy to pluck one of its provincial hotties out of town to become my spouse (the overworked leader type, ideally), but magical girl-inspired Fields of Mistria has given me a bad case of choice paralysis. I love them all!

Fields of Mistria originally launched in early access with only the beginning of an already excellent story and two unlockable cutscenes per eligible single. Over the past two years it's added quality of life updates, story progression, and additional friendship and dating scenes. Mistria caps it all off this week with a 1.0 launch that completes the main story and, finally, adds the ability to get married. I would be psyched (I am psyched) except I've spent the past two years confessing my feelings to ten of them and if anything I'm less sure who to choose than before.

Fields of Mistria is steeped in nostalgia for '90s anime. It's got off-the-shoulder jackets. It's got shockingly high waist lines. It's got a guy who's rude right to my face and blushes when I'm nice to him anyway—a dynamic I'm too damn old for but lies dormant in the grey matter of my brain that solidified during the years Fruits Basket was in print. It's a sepia toned flashback to playing my Game Boy Advance in the third row of a minivan and drawing Edward Elric on filched printer paper.

I love how Mistria has characters for all my eras. The fifteen year old inside me will always have a soft spot for tsundere boys like March the blacksmith and arrogant beauties like Juniper the witch. In my twenties I'd have been swayed by Adeline the acting town leader who needs to take a break from organizing Mistria's earthquake recovery. Now I'm drawn to Ryis the carpenter, an unassuming 'guy next door' who moved from the city and isn't sure if he'll put down roots in the countryside.

Mistria pulls off a magical girl-worthy transformation on all those timeless anime tropes. They've got modern frills like loveable hunk Hayden being a pseudo single dad… to a prize-winning chicken. Sweet older sister Reina isn't relegated to unsung family cook; her parents support her chasing national recognition as a chef. Eiland the noble scion looks foppish at first but is way more obsessed with archaeology than his looks. They're all just a little deeper than their archetypes without ever really masking the fact that yeah, Juniper still is a classic arrogant villainess type.

The quality of Fields of Mistria's writing is what's made me so uncharacteristically indecisive. Even the best post-Stardew farm sims are cute but pretty shallow. Mistria is sneaky about how excellently it's written. Its tropey characters mean I'll never bring it up in a "good writing" conversation next to sharply smart things like Disco Elysium. Instead It's more like Avatar The Last Airbender, whose lighthearted tone masks a subtle maturity. Not the kind of maturity with swear words and dark topics, the kind that's emotionally earnest and resolves conflicts instead of omitting them.

After a decade of Stardew-chasing farm sims, Fields of Mistria is the first one to really recapture the magic for me. It addresses so many functional elements of farm sims in a way I can appreciate but what I enjoy most is how it clearly understands that the people and the community are the things to love in this genre more than a button for jumping over fences (we do love a jump button though).

I've smiled over finding out that Hayden the rancher and Valen the doctor were friends as kids, or Hemlock the bartender remembering the first time he asked his wife Josephine to dance at the fall festival even as I'm spinning in circles wondering who to ask myself. I'm still surprised finding fun new little bits of conversation around town, delighted with even more to unearth in the full release.

For two years I got the classic anime release schedule experience: agonizing over these characters while waiting for the next arc of the story to arrive. Now that the 1.0 version has landed, you get to indulge in a modern binge session, seeing Mistria and its cast all grow in tandem as intended.

As soon as Fields of Mistria 1.0 landed I rushed to shove gifts into my lovers' faces and drag them on dates to hustle my way to the coveted 10 heart threshold for marriage, only to find out that, woof, crafting an engagement ring is a real investment! The material cost isn't actually that steep if you've already played a lot, but it does require you to get to the final level of the mines. I'd sort of neglected unlocking those final seals while totally engrossed in friendship grinding, which was apparently the wrong thing to do.

How to craft an engagement ring

To craft an engagement ring, you have to reach level 100 in the mines to unlock additional recipes for The Dragon Forge on level 90. After you make a Dragon-Forged Core, you can craft an engagement ring at a normal blacksmithing station.

Engagement ring recipe:

• 2 Diamonds
• 4 Mistril ingots
• 4 Gold ingots
• 1 Dragon-Forged Core (craft at The Dragon Forge on mines level 90)
  • 5 Monster core
  • 1 Mistril ingot
  • 1 Pink diamond
  • 1 Ancient firefly
  • 1 Medium essence stone

Engagement ring materials shortcuts

You can't just throw down the cash for an engagement ring outright, but you can pay your way to avoid some of the material grinding if you're ore poor but have tons of tesserae.

What you can buy or craft:

• Buy 40 gold ore from the blacksmith for 8,000 tesserae
  • Craft 4x gold ingots at the blacksmithing station
• Buy 50 mistril ore from the blacksmith for 20,000 tesserae
  • Craft 5 mistril ingots at the blacksmithing station (1 extra ingot is for the Dragon-Forged core you need to craft)
• Buy a Large Bundle of Stone to get 100 stone (you need 90) at the carpenter shop for 2,000 tesserae
  • Craft 2 diamonds at the stone refinery (in the mines entrance) with 70 stone
  • Craft 1 medium essence stone at the stone refinery with 20 stone

What you need to find or grind:

• 5 monster cores
  • Dropped by lantern enemies (mines levels 1-39) or by flame spirits (mines levels 61-99)
• 1 pink diamond
  • Mine pink diamond nodes (mines levels 81+)
  • OR take your partner on a gem cutting date on Saturday or Sunday for a chance to get one as a reward
• 1 ancient firefly
  • Catch with a net in the Ancient Ruins (mines level 81+)

Farm simmers already know what day it is: It's Fields of Mistria 1.0 day. The magical girl-inspired, '90s anime flashback farm sim has been in early access for two years (to the day) and has just launched its full release version with the conclusion of its main story and, way more importantly, matrimony.

To the dismay of some of my fellow PCG editors and the delight of others, I've been totally incapable of shutting up about Mistria. Farm sims are nominally about planting crops and making cash but what keeps me and all the other life simming freaks coming back is always going to be great artwork and crushable characters. Mistria is drowning in both with its Game Boy Advance-inspired colorful sprites and characters who clawed their way out of my old Shojo Beat mags.

It's an old anime tropes fest on its face (red-headed tsundere boy, arrogant villainess, flirtatious rogue, and blonde protagonist are all here) but Mistria does such an incredible job of layering genuine character insights underneath all of them with a shocking amount of contextual dialogue. Farm sims just don't typically write this much, and I respect the heck out of Mistria for it.

Today's a great day to start your first farm in Mistrira, but for those of us who'd been vibrating in anticipation—you don't have to start from scratch at all. The new main story quests and final romance and marriage scenes all naturally fall after the progress you've made so far. Even the new Steam achievements are awarded retroactively.

I'll be writing a scored review of Fields of Mistria just as soon as I have a chance to complete the story and finally choose my spouse, which is the real final boss in this game where I'm dating 10 of the 12 marriage candidates and have only gotten more indecisive. You can wait on the formality of a percentage, but I've made my opinion known that I think this is one of the best games like Stardew Valley a few different times over the past two years so you can see where my head's at pretty clearly.

You can grab Fields of Mistria on Steam now (no console releases yet, sorry) for $12.59 (£10.61) which, if I can effusively praise it one more time, is a heck of a lot of farm sim for about half the price most other farm sims go for these days.

After exactly two years in early access, shoujo-ified farm sim Fields of Mistria 1.0 is launching. Whether you've been playing consistently all this time or coming back after trying it two years ago, here's what you need to know about what's changing in the full release version of Mistria.

Fields of Mistria 1.0 highlights

Should you start a new save for 1.0?

You don't need to start a new save file for the 1.0 launch and personally I didn't. The biggest changes coming in the launch version of the game are mostly ones being added on to extend the story, so it shouldn't feel weird to play through even if you're in year three or four. I've come back to play Mistria a couple times after its early access updates and story content that's been added has always felt like a pretty natural flow from where I left off.

You also won't need a new save file to get any of the new achievements added to the game. They'll all be earned retroactively based on what you've done in your save so far.

What if you haven't played since the early access launch?

There have been several major updates over the past two years. If you stopped playing early on and are just coming back, here are some features you might not immediately realize were added:

• Shooting Star Festival on Summer 28 that you can invite a date to attend
• Harvest Festival in fall and Animal Festival in winter
• Riding mounts after upgrading Hayden's barn
• You can buy an expansion for your farm property from the carpenter's shop (and home size upgrades too)
• Greenhouses are available, but only after reaching renown level 70
• Apiaries for farming honey are now craftable
• After upgrading the general store you can buy a seed maker to turn crops (or forage) into their seed versions
• Hayden sells an auto-feeder for your barns and coops after you reach ranching level 45

Full 1.0 change list

Via the Fields of Mistria official blog.

[Highlights]

• The Town Repair Questline can now be completed!
• The Town Renown Cap has been raised to 100.
• The Mistril Town Rank Event has been added to the game.
• NPC Heart Level Cap has been raised to 10.
• 10 Heart (Proposal) Events have been added to the game.
• Wedding Events & Marriage have been added to the game.
• Children have been added to the game.
• The “Saturday Market Plaza” Quest has been added to the game.
• The “Repair the Bell Tower” Quest has been added to the game.
• Stillwell & Zorel join the Saturday Market.
• The Museum can now be completed.
• Steam Achievements have been added.
  • Note: Achievements will be retroactively received after loading an existing save, and will populate based on that save data. If you would prefer to start fresh without receiving retroactive achievements, all you will need to do is start a new save file.
• Beta localizations for 7 languages have been added to the game:
  • Chinese (Simplified)
  • Chinese (Traditional)
  • French
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Russian
  • Spanish 

🎮 Gameplay

• Unlocking Stillwell will allow you to access Mission Quests from his Mission Board at the Saturday Market.
• Unlocking Zorel will allow you to purchase Crystal Resonators and Song Crystals at the Saturday Market. This feature allows customization of the music that plays on your farm and in the rooms of your home.
• The exterior of your house can now be customized from a selection of styles after it’s been fully upgraded.
  • Note: You will receive a letter from Landen after fully upgrading your house, which will unlock this feature in the Carpenter’s Shop.
• 7 new perks have been added to the game, including:
  • Cooking:
    • Espresso Yourself
  • Ranching:
    • Playtime
    • Eggstra
    • Close Bond II
    • True Trust
  • Woodcrafting:
    • Hammer Timing IV
    • Deliberate Debris II
• The “Engagement Ring” item will now become craftable at a Forge after reaching 10 Hearts with an NPC you’re dating. 
  • Note: Elsie will deliver the recipe to you the morning after reaching Heart Level 10. Use the recipe scroll to unlock it.
• “NPC Special Items” received from NPCs 10-Heart (Proposal) Events have been added. 
  • Note: It is possible to view all events and collect all the special items before deciding to proceed with a proposal (if desired), as 10-Heart events can be retriggered with the Engagement Ring until you choose to propose and become engaged.
• Elements of your wedding (such as flower color, cake flavor, and meal served at the reception) can be customized via wedding planning dialogue with your fiance in the days leading up to your wedding.
• The “Mystical Feather” item will now become available via a cutscene in the weeks following your marriage, allowing you to trigger an optional family planning discussion for players who wish to have a child.
• Via the Combat Perk “Friend-Shaped,” all monsters now drop Pet Skins that make your pet take on the appearance of that monster.
• The Big Chicken mount has been added to the game.
• An additional “Friday Night at the Inn” storyline has been added after finishing the Mines Storyline.
• New Requests have been added to the Request Board.
• 2 new Museum Sets and associated rewards have been added.
  • Honey Set
  • Terrarium Treasures Set
• You can now interact with NPCs you are dating, engaged to, or married to, to kiss them.
• Taking an NPC on a date will now increase their heart level more.
• Town Rank Quests have been added to better guide existing progression.
• Museum Wing rooms can now be entered to view your collection.
• The order of popups when donating items to the museum has been updated such that Museum Set Complete popups now appear directly after seeing their respective donated items popup.
• Previously inaccessible cooking recipes are now available in-game.

✨ QOL

• 🌼 The player character can now be rotated in the customization menu.
• 🌼 Players can optionally disable the break-up letters and associated follow-up lines that acknowledge the change in status from “Dating” to “Best Friends” that occurs by default after getting engaged (when dating multiple NPCs).
  • Note: this setting will not disable the break-up themselves, and will become available in the gameplay settings menu via the engagement tutorial cutscene.
• 🌼 Players can optionally disable the status change from “Dating” to “Best Friends” that occurs by default post-engagement (when dating multiple NPCs).
  • Note: this setting will disable the break-ups entirely, and will become available in the gameplay settings menu via the engagement tutorial cutscene, but must be toggled prior to confirming an engagement in order to take effect.
• 🌼 Drop rates on items received from Mines treasure chests have been improved.
• 🌼Ritual Chamber and Treasure room spawn rates have been adjusted to be more common.
• 🌼 Your animals will be fed and your crops watered automatically during March’s 8-Heart Event.
• 🌼 The speak interaction now takes priority when multiple interactions overlap near NPCs.
• New Graphics settings have been added to the settings menu, including brightness & saturation sliders and options to better customize the game’s performance on your machine.
• The Birthday selection screen now has a header that says “Select Your Birthday”.

🎨 Art

• Cloud shadows now appear outside on sunny days.
• Ryis’ Hawthorn tree now has an intermediate growth stage.
• The Bathhouse water wheel now animates.
• 🌼Additional UI indicators have been added, including a directional arrow when placing furniture, an arrow icon over Mines ladders, and a talk icon over Caldarus’ Statue.
• New furniture items have been added to the game, including:
  • Monster Set
  • Ornate Set
  • Bonsai Set
  • Dragon Set
  • And more!
• New cosmetics have been added to the game, including:
  • Barrel Hat
  • Wedding Outfits
  • Beetle Mandible Horns
  • Dragonfly Wings
  • And more!

💛 NPCs

• NPC Heart Level Cap has been raised to 10.
• 10 Heart (Proposal) Events have been added. 
• Engagement dialogue has been added.
• Wedding Events have been added.
• Events related to having a child have been added.
• Post-Marriage dialogue and NPC routines have been added.
• New dialogue has been added to the game.

🔊 Sound

• A new winter song has been added.
• 4 existing seasonal songs will now swap to special extended versions after progressing through the game.
• 10 new songs have been added via Song Crystals

[Bug Fixes]

• 🌼 Substantial improvements to performance since the last update.
• 🌼 Fixed early errors on startup which prevented the game from launching on certain old PCs.
• 🌼 Reduced the game's VRAM usage by over 50%, which should help with performance on older machines.
• 🌼Players can no longer walk on water by moving diagonally into corners.
• 🌼The game no longer crashes due to the Pet being in the wrong location while their job is active.
• 🌼Players can no longer earn second place in the Harvest Festival despite turning in a winning amount of Queen berries.
• Hayden’s weathervane now correctly reappears on his barn after you return it during the Find the Weathervane quest.
• Stepping stones on the beach now play stone footstep SFX.
• Certain popups (e.g. unlocking new hairstyles) have been widened to better fit on the screen.
• Repeatedly ringing the Bell no longer raises the Ranching Skill level.
• Placeable forge animations have been restored.
• Rock Stacks can no longer get stuck in an idle animation.
• Flame Spirits no longer get stuck idle after attacking.
• 🌼The game no longer encounters a rare crash when scrolling through the museum menu rapidly.
• Shooting Star Festival-related dialogue can no longer fire past midnight on Summer 27.
• Players can no longer obtain cosmetics from the Chicken Statue for animals they haven’t unlocked yet.
• It is no longer possible to equip armor and miss unlocking its associated cosmetic.
• NPCs eat specific meals where intended during certain cutscenes instead of randomized meals.
• The camera no longer zooms rapidly when tabbing back into the game window during the End of Day pan.
• 🌼NPC sub-icons on Date Photos have been restored.
• 🌼You can no longer get stuck in certain doorways.
• The Flying Tome now appears at the appropriate depth relative to its wind attack VFX.

Somehow, Mistria's most popular bachelorette is the one who doesn't even want to be here. Are we all romancing Juniper due to chronic deficiencies in self-regard that can only be made worse fixed by earning the love of a woman who thinks she's definitely smarter and prettier than us? Maybe, but we don't have time to unpack all of that!

For the nittiest of gritties, you can always turn to the page for Juniper on the Fields of Mistria wiki but right here I'll be divining the ideal path to witch wife-ing. This is your quick cheat sheet on heart thresholds to hit, which gifts to stockpile, and what her heart events entail.

Juniper romance walkthrough

Juniper romance to-do list:

• Talk to Juniper every day! (You can reach four hearts just by talking every single day of spring and summer even if you struggle with her gifts list.)
• Always be foraging. In your first spring, morel mushrooms, nettle, and middlemist flowers are on her liked gifts list.
• Splurge on mushroom brew from Darcy's stall at the Saturday market if you spot one in stock; they're one of her more attainable loved gifts if you get lucky.
• Grow poinsettias in winter; it's one of the few gifts she likes that doesn't require luck or prerequisites to get your hands on.
• Reach four hearts by Summer 28 to go on a date to the Shooting Star Festival (and the Harvest Festival dance on Fall 10).
• Reach the lava caves on level 60+ in the mines; a Breath of Flame forageable is required for her 8 heart event.

Consistency goes further than perfection when romancing Juniper. It's tough to stock up on her favorite gifts, so just talk to her every day and give her foraged items she likes instead of holding out to give her gifts that she loves.

Juniper heart events

Best gifts for Juniper

The best gift for Juniper is wine

After much agonizing, I've decided the best gift for Junier is wine which you can buy from the inn. But don't run out and buy wine on day one! It's initially expensive and you can gift her forage items (see below) early in spring instead. When it comes to playing the long game with Juniper, though, wine will become the easiest gift since you can buy it on demand at the inn any day of the year.

Juniper's loved gifts list is almost entirely rare artifacts and high tier food recipes while her liked gifts are rare forage and deep mines loot. You may have lots of items she likes laying in your chests, but it's hard to stock up on any one of them.

• Juniper's most accessible loved gift is Mushroom Brew if you spot one in stock at Balor's daily cart or Darcy's Saturday Market stall, but you can't stockpile that.
• The cheapest gifts she likes are spring forage items like morels, nettle, and middlemist, (or monster powder from the mines) but you're going to eventually run out of those.
• Poinsettias are one of the few flowers she likes that you can actually grow in bulk without foraging, but only in winter. If you've been dilligently wooing her in your first year, you'll likely be close to 8 hearts with her already by then. If so, there's no need to go all in on flower farming when you've likely got pocket money to spare on buying your girl a nice glass of red every day.

Juniper gifts list

Marrying Juniper

Wedding planning with Juniper

Talk to Juniper on three of the days leading up to your wedding to choose details about your big day.

• Flowers: Red, white, or purple
• Cake: Vanilla, chocolate, or moon fruit
• Dinner: Harvest plate, mushroom steak dinner, or pizza (which she loves!)

Juniper's wedding day

On your wedding day, here's who gets featured at the celebration:

• Juniper's party: Celine and Dozy
• Toast: Celine and Elsie (sort of) joined by Dell, Maple, and Luc

Juniper's spouse items

Here's which special items you get to keep for marrying Juniper:

• Juniper's protection scroll (proposal)
• Juniper's desk
• Juniper's comfy chair
• Juniper's cauldron
• Dozy's dog bed

So you want a little rivals-to-lovers arc with the prickly blacksmith? No judgement, I too came of age at the height of the tsundere tsunami so I'm not surprised that March has become by far the most popular bachelor in Fields of Mistria (so long as his brother Olric stays un-romancable, that is).

For the nittiest of gritties, you can always turn to the page for March on the Fields of Mistria wiki but right here I'll be refining the raw ore of March's romance into a glittering tips list. This is your quick cheat sheet on heart thresholds to hit, which gifts to stockpile, and what his heart events entail.

March romance walkthrough

March romance to-do list:

• Talk to March every day! (You can reach four hearts just by talking every single day of spring and summer without gifts, if needed.)
• Mine some copper ASAP in your first spring to gift him an ore for his birthday on Spring 16 (or buy him a beer from the inn).
• Stockpile perfect copper ore (drop chance from copper nodes in levels 1-20 of the mines) as a repeatable loved gift to grind friendship points.
• Reach four hearts by Summer 28 to go to the Shooting Star Festival as his date and dance at the Harvest Festival on Fall 10.
• Prioritize clearing the mines because getting past the fire seal on level 60 is required for his 8 heart scene.

March heart events

Best gifts for March

The best gift for March is perfect copper ore

Perfect copper ore is the easiest of March's loved gifts to stock up on and gift to him repeatedly. You're going to be mining tons of copper from levels 1-20 of the mines early on and you'll pretty routinely score perfect ores as you're swinging away. Donate your first one to the museum and stash the rest to sweeten March up. Until you find your first one (and if you run out), he likes regular copper ore too.

March gifts list

Marrying March

Wedding planning with March

Talk to March on three of the days leading up to your wedding to choose details about your big day.

• Flowers: Red, white, or blue
• Cake: Vanilla, chocolate, or "triple chocolate!!!"
• Dinner: Harvest plate, mushroom steak dinner, or sushi platter (which he loves!)

March's wedding day

On your wedding day, here's who gets featured at the celebration:

• March's party: Olric and Ryis
• Toast: Olric

March's spouse items

Here's which special items you get to keep for marrying March:

• March's Mistrian shield (proposal)
• March's desk
• March's comfy chair
• March's forge

Jay and Silent Bob first appeared in the 1994 grunge film Clerks as eccentric weed dealers. Jay was the sweary, loquacious, long haired slacker, and Silent Bob was the silent, ruminative long haired slacker. They were cult figures in the '90s. Most of my teenage friends thought they were very funny, and Clerks is still a fun time capsule of the early '90s.

But like a lot of '90s phenomena, Jay and Silent Bob quickly contorted into parody. They've spawned at least three standalone films, each more silly than the last. They also reliably feature in every one of Kevin Smith's View Asknewiverse films, from Clerks all the way through to Clerks 3, but also taking in Mallrats, Chasing Amy and Dogma, just to name a handful.

More recently they've started getting their own videogames: Jay and Silent Bob Mall Brawl is a 2020 sidescrolling beat 'em up developed for NES but also ported to PC and consoles. In April, Atari published Jay and Silent Bob: Chronic Blunt Punch, which is also a sidescrolling beat 'em up but with a modern comic book presentation. There are also two Jay and Silent Boss phone games, and an in-development VR game, and they both cameoed in Black Ops 6. Talk about selling out!

Now they're back again: Jay and Silent Bob's Joint Venture is a cosy farming sim about running a farm. "Armed with some old tools, a handful of seeds, and a couple of questionable business partners, you'll turn a trashed yard into a thriving weed business," the Steam description reads. "Get your hands dirty doing things the way it used to be done before corporate cannabis moved to town – slinging dank dimes outside the Quick Stop!"

So it's a farming sim about growing weed. You'll get to experiment with growing different varieties of weed, upgrade your home from hovel to pad, interact with "dozens of characters" from Kevin Smith's films, and visit a bunch of places you'll recognise from Clerks: the Mall, RST Video and Jay and Silent Bob's beloved Quick Stop. It also has dumpster diving though, in fairness, so does Stardew Valley.

Joint Venture is developed by Starworks Studios, responsible for the 3D platformer Timeworks and the still forthcoming Boast Guards. It's set to release on Steam some time in 2027.

I guess the question is: is there much hunger for Jay and Silent Bob games? It certainly doesn't look like it. Neither Chronic Blunt Punch or Mall Brawl made much of a dent upon release, at least on Steam. Joint Venture seems to lean a lot on writing, which is maybe what fans of Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse would prefer. I guess we'll find out some time next year.

"A nocturnal farm sim where you're a vampire" is one of the better hooks I've heard lately in a subgenre that's long become overstuffed with too many same-y, saccharine rural community sims. Moonlight Peaks' slightly spooky theme is a welcome twist, but that's where its originality ends, because it struggles to ever turn that concept into a story with any bite.

You play as Dracula's spawn, storming out of Dad's castle to take up farming "cruelcumbers" and "blood tomatoes" at the overgrown family retreat in small town Moonlight Peaks, where families of vampires, witches, seers, and werewolves are mired in years of bickering. There's a whole lot of all-caps dialogue in this town.

Eternally familiar farming

It's got the requisite activities checklist for a post-Stardew, Animal Crossing-like farm sim: crops, animals, foraging, fishing, bug catching, a museum, cooking, friendship and dating, decorating, and a bit of crafting. All those basics are executed competently enough that I can shut my brain off and have a good time for a few hours. Digging tidy rows for my blueberry plants, using kegs to make wine, and running off to mine copper for an axe upgrade is all comfortingly familiar, but as soon as I try to look any closer the cracks show.

Unlike more open-ended cousins like Stardew Valley, progression in Moonlight Peaks is extremely main quest-driven. There's no leveling your farming skills or unlocking buffs here. It's all about making money to fund the string of crafting and collecting tasks that help revitalize the town and repair the relationships between its supernatural families. Despite that, I often go days at a time without an active quest to pursue, going to bed early after watering my crops and talking to a couple villagers as I wait for my next goal to trigger.

In between quests and farm planning there are several side activity minigames like flower arranging and pottery, which are genuinely neat, though there's not much incentive to engage with them after making a couple custom decorations for my farm. Some are used as date activities, which is a cute concept, but each character only goes on one date type, so players who choose to only woo one character will be stuck endlessly embroidering or marshmallow roasting their way to marriage, which gets old fast.

For those who do date around, being able to play the field before committing to marriage is nice, and common now in farm sims. With just a few families living in Moonlight Peaks, though, I've found myself simultaneously dating parents and their adult kids, or all four members of a witch coven, or two siblings, which feels a bit odd.

The relationships panel does track gifts that I've given to the locals to earn their friendship, but only the past eight items, duplicates included, which isn't nearly as useful as a discrete list would be.

Every interesting idea or variation on farm sim standards that I can find to praise in Moonlight Peaks comes with an asterisk, which is most true of its story and characters.

Totally de-fanged

Thanks to that driving main quest, there's a ton of story content in Moonlight Peaks. Each character has four cutscenes doled out as we become friends, with more available if I choose to date and marry them. Many of the main quests also involve a handful of the cast getting together to banter and bicker. It's a total feast of character interaction compared to so many other farm sims out there. But yet again, a caveat: The writing is offensively bland.

I don't expect literary innovation from a genre whose current trends prescribe a cast of character tropes. There must always be a friendly rancher, fastidious mayor, plucky carpenter, and a charming bartender (etc.), most of whom should be hot, single, and down to date. Moonlight Peaks has done more than just cleave to character archetypes, though. It's managed to not find a single original string of words in that bounty of character dialogue.

The coven's relentless flirt of a warlock Noel is all confident bluster, which of course begs a relationship arc to uncover his inner sincerity. In one of his early cutscenes he says "there's more to me than this front," in nearly those exact words. "When I'm around you… I don't have to pretend," Noel later says in the scene confessing his feelings to me after we've been dating. Every character interaction is full of these same trite lines I rolled my eyes at in network TV shows 20 years ago.

The tone is inconsistent. Interactions with alcoholic vampire dad Orlock are played for laughs at every opportunity, but his behavior is treated as a serious emotional burden for his adult kids in their own character scenes. Then it's right back to blacking out gags. Its characters all fail to find a compelling identity with inconsistencies like Elvira expressing excitement over seeing pumpkins in the autumn festival but being totally disinterested in receiving one as a gift.

I just haven't managed to care about the story when Moonlight Peaks can't decide if it wants to be silly or sincere, sweet or dark. It's possible to juggle those moods at different moments, but this cast consistently drops the ball.

Moonlight Peaks works as a second screen game for farm sim fans who just want a new aesthetic in which to decorate a home and lay out perfectly even rows of tomato plants. This subgenre is completely packed with options at competitive prices, though, so I can't eagerly recommend one that feels so thin.

One of the biggest end goals in a farm sim (other than a massive wine-making operation) is getting married to your favorite townie. Moonlight Peaks lets you really play the field by going on dates with pretty much everyone before you lock down one chosen beau.

I've been through the process a couple times already, so I've broken down everything you need to know about popping the question, prepping for a wedding, and how to get divorced if you want to head along to your second (or third) marriage. I won't judge you for getting married early and then realizing that you want to date Samael later.

Marriage in Moonlight Peaks

How to get married in Moonlight Peaks

1. Reach 8 friendship hearts with your partner
2. See your partner's 8 heart cutscene (check your map for sparkles indicating where to go)
3. Invite your partner on a date
4. At the end of the date, you can now propose marriage instead of a hug or kiss
5. Set a date for your wedding when prompted (check your calendar after to see it logged there)
6. (Optional) Starting the day after your proposal, buy white attire from Third Eye Threads to wear on your wedding day
7. Your wedding ceremony will take place first thing on your wedding day

What happens when you get married

• Spouse moves into your house
• Spouse unlocks two final (10 total) friendship hearts for you to earn
• Anyone else you were dating becomes "hurt" and goes back to only four hearts
• You can no longer invite other characters on a date and are locked at four hearts with other marriage candidates

When you propose and become engaged, your partner will temporarily have the "fiancée" relationship label and a total of 11 friendship hearts. Any other character who you had a "dating" or "partner" relationship with will be in their feelings about it and temporarily gain the "hurt" relationship label. They will be reduced to just four broken-looking friendship hearts, will have sad dialogue when you chat with them, and will not accept gifts from you. This status seems to only last a day though, so singles in Moonlight Peaks move on fast.

After you get married, your spouse will move into your house but will still go about their own business in town by exploring or going to work like they always have. They will go back to having eight friendship hearts and will have two new hearts to earn while married for a total of 10. You can continue to ask your spouse to go on dates together, which will help you earn those final hearts. You cannot have children in Moonlight Peaks, but you can get divorced.

Divorce in Moonlight Peaks

How to get divorced in Moonlight Peaks

1. A few days after your wedding, Llemi will come to your house to tell you about divorce
2. Visit Llemi's house in the Pink Grove (must progress the main story and unlock Luna Bay to reach it)
3. Tell Llemi you want to divorce your spouse
4. Sleep until the next night and your spouse will return to "friend" status

Getting divorced in Moonlight Peaks is arguably way too easy. When Llemi first comes to your house a few days after your wedding to just casually drop the possibility of divorce into your mind, he calls it "A clean slate. No bonds, no vows, no lingering what-ifs. A love undone as if it had never been."

Despite his protests about breaking your partner's heart when you actually come to take him up on the offer, "as if it had never been" seems to be how Moonlight Peaks treats divorce because your ex-spouse will be totally unfazed by your marriage ending. They'll return to being your "friend" the following day with only four hearts, no "hurt" relationship label, and will not acknowledge the divorce in dialogue at all. In fact, they'll act like they want to start dating you all over again.

Remember though, getting married in the first place locked all your other relationships at four friendship hearts. If you want to tie the knot a second time, you've got a lot of gifting and dates to do to make it back up to eight hearts with your next prospective spouse.

I don't blame you for loading up Moonlight Peaks and saying: "Wait, how are you supposed to date Samael?" The broody bartender is easily the most conventionally attractive guy in town. If you peeked at the datable candidates list for Moonlight Peaks, you'll have seen Samael featured alongside all the other eligible townies. When you start playing, though, you notice pretty quickly that Samael only has four friendship hearts in his relationship panel unlike the other bachelors, so what gives?

Unlocking Samael's romance involves some main quest story spoilers about characters who you won't meet for several seasons, so scroll down with caution. If you just need reassurance: Samael is datable. Just keep plugging away at the main story improving the town and you'll likely see his relationship progress in the first autumn or winter depending on how fast you're progressing.

How to date Samael

Once you've got Samael's expanded relationship hearts unlocked (scroll down for spoilers on that below), you can approach going on dates with him just like other locals:

• Reach four friendship hearts
• See Samael's four heart cutscene
• Talk to Samael and "invite" then "ask on date"

Here's what you need to know to woo Samael fast:

• Samael loves red wine, so make sure you're keeping your kegs stocked with grapes and talking to him each day
• You can prepare to romance Samael by going ahead and reaching four friendship hearts with him before his romance is available
• Samael will take you on a stargazing date where you'll identify constellations he points out, how romantic!

How to unlock Samael's romance (spoilers!)

• Complete the quest "Bride's attendant duty"
• Wait one week for Orlock to visit your house
• Complete "Unfinished business"
• Earn four hearts with Samael to ask him on a date

To unlock Samael's romance, you need to progress through the main story quest until you unlock Luna Bay and meet the Hosu family. The quests "A Curious Passage" and "The Mysterious Bay" are the precursor to Samael's story. You'll need to lift a fallen tree, repair a bridge with Ludo, and help Samael prepare for a really big day.

Don't panic when it becomes clear that the guy you've been pining after is carrying a torch for your new mermaid neighbor. Samael's freakishly fast marriage to Kim doesn't actually go through. After you help them prepare for the ceremony, Kim's brand new feet get cold at the altar and she runs away. Samael will still be un-datable for one week after being ditched. One week later, Orlock will display some uncharacteristically perceptive behaviour by arriving at your house and enlisting your help to shake his nephew out of his sad funk.

You'll help arrange a meeting for closure between Samael and Kim and then, finally, you'll be able to open your relationship panel and see that Samael now has extra hearts for you to unlock past the first four hearts of friendship just like other datable characters. If you've already reached four hearts with Samael, you can go ahead and invite him on a date immediately. No shame.

During the quest The Mysterious Bay you're going to need to lift a fallen tree in Moonlight Peaks to help your newly-discovered mermaid neighbors rejoin the town proper. After you get the rundown, you might wind up scratching your head over where that tree you're supposed to clear was. It certainly isn't nearby in the Howling Marshes where you'd assume.

How to lift a tree

If you've perused the spells at Webb of Wonders, you'll have already noticed there's a spell for lifting a tree that you can buy from Sabrina You'll need three mana to cast the Arborascend spell, so hold off watering your magic crops for the day (or cook yourself a mana food to supplement) so you can go lift the fallen log.

In case you've forgotten, you can refresh your memory on casting each spell in the first tab of your almanac in the game menu. The pattern for Arborascend looks like a tree after you finish casting it: down, up, right, left, up.

Fallen tree location

The fallen tree is in Moonlit Pines near Luna's seed cart. If you forgot exactly what Rei and Kim told you, you may mistakenly think there's a tree in the Howling Marshes that you need to lift since that's the area adjacent to their home in Luna Bay. But nope, you're actually looking for a fallen log over in the forest where the witches hang out.

You can spot the fallen log blocking a small waterfall just west of the set of stairs that leads to Luna's seed cart and cottage. Cast your Arborascend spell to trigger a cutscene that removes the tree. Kim will rush down to thank you, excited to be reunited with her "Sammy" again.

We're always keeping an eye out for new Stardew Valley mods. For instance, not long ago I played a mod where I could open my own grocery store and make Pierre buy my seeds for a change, dammit! It was satisfying.

But here's a mod (via Gaming Bible) created by modder kittycatcasey, aka spacechase0, that immediately looks different from all the other Stardew mods out there. That's cuz it's in 3D. Have a look at "The Third Dimension," a proof-of-concept video of a 3D version of Stardew Valley—and then come back here and help me decide if it looks completely rad or vaguely horrifying.

I'm delighted at first: the video shows the modder strolling around their house, interacting with the kids, and talking with their spouse, Penny. It really is neat seeing the game's bright and cheerful art in 3D, even though the sprites (except for structures like walls and floors) are all still 2D.

But as I watch more, it quickly begins to get unsettling. Since nearly every entity is still currently 2D, it only has one side to face the player, which means it all swivels to continue facing you no matter where you go. Everything: plants, decorations, furnaces, the mailbox, scarecrows, containers, all slowly turning as you walk by. As if alive. As if watching you. It's creeptastic.

This is temporary, of course: "Right now just about almost everything besides the terrain is billboarded sprites, but the plan is to over time give everything a unique 3D model," spacechase0 says.

I feel better again while watching spacechase0 harvest blueberries from the farm: it's delightful to look up instead of down at the plants, to be surrounded by them like you were really out there doing some gardening. But then I notice the house in the background. It, too, is swiveling to watch you, everywhere you go, like some sort of extremely nosy Baba Yaga's Hut. I'm glad the video doesn't show downtown Stardew. Just imagine those shops and houses all turning to watch as you walked around. Chilling!

This isn't shade on the modder, by the way: turning a 2D game into 3D is really impressive, and even this extremely early proof-of-concept looks great (except when it makes my skin crawl). The second half of the video is a demonstration of the 3D concept compatible with VR, which is amazing—though fighting off bats sure looks tricky.

The mod isn't available to try yet, which works for me: I think I'd be a little too creeped out with all those sprites slowly swiveling around to stare at me everywhere I went. If you want to play Stardew Valley in 3D or VR someday, though, this is one mod you should keep a close eye on.

When Elvira cooks up a little treasure hunt for you in Moonlight Peaks, you may find yourself stumped if you haven't explored too far out of town. A couple of her poetic little hints refer to locations you've got to really pay attention to. Down below I'll go into detail on the clues and where to find them, but here's a quick reference list of all five clue locations:

• Clue 1: The Broken Lamp bar
• Clue 2: Ambrosia graveyard
• Clue 3: Webb of Wonders
• Clue 4: Cave of Echoes
• Clue 5: Khazan temple

Elvira's first clue

Where spirits are poured and secrets are stored,
Find the book that's dusty and old.
Look between the shelves where bottles line,
The next hint awaits, where magic and wine intertwine.

For the first clue, head to Samael's bar over on the east side of town. You'll have been here plenty already so you should know the way. Elvira's clue is an envelope on the ground near the wine racks on the right side of the bar.

Elvira's second clue

Where the quiet ones rest beneath moonlight's gleam,
Find the spot where shadows dream.
Seek the place where memories are kept,
The next clue lies where the peaceful are slept.

Clue two refers to the Ambrosia family graveyard over in the Misty Shores region. The clue is a bit hidden, tucked behind a bat-shaped headstone in the top left corner of the graveyard.

Elvira's third clue

Where moonlight dances on ancient spells,
Find the place where magical items dwell.
Look for the spot where enchanted crafts appear,
The next clue waits for you, close and near.

For clue three, head to Webb of Wonders where Sabrina works in town. Elvira's clue is on the right side of the shop beside the pottery station.

Elvira's fourth clue

Where moonlight is scarce and sound slowly sours,
Find the shrine that tolls at the passing of hours.
Seek the stones that remember, and find two apart,
You'll find your next clue in the space at their heart.

Clue four is a lot tougher! The "sound slowly sours" is your hint to head to the Cave of Echoes, the mine in the Misty Shores where you'll have been farming for copper. It's referring to a big bell that actually marks the hour passing in Moonlight Peaks which is over on the eastern side of the mine. Luckily the envelope is very easy to spot so you won't miss it.

Elvira's fifth clue

Where the moon and her followers watch the futures of all,
Find the eastern cascade of the water's fall.
Look for leaves well-tended by the keepers of fates,
And find the last clue, where your treasure awaits.

Clue five is a location you may not have even been to before: the Khazan Temple east of town. Follow the path that heads directly east away from town hall (not up to the Howling Marshes) and look for the last note on the ground outside the temple on the right side of a waterfall.

Elvira's treasure hunt reward

Elvira's reward for finishing her treasure hunt is a painting that you can hang in your house. For me, it was a pink painting of a cat (or perhaps a vampster?) laying down. Cute!

I was pleasantly surprised to find that going on dates in Moonlight Peaks is more involved than your average farm sim. After you extend an invite, your beau will take you out for a little activity featuring some of Moonlight Peaks' minigames. You're free to date around, too, so don't be stingy with your time. Here's how to start stepping out with all the locals.

How to go on dates in Moonlight Peaks

• Reach 4 heart friendship level with a datable townie
• Choose "Invite" and "Ask on date" when talking to them
• Go to sleep at the end of the night and your date will begin the next night
• Listen to your date and play a mini activity to have a successful outing
• After finishing a date (even a bad one) your relationship will change to "dating"
• You can have a "dating" relationship with multiple people at once

Be careful asking multiple people on a date in the same night! Whoever you asked most recently will pick you up for an outing the following night. The dates seemed to stack in reverse order, so the person I asked first came to get me the second night, though I didn't see a way to track this anywhere. I have no idea what stacking too many dates might do, so perhaps best to avoid that.

How to start a date

Counterintuitively, you need to start a date by going to sleep. You'll ask a townie out by using the "invite" and "ask on date" dialogue interaction after you've reached four hearts with them, but your rendezvous will happen at the very beginning of the night after that. So head to bed and get ready to be picked up promptly at 6pm.

Date rewards

Your date will pick the activity to take you on, some of which will reward you more than others. Here's what you can expect:

• "Dating" relationship status in your friendship menu
• Friendship points awarded for a successful date
• Once you're dating, you can kiss your partner each day with the "give" dialogue interaction
• Some dates will send you home with a gift, like a custom bouquet when a date takes you to do flower arranging

A new farm sim has launched today and, as is tradition, cozy game enjoyers gather round to ask each other: Is Moonlight Peaks worth it? I'm about 40 days (nights, actually) into my playthrough, so it'll be just a bit longer before I can deliver our scored review, but I want to give some early impressions to help all my fellow farm simmers figure out if this month's flavor is one to take a bite out of.

In my early preview of Moonlight Peaks, I called it Real Housewives of Stardew, which remains true. It's got all the usual farm sim bits (crops, foraging, farm animals, friendship, crafting, mining, fishing, etc.) but the four families of supernaturals in town are feuding something fierce. There's quite a lot of all-caps dialogue around here.

In the first few weeks, all that goofy toxic behavior is entertaining, but as I've continued playing, Moonlight Peaks feels like it can't pick a tone. It plays Orlock the vampire patriarch as a comedic relief alcoholic, which feels a bit out of touch in 2026, but then in other moments attempts to treat that tense family situation as a genuine struggle for his daughter Mina.

Meanwhile the annoyingly persistent charmer Noel seems to be going for a "there's more to me beneath this front" character arc by… just saying that out loud and then immediately going back to being shallow. Even in a genre that intentionally leans on character archetypes, these townies have felt a little one-note so far.

Not for nothing, but making the requisite 'white-haired hot guy' laughably childish while leaving the broody bartender Samael un-datable (or so it first seems, based on his sole four friendship hearts) feels like a real misread on the farm simming audience. I'm happy to date one of the many ladies of the town, but the bachelor options probably aren't what most people are hoping for.

Moonlight Peaks is full of slightly odd decisions like that. I can store seemingly infinite resources in my house, but the storage menu requires so many button presses that it becomes more of a chore than organizing my chests in any other crafting game. It tracks gifts I've given to villagers, but just in a list of "recently given" that seems far less useful than a discrete list of things they like or love. It's very quest-driven, rather than being open-ended like Stardew Valley, but I'm often left without enough to do in a day because my next goal is too far off from being completed.

For all that, Moonlight Peaks is really easy to pick up and dive into. The Animal Crossing-like chibi character designs are cute, the supernatural town concept is charming, and quest directions are clear even if the pacing is a little slow. Its flower arranging and pottery minigames, and the pattern-based spellcasting are all fun touches too.

I'm glossing over the 'how it plays' bit of things, because for so many farm simming fans that never seems to be a dealbreaker. Most of us are in it for the cast of characters and their stories, while the gameplay specifics are either a little speed bump or boost on that journey as long as they include all the usual activities, which Moonlight Peaks does. I did finally find out how to go on dates in Moonlight Peaks, though, and the fact that they involve minigame activities is a little treat.

I'm not having a bad time in Moonlight Peaks, but it's hard not to look at its $35 price tag and rather average writing without thinking of Fields of Mistria's 1.0 launch coming up next month after two years of consistently excellent character writing in early access and no hike in sight for its $14 price. Farm sim fans have a lot of options these days and I'm not convinced yet that Moonlight Peaks earns its keep.

Sul sul! If you've ever spent extended time with The Sims, don't pretend like you don't know what I'm saying—we've all been there. It's never enough to open a game in the series for a quick session. You've got to spend hours micromanaging households, building new homes, and coordinating fancy 'fits.

But I get it, no judgement here. The Sims 4 is easy for me to pick up, but impossible to put down. And because of that, I may know a word or two of their bizarre, in-game language.

It's called simlish, and just like Klingon from Star Trek or Final Fantasy 10's Al Bhed, it's your sims' very own in-universe language. The Sims Studios has explained its linguistic process multiple times over the years, but in case you were wondering: no, it's not just you. Your sims really do have specific words and phrases to describe the same concepts. When you've played a ton of The Sims series, it's hard not to pick up and repeat a few of them.

In honor of the series' impressive linguistic feat, I've teamed up with PC Gamer's very own Sims series scholar, Lauren Morton, for a quick quiz on simlish. You've got a little over eight minutes to interpret these 10 sim phrases. Good luck, and let us know how you scored in the comments below.

The Sims 4 is a noisy game, especially once you've piled on a few expansion packs. You're constantly fielding stray notifications and unsolicited calls from acquaintances asking you for advice, and before you know it you've soiled your pants and bowling night is ruined. Thankfully, the headlining note in a recent Sims 4 patch is a stab at "clearing the noise."

As the update blog notes, there are loads of new menu options for in-game alerts. You can silence your phone entirely, for instance, and toggle festival notifications for each individual pack.

Some nonsensical cases of unwelcome calls have been accounted for explicitly: freelancer sims will no longer receive calls regarding careers they aren't in, the grim reaper will only bother recruiting sims if they’re already tagged as macabre (see our guide on that if you think claiming the souls of the dead actually sounds pretty rad), and sims on your front lawn won't call you to ask about your childhood anymore.

There are a lot more notes like that, so I'd check out the blog if you want to ensure the thing that bothers you in particular was accounted for. Beyond that, there are over 70 bug fixes to peruse as well—among them, sims created as romantic partners shouldn't errantly become siblings all of a sudden anymore, doors and windows should clip less, and the gallery UI should be less buggy.

As always, The Sims patch notes are simultaneously a bizarre read and a relief to regular players who are well-acquainted with the life simulation's innumerable quirks. As it turns out, simulating human life in a videogame comes with some challenges. If you'd rather introduce some new bugs, take a look at our list of the best Sims 4 mods, and if you're looking for a change, try our list of the best Sims-likes.

Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone recently gave us a small update on the progress of Haunted Chocolatier. He said that his next project is taking longer than expected due to the fact that it's a bigger game than Stardew Valley and because he's a perfectionist. He also explained why there are no screenshots alongside this update—or in-depth explanations of any systems—in terms that any cosy game player will understand.

"Please excuse me, but I don’t like to share too many screenshots, or even talk about the systems in too much detail, while the game is in development," Barone wrote in his blog post. "Partly, it feels like I’m serving a half-baked bread. I would rather serve a fully baked bread."

This is hardly a surprising decision given that as far as we know Haunted Chocolatier isn't close to being finished. There's also plenty that could change between now and its release, so explaining systems and supplying fans with too many screenshots runs the risk of getting people excited about things that just won't end up in the final game. "If I reveal them early, I risk disappointing players if the final product does not match their expectation," Barone said. Inaccurate screenshots truly are the goopy bread of indie game development.

There's an increasing trend of games drip-feeding players morsels before release, whether through demos or countless blog posts. And while demos and community engagement certainly have their place and have proven successful for games such as Cult of the Lamb or YapYap, it's certainly not the only way to release a game.

This is especially the case since Barone doesn't have to worry much about creating hype. "I'm in a position where I don't need to market the game," before its release, said Barone, humbly refraining from mentioning Stardew Valley's 35 million plus sales. He's sticking to his "preferred approach," which seems to be slowly but surely bringing Haunted Chocolatier up to temp.

It's been five years since Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone announced the idea of Haunted Chocolatier, since then we've got a few small updates on progress here and there, with the bulk of Barone's time being spent on making Stardew Valley one of, if not the best indie game available (which is currently 40% off in the Steam Summer sale).

It sounds like work on Haunted Chocolatier has been slow yet very deliberate, something that Barone yet again stresses in this latest update on progress. "I know it’s taking a long time," Barone says in a blog post. "A big part of that is that I am being very thoughtful about every aspect of the game. The things in the game which the player will be interacting with or using very often need to be 'perfect'. They need to be seamless, clear, intuitive, satisfying, aesthetic."

Barone has already confirmed that Haunted Chocolatier will be bigger than Stardew Valley, which is fantastic for us as it means we'll have more to chew on once we get our hands on it, but that does mean way more work for Barone. Whether there'll be a bigger map, more characters, or more systems (or all of the above), Haunted Chocolatier certainly sounds like a much bigger project than Stardew Valley was at launch.

One area which Barone has dedicated a lot of work to, and a lot of reworks, has been in the actual chocolate making: "I’ve been revisiting the recipe book for making chocolates. As with many things in the game, I’ve iterated on this many times, each time bringing it closer to its final form. To me, it’s not a simple task, as I torture myself over every last detail. This is a UI you will be using fairly often, so it has to be perfect. You need to be able to accomplish your goal with the minimal number of clicks.

"There needs to be just the right amount of data presented to the player: not so much as to be overwhelming, but not so little as to be trivial or mundane. And the way that this data is laid out on the page is crucial. If the data is all clustered together, it will be disgusting to look at. The data needs to be grouped into compelling, intuitive and easy to read/understand groupings. It needs to look appealing and intriguing. And this is just the bare minimum, that players will likely take for granted."

I've never really thought about just how well-crafted Stardew Valley's UI is, because it's just so bloody intuitive. I always end up explaining the systems to my game-averse mates by simply saying "you just know". Stardew Valley has the right amount of information dispersed in the right ways to make playing feel instinctive. It's a brilliant template for Haunted Chocolatier.

But even still, Barone doesn't seem content with just making the whole experience frictionless: "I want to delight the player" and that means a hell of a lot more work needs to go into iterating on systems "several times before I'm satisfied with it."

There is absolutely no part of me that wants Barone to rush Haunted Chocolatier. Sure, I can't regulate my excitement everytime I read an update on it because it just sounds sick as all hell. But I'd wait many more years to play this game if it's what's best for the game and the developer. "It’s a big game, so there are many things for me to fuss over," Barone explains. "But, this is what it will take to make a game I’m satisfied with."

This year's Steam Summer Sale has kicked off and if I could convince all my fellow cozy gamers to pick up one thing it would be Fields of Mistria. It's got a nice little 20% discount during the sale, going for just $11.19, which is a dang good price for an already excellent farm sim that's about to launch its completed version.

The magical girl anime-inspired farm sim has been in Early Access for a couple years, and as soon as its 1.0 launch lands in August it's going to officially take the top spot on my favorite games like Stardew Valley list. Mistria's cast of characters is so much more charming and lively than any other farm sim I've played in the past decade. It's been two years and I still can't decide which one to marry, which I'll finally be able to do after the 1.0 version lands.

Even on a normal day, Mistria is one of the cheapest farm sims around. While most of the post-Stardew crop go for around $30, Mistria has always been $14. NPC Studio confirmed to me during its 1.0 date announcement that the price isn't going to increase after the August 5 update, which rocks. Getting it for an extra couple bucks off is even better, especially knowing it'll be in a completed state in about a month.

The Sims 4 painted the town green with its outdoorsy, fairy-themed expansion, but if you don't want to work your way up the faefolk rankings to get to the good stuff, you can use Enchanted by Nature cheats for an easy shortcut. Some fairy features don't have their own code, but here you'll find cheats for most Sims 4 careers, skills, and traits that were added with the expansion.

If you need extra guidance, check out our main list of The Sims 4 cheats for a refresher on the basics. And if you're looking for other expansion commands, we've got lists for Businesses & Hobbies cheats and Life & Death cheats.

Enchanted by Nature career cheats

Enchanted by Nature added one new career to The Sims 4 with the Naturopath. It's a handy career for curing ailments, and you can even take things a step further with branching career paths as a Lifestyle Coach or Apothe-curist.

Enchanted by Nature skill cheats

The Sims 4 received two new skills with Enchanted by Nature: Apothecary and Natural Living. Sims skilled in Apothecary will learn how to make cures for ailments, while Natural Living sims learn how to thrive outdoors.

Use the testingcheats true command before setting a skill level via cheat code.

Enchanted by Nature trait cheats

Sims get three standard traits in this expansion: Disruptive, Mystical, and Plant Lover. There are Enchanted by Nature cheats for all three, but you can always add them via Create-a-Sim by:

• Using testingcheats true in the cheat console
• Using cas.fulleditmode in the cheat console
• Clicking your sim and selecting "Edit in CAS"
• Find both in the "Social" traits section

You can also add or remove traits in the console with the codes below. Traits marked with the fairy emoji 🧚 are exclusive to the occult sim.

Personality traits

Reward traits

Enchanted by Nature death cheats

Enchanted by Nature adds two overdramatic deaths for fairy sims, Death by Emotional Starvation and Death by Emotional Overload, but there's only a cheat for one.

Fairy death cheats

How fairy sims die from Emotional Overload

Fairies can detect and absorb other sims' emotions, but consuming Overload Moodlets can lead to Death by Emotional Overload. Here's how to get the process started:

• Use Detect Emotion on other sims to find overload emotions (look for an exclamation❗)
• Use Absorb Emotion until it triggers Enraged, Hysterical, or Mortified
• Continue until triggering Death by Anger, Death by Laughter, or Death by Embarrassment

Sims have been able to die from extreme emotions for a while, but the fairy sim option is still a new way to experience all three possibilities. If you're trying to avoid death or bring someone back, refer to our main list of Sims 4 cheats.

Enchanted by Nature fairy cheats

As Enchanted by Nature's occult sims hone their magical abilities, they'll also improve their fairy ranking. There are five ranks to work (or cheat) your way through, each with their own perks and special manipulation magic.

There's no cheat to directly equip the fairy rank to your sim, but you can use an XP shortcut to accomplish the same thing.

I usually expect blank stares when I wax nostalgic about The Guild 2, a rough diamond that's part management game, part life sim, part RPG. It's the kind of game that does well in central Europe but not remotely as well elsewhere. Your classic eurojank romp: big on ambition, not so much on optimisation or clarity. This is the Stalker of life sims.

For the uninitiated, imagine Anno—or any other detailed economic sim—but instead of playing some omnipresent administrator, you're just some guy. Some guy, though, who can climb the ranks of medieval society, forging a lasting dynasty with the power to change history. Or you could just open a successful tavern or become nothing more than a moderately successful gravedigger.

So many life sims fall into the cosy game category, and while I like Animal Crossing and Pokopia, it's sometimes hard to shake the feeling that these games aren't for me—a middle-aged man who loves boring things like historical accounts of terrible monarchs or the rise of the industrial revolution. I was not yet a middle-aged man when The Guild 2 came out in 2006, but I was still a bore, and this game felt made for me.

I craved more, and the monkey paw curled. In 2017, The Guild 3 was released in early access. It largely seemed to be more of the same thing, but fancier. I was thrilled, right up until after I had to play it. Back then I ran Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Premature Evaluation column, exploring new early access games. Here's what I wrote at the time:

Disappointment has hounded me at every turn. Nothing I do feels like it matters, and the simulation that ostensibly drives the game is very, very slight. Relationships, jobs, the economy that’s meant to lie at the heart of the game—all of them are half-baked at best, and I’ve seen little evidence of any dynamism.

Things didn't improve much throughout early access. The release date kept getting pushed back, promised features never materialised, and the initial developer, GolemLabs, was given the boot, to be replaced by Purple Lamp. The Guild 3 eventually left early access in 2022. But it never actually got finished. Updates continued for a year, but not ones that could salvage it.

But now a new Guild is on the horizon! Except it's not really new. It's The Guild: Europa 1410, inspired by the first game in the series. Unfortunately, this was before it became a life sim/RPG. This is disappointing, but I still love economic sims, so I was willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

I shouldn't have bothered.

The Guild: Europa 1410 is, in its current incarnation, just a bunch of flavourless menus and repetitive notifications. It's a little bit less abstract than a lot of economic sims, in that you are technically playing a person, as well as the head of a dynasty, and they technically exist within the world. However, you exclusively control them through menus, and how they interact with the world is extremely limited. You also can't name them, any of their family members, or their business. The game does that for you. And while you do have RPG-like stats, there's no character creation.

So! I guess I'm Jan Hirschfeld, the owner of The Fat Goose, the only tavern in all of Kuttenberg—which, if you're not from the Czech Republic, you might remember from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. And for 17 days—where each day is also a season—I am tasked with diligently moving ingredients from one menu to another menu. Such is the life of an innkeep.

Occasionally I move some sliders, attempting to stop my employees from hating me by increasing their wages and treating them with more kindness. And when I start to get annoyed with how few items I can sell at once, I upgrade my bar and storage facilities. More exciting upgrades are available, like a stage for shows and a dark corner for spying on customers, but I don't have the relevant skills to construct them.

Every day is the same. My workers keep inexplicably injuring themselves, no matter how much training I provide—an event that is always accompanied by a voiceover letting me know how rubbish my employees are. And when they aren't just falling over, they make beer and gruel, which another employee sells. I can actually make more money selling beer at the market, though, so I usually send the cart out with any beer I've not already sold.

I guess folk really like a frothy beverage while they're doing their groceries.

During the 17-day demo, a few events occur that sort of break up the monotony of running an inn. At one point, I'm reminded that it would be handy to have an heir. I click on the first woman I find in the courtship menu. I flirt with her four times and a day later we are married. And a day after that we have our first child.

Now, I'm not really a fan of children. They're pretty useless. So when Satan shows up at my house and asks me to sacrifice my first-born child, with the promise that this will strengthen my bloodline, I go ahead and murder Jan Junior. Nobody seems to mind, and a day later I have another kid anyway. God, parenting is so easy.

Yes, making a deal with the Devil sounds pretty neat—but again, this is all happening in menus and text popups, and the result is just that I have slightly better kids, I guess? This is not Crusader Kings 3, where you've got playful text accompanied by striking art and characters with actual personalities. It's the bare minimum.

One afternoon, I agree to hold onto a sacred relic for a pilgrim. He says he's being hunted for it, and that I should deliver it to the church. I now have an artefact in my possession, and the game tells me I could sell it for 800 gold—I'm calling it gold just for convenience, but it's actually referred to as "local currency". I need the money, but there's a problem. Items from your personal inventory can be gifted, but not sold—which makes me wonder why it even has a price in the first place.

Since there's no objective listed, and no obvious way to deliver it to the church, I instead gift it to the local archbishop. He takes it, nothing happens. Thrilling quest!

The life of an innkeeper is clearly not for me, and I start dreaming of an exciting career in politics. Unfortunately, I'm not even considered a citizen yet. That will cost me 1,000 gold—which is actually not too much. Except I need to have 20,000 gold in my bank account first.

No politics for me, then. Instead, I just watch as increasingly bizarre laws are passed. Theft becomes legal. Then beating people up. And witchcraft. It sure sounds like someone powerful in Kuttenberg is a magical thief. Not that anything going on in the city really seems to affect me. Though it might be affecting how much I can sell my beer for. The price keeps fluctuating, and the economy is dynamic, but it's not clear how external factors affect my business.

17 days isn't much time to get to grips with the game. Even at the default speed, a day goes by in minutes. But even with this meagre offering, I duck out early. It's all just so gruelling—a joyless grind, one day to the next.

The Guild: Europa 1410 has the appearance of a deep, complex, systems-driven sim, but playing it is a shallow, repetitive experience that fails to capture any of the series' former magic. It's due to hit early access on July 16, but I'd give this one a miss, folks.

Spore is the greatest game that never was. Clear as day, I remember the wonder the pitch instilled in me as a young'un. It was to be a true simulation like The Sims, not just of daily life, but of the history of all life—life as everything from a unicellular amoeba to a spacefaring alien of my own design, all realized in exacting detail.

That was the idea, or the one overhyped fans ran with, anyway. The game we got is not that. It's more of a sci-fi minigame collection with an impressive, if cartoony, character creation engine tacked on. But as an interview-stuffed oral history from Design Room explains, that was always the idea.

"Will [Wright] said from the jump that this was going to be a lot of little minigames. Just nobody listened," gameplay designer Jenna Chalmers told Design Room. "Everybody knew him for these really rich, robust simulations, and wanted all the depth and the richness … people heard what they wanted to hear."

Admittedly, this perception of Spore as some sort of mythical super-game didn't materialize out of thin air. When The Sims designer and PC gaming mastermind Will Wright presented the game at GDC 2005, he did so in the now-infamous talk humbly titled "The Future of Content" which shows the game with a less cuddly art style and some features that never made it into the final game, like an aquatic stage between single cell gameplay and land-dwelling creaturedom.

In the talk, Wright throws around tantalizing terms like "procedural verbs" and notes that budding societies may come to favor emotional or logical styles of reasoning—while a good deal of what's shown has some sort of approximation in the final game, it's easy to fill in the blanks with depth that isn't there. As for the stuff that never made it into the final game, there's a whole fan wiki article about that.

You don't have to scroll down far to see that people are still bitter about it. "Remember what they took from us," reads a comment from Worldsawesomestguy posted just five years ago.

Talking to Design Room, Will Wright said that preview might have been a bit much. "[EA executive Don Mattrick] was really against [the talk]. He said we shouldn't show it to anybody yet. But I wanted to start getting early feedback," said Wright. "We were definitely overrepresenting what it eventually became there."

Art director Ocean Quigley recalled the talk's glowing reception: "One of the journalists who covered [the GDC talk] said, 'This is either the most amazing game design of all time, or an act of bold chicanery.' It was B. It was an act of bold chicanery." Alex Hutchinson, lead gameplay designer on Spore, said the preview "built a fantasy in people's minds that was unachievable."

You might assume that, as is so often the case in stories like these, publisher meddling led to a change in direction or cut necessary dev time short. But in the article, Wright and others recalled that EA gave Maxis both a long leash creatively and an exceptionally long development timeline of nine years (though Wright recalled he and EA exec Mattrick were at odds on certain design decisions).

"We never felt pressure," said developer Chris Hecker in the article. "EA's got lots of problems, but this was not one of them."

Quigley told Design Room that keeping that relationship strong took coming up with "compelling bits and pieces" to share frequently, "Scheherazade-style," but ultimately Wright had won a lot of good faith with his previous successes. Spore was afforded so much time, money, and confidence on the promise of what it could be.

"He had more credibility than anybody," Quigley explained. "And this is both good and bad. That gave him license to explore half-baked ideas and see if there was anything there. But it also gave him license to be self-indulgent. There wasn't any sense of crisis. And sometimes a sense of crisis can be useful for driving decisions and getting to clarity."

Despite the turmoil behind its creation, the game still found an audience and has its merits. It's still one of the most ambitious games on PC thanks to its sheer variety and impressive procedural animation, and even if the game itself is kind of "a slog" as Philippa Warr described it writing for PC Gamer, there's nothing else quite like it. That's probably why it's inspiring games like the roguelike Everything Is Crab to this day.

Life sim player tradition (or stubborness?) dictates I often attempt to build a real house—my childhood home or one I drove past last week—and yet in The Sims, I always wind up frustrated that the series' grid-based building has never been able to quite replicate actual floor plans. I've become totally enamored with building in Paralives because its gridless, real world measurements make so many designs possible, even going so far as just slapping a real life blueprint into the game and tracing it.

In the week after Paralives launched, lots of players were sharing the possibilities of importing custom images. One trick, which just requires a small mod, is uploading an image of a real blueprint and putting it onto a rug which you can use like a guide to draw all your walls in Build Mode. Incredibly it just… works?

How to use a custom rug floor plan in Paralives

1. Download Bunny's Customizable Rug in the Steam Workshop
2. Save an image on your PC of a floor plan you want to replicate (one that shows measurements, ideally)
3. Use the search function (magnifying glass) in the Build Mode menu to find Bunny's Custom Rug
4. Click the "change image" picture icon and scroll down to find the custom image "+" button
5. Import your blueprint image and resize the rug to the correct scale
6. Make sure to toggle the grid off when building walls and verify you're using the matching measurement type (metric or imperial) in your game settings
7. Trace your walls!

To get the scale of your image correct, check the measurements of a room in your blueprint and build two perpendicular walls in the lengths specified. Use the resizing arrows on the rug to line those walls up on your blueprint. With your measurements aligned, you're free to trace away.

In The Sims games, which I've always loved building in, you've got to treat the dimensions of real houses more as inspiration. Tiny rooms like hall closets or half baths are a bit too big even when you make them a single wall tile wide, and bedrooms always have to be a bit bigger than seems realistic just to fit a tiny twin bed.

It was so fun to see a blueprint just translate nearly perfectly into Paralives. The moment of truth was when I finished its small but realistic 8'x11' bedrooms and went to see if a standard size bed would fit and, miracle of miracles, it does. Even my linen closets in the hall just work.

The one bit of scale that I've struggled with in Paralives are the showers. Even those miniscule rounded corner showers measure 4sqft in game. I've been in one of those things in real life and can assure you they are not four feet wide. Since showers are one of the few structural bits in Paralives that can't be resized, because of the animations for showering I assume, it means a few of the realistically cramped bathrooms I've attempted haven't worked out. Alas, I haven't spotted a workshop mod with smaller showers yet.

Otherwise, building true to real life scale has been such a treat after spending 20+ years finagling uncanny replications of the homes in my neighborhood. I wish I could tell my ten-year-old self about this.

Today's Xbox Showcase just wrapped up, and amid all the blood, guts, and wackiness the standout trailer for me had to be the calming life sim, Vivarium.

It's not that I don't like my fair share of gore—State of Decay 3 and Metro 2039's new trailers both looked fantastic, and I can't wait to play them, but a Ghibli-styled cosy life sim? Hell yeah, that's what I get out of bed for.

This is the first time I'm seeing anything about Vivarium, but I like what I'm seeing. Set inside a "perfect" pocket world you play a protagonist in a life sim adventure progressing through a non-linear narrative which is apparently shaped by your own choices.

To do so you need to chat to the locals, who are peculiar yet charming anthropomorphic animals, plus a doll, who is also your best friend (no judgement here). You'll learn more about your neighbours and the secrets that this world holds.

It all sounds absolutely delightful. I'm something of a horror mega fan, but I always like to have a slower-paced cosy game in my back pocket for mental emergencies. It works just as well as watching cute animal videos in my experience.

But it's greatest strength, in my humble opinion has to be its hand-illustrated art style which has clearly been inspired by anime classics like those from Studio Ghibli. Watching the protagonist amble through forests and over babbling brooks feels good for my soul. My love for this style is almost certainly nostalgic, but it doesn't make it any less beautiful.

The only catch is that we don't have a release date for this lovely life sim yet. We do know it will release sometime in 2027, so let's just hope it's sooner rather than later.

Some of you may have had your fill of farming sims, but I swear it's impossible for me to grow tired of them. As you can imagine, shows like the Wholesome Direct are often a treat for me, and today did not disappoint with a new look at another life sim, Fourleaf Fields.

Well, it being a farming sim is what pulled me in, at least. The gossip mechanic is what really got my attention though—I love mess.

As part of the Summer Game Fest 2026 lineup, the Wholesome Direct put the spotlight on this tiny farming sim from Behemutt, an indie studio based in Brazil. In Fourleaf Fields, you're a polly pocket-sized farmer growing gargantuan crops, and their massive size impacts the way you care for them. You don't just pull giant carrots up; you slice them into a bunch of normal-sized veggies. And instead of using a watering can, you shoot big dew drops at your thirsty plants.

It's all pretty dang cute, but I can't get over how clever a town gossip system sounds. I love not minding my business in these games—I'm in everyone's house at all hours of the morning and night, so of course I know all of the town tea. We don't get a very long look at how exactly it all works in Fourleaf Fields, but Behemutt says you'll collect stories from around town to uncover your neighbors' secrets with its "tech tree fueled by hearsay."

Aside from peddling in the rumor mill, Fourleaf Fields has some of the other farm sim staples you've come to expect too, like maintaining your relationship with other villagers, upgrading structures around town, and caring for your livestock. Oh, and the livestock are all bugs, by the way. Your little Thumbelina farmer can't handle normal animals like chickens and cows, so they'll care for moths, butterflies, and bees.

It's also multiplayer, so between the adorable sprites and Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Kids aesthetic, I reckon I'll have no trouble cornering a few of my cozy gaming friends to play with me. As for when I can do that, it's still up in the air. Fourleaf Fields doesn't have a release date yet, but it's available to wishlist now on Steam.

Vampire life sim Moonlight Peaks is creeping near but if you can't wait for launch day to play, well, you don't have to: there's a new demo over on Steam right now. My fellow farmlife sim players have been looking forward to this dark but cute twist on the genre for a few years now and with the release date scheduled for July, now's a great time to take a quick look on a handy 'try before you buy' basis.

Moonlight Peaks has had a couple demos over the past few years since its reveal and, as announced at the Wholesome Games showcase today, it's swapped in yet another bigger, better version for you. Past demos haven't had much story content or the character creator and were focused on smaller bits of decorating or farming in short bursts.

A rep for the game told PC Gamer that this demo will be largely similar to the one I played 6 hours of last month, though you'll start with a partially upgraded farm instead of from scratch. It will "cover the same content" though, they say, so presumably that means you get to see the start of the story where the werewolves, witches, vampires, and seers in town are all at odds with each other slinging spells and insults equally liberally. You'll be able to meet most of the cast, begin farming, and learn how to cast spells and shapeshift.

Based on my experience playing, that should be the bulk of what farmlife simming fans need to decide whether you're into Moonlight Peaks enough to buy it at launch. I found all the basics plenty competent—snappy tool animations, easy menus, and cute character designs—so it's down to whether the comically toxic bantering and the directed main quest (rather than open-ended goals as in Stardew Valley) are to your taste.

Do be aware: Moonlight Peaks strongly advises that you use a gamepad to play, though I tried a bit of keyboard & mouse and didn't find it played poorly that way.

You can find the Moonlight Peaks demo on Steam, which is also where you'll be able to buy it when it launches on July 7.

Summer weddings are back in, babes. I am not waiting a day longer than necessary for my nuptials, so you'll find me at the altar on August 5 when Fields of Mistria launches its 1.0 update. The full launch will finally bring marriage and babies and a whole lot of other awaited changes to the magical girl farm sim. Who's going to be standing beside me saying "I do?" I don't know yet. I'm still deciding.

Mistria delivered its save the date in a new trailer at the Wholesome Direct showcase today, with a cheeky little peek at some of the parts that are going to have me kicking my feet giggling. There's a marriage ceremony with the blacksmith March (you're taking his breath away) and domestic life with Juniper (your baby's name is Rune). I still really enjoy the special details Mistria packs in for its characters like seasonal outfits, including wedding outfit portraits now, and an alternate sprite for Juniper holding your baby, which I assume other spouses will have too.

In its announcement post NPC Studio broke down lots of what's coming in this 1.0 update. Of course there's the 10 heart friendship events with villagers, marriage, and children, as mentioned. There are new Saturday Market vendors, one of which you can spot in the trailer named Stillwell. You'll also be able to raise your town renown level to 100 and complete the town repair quest line, which is likely related to the cutscene featuring Adeline and Eiland's mother Baroness Linnet there's a little teaser for at the end. Oh, and a giant, rideable chicken?

For a farm sim lover, my 50 hours in Mistria so far are actually pretty pitiful, but I took a break after the early access launch to wait for more character heart events and town quests. Knowing 1.0 was planned for sometime this year, I booted it back up this spring to start advancing through the friendship stories that have been added but got nowhere near finished. I've got a deadline now—time to hit eight hearts with everyone by August so I can drop into relationship endgame on the 5th.

My only question now is: with who? I lamented right at launch two years ago that I couldn't decide who to date because all of Mistria's residents are so charming and all the writing is so well done. I still haven't decided, so I've got my work cut out for me there too, oops.

Getting notice about the full release now is actually quite nice. The yearly Steam Summer Sale is coming up this month, so it's worth watching to see if Mistria goes on discount at all. Its current $14 price is extremely cheap compared to other farmlife sims, though, and NPC Studio confirmed to me this week that it will not be raising the price for the full launch.

The Fields of Mistria 1.0 update launches on August 5 and NPC Studio has said that "early access is just the beginning" so it's clearly preparing for more updates even after the main game story is complete.

The A Heroes Journey update brought Hercules and Phil to Disney Dreamlight Valley, but unlike Pocahontas, the process of unlocking both characters is slightly more complicated. You've got five new quests to make your way through before they move into your valley, alongside a shiny new realm to explore.

To begin the first quest you need to complete, you have to unlock the Hercules realm in the Dream Castle. This will cost 11,000 Dreamlight, which is a pretty big investment if you ask me, but it's worth it. As soon as you've unlocked the realm, before you've even set foot inside, you'll begin the Moonlighting as a Hero quest. Here's what you need to do from there.

How to complete the Moonlighting as a Hero quest in Disney Dreamlight Valley

Once you're inside the Hercules realm, a cutscene will play showing Phil running through the woods. Follow him by going right and walking through the trees. Speak to him in front of the plinth surrounded by thorns, and he will explain that Hercules has gone missing and he needs your help. You'll offer to investigate the thorns and fog, so once the conversation has ended, walk up to the thorns and interact with them to receive a message from Artemis which doesn't make much sense.

Head back to Phil by the pillar at the start of the realm, and talk to him. He'll decipher the message you've just found and task you with finding a Moon Headband in the realm. Fortunately, it's just in the pool of water behind where you're talking to Phil, so grab your fishing rod and cast your line into the ripples. When you've reeled it in, take it to the pedestal next to Phil.

Talk to him again, and he'll suggest getting more gifts for Artemis. You'll need to gather the following items from around the realm next:

• 3 x Greek Clay
• 3 x Greek Flowers
• 3 x Sylvan Wood

Transfer these things to the pedestal, and the Moon Headband will start to glow. Phil will then tell you to pick it up, put it on, and head to the training arena with him. So, equip the headband and follow Phil to the left, clearing all the night thorns along the way. Speak to Phil once you've reached the arena, and he'll get you to run the obstacle course before helping you. So, go through the starting line behind Phil to begin your run.

You'll need to clear night thorns and light five Moonlight Beacons on your way around the course, so keep your Moon Headband equipped. It's worth increasing your stamina bar to gold so you can glide around too, as this makes the entire course that little bit faster. As long as you get through in two minutes or less, that's all that matters though.

Once you've spoken to Phil a final time, he'll send you back to the first pedestal you found in the realm. Light this to clear the first bit of fog, and then go through the woods lighting every pedestal you come across until a cutscene plays showing Hercules in front of three swirling water fountains. Talk to Hercules, and the Moonlighting as a Hero quest will end, and the Speedrun Crash Course quest will automatically begin.

How to complete the Speedrun Crash Course quest in Disney Dreamlight Valley

Head back into the woods and speak to Hercules and Phil. After the initial excitement of them being reunited, they'll explain they need the help of Hermes, aka some Winged Boots, to get across to the temple. These need to be mined from the marble pile to the left of where you speak to Phil and Herc. You'll also need to gather five Pegasus Feathers while you find the boots, which can be found throughout the forest and are hard to miss given their golden glow.

Take all of these items back to Phil, and he'll lead you to the Hermes pedestal back at the arena. Place the items on the pedestal, and speak to Hercules. Much like what happened with the Moon Headband, you'll need to put in a bit more work to please Hermes, which means cooking up a "Legendary Meal". To create this, you'll need to find the following items scattered across the entire Hercules realm:

• 1x Aegean Delights
• 1x Legendary Goldfish
• 1x Greek Cheeses
• 1x Greek Fruits and Veggies
• 1x Giant Lettuce

When you've gathered all of these ingredients, use the cooking pot (the firepit) at the entrance of the arena to save yourself from going back to the valley. Shove all of these ingredients into the pot, and take the Legendary Meal to the Hermes pedestal. When you place it, the boots will start to glow like the Moon Headband did. Pick them up, put them on, and go to the starting line for the Hermes obstacle course directly to your left.

As you run around the obstacle course, you'll need to collect five feathers. Just like the first obstacle course you ran, it's easier to float or glide around and much faster too, so fill your stamina bar before you start to make your course more efficient. When you've finished in five minutes, you'll be sent back to the dark forest and you need to talk to Hercules again.

He'll say you're ready to cross the storm to get to the temple, so run back to the cliff edge and interact with the Hermes symbol on the floor to cross. This will end the Speedrun Crash Course quest and immediately start the Thunderstruck quest.

How to complete the Thunderstruck Quest in Disney Dreamlight Valley

Hercules and Phil waste no time in telling you that the gate to the temple is locked, of course. But luckily, there's a rotating puzzle on the floor you can solve to help. Use the levers at the bottom of the puzzle until the cloud with lightning coming out of it is facing you. You'll know when you've positioned each correctly as a mechanism will pop up in the middle, and you'll be able to grab the Stone Bracers Mould. Take this to Hercules, and he'll ask you to gather the following items:

• 6 x Hephaestus Coals
• 10 x Orichalcum Ore
• 10 x Greek Marble Fragment

You can gather most of your Orichalcum Ore and Hephaestus Coals from the island you're on, but you need to head back into the dark forest to get marble fragments from piles of broken marble pillars, and more coals from the arena.

Take all of these items to the crafting bench left of the temple's entrance and craft the Golden Bracers. Place them on the Zeus pedestal in front of the temple entrance. Before you can enter the temple though, you'll need to decide on whether you want to make Zeus laugh, cry, or become angry.

I chose to make him laugh, which sent me back to the valley to speak to Scrooge McDuck, Merlin, and Goofy to learn some good jokes. I couldn't test if the other options gave different characters to speak to, but I imagine so. Go back to the valley and chat to your selected villagers, and return to Hercules in the realm with your findings. For me, I had to tell him my favourite joke, which triggered the Golden Bracers to glow on the pedestal.

Pick up and put on the Bracers, and you'll be able to break the rocks blocking the temple entrance, alongside the chains keeping the door shut. When you break these, Hercules and Phil will run in and walk up to the mosaic at the back of the room. Follow them, and speak to Phil who explains that someone is making a mockery of the Gods by switching parts of the mosaic around. You're then challenged to find the missing pieces around the temple. After this conversation, the Thunderstruck quest will end and automatically start the A Real Godly Mess quest.

How to complete A Real Godly Quest in Disney Dreamlight Valley

You need to find six mosaic pieces around the temple, and luckily they have a very bright golden glow so you can see them from a mile off. Most of them are trapped behind big rocks, so keep your Golden Bracers on as you won't be able to break them otherwise. Once you've got all six pieces, take them to Phil and interact with the mosaic to solve the puzzle. This is just like the puzzles we solved during the Storybook Vale DLC, so you just need to drag and drop the pieces into the right places.

Once you've completed the puzzle, a cutscene showing peace being restored to the realm will play, and you'll ask Phil and Hercules to join you in the valley at the end. Hercules will immediately agree, but Phill will say he's got things to do.

Head back to the valley, place Hercules' house plans, and pay 10,000 Star Coins at the Scrooge McDuck sign. Once his house is built, the Welcome Hercules screen will play. This will unlock him in your valley, but it isn't quite the end of the A Real Godly Quest mission.

Instead, you need to cook a 5-star meal for Phil. Any will do, I ended up just using whatever ingredients I had on hand and baking Aurora's Cake. Take your meal back to the Hercules realm and give it to Phil at the temple, and he'll say that it's a tempting offer but he needs to find out who chaotically rearranged the mosaic. You'll offer to help, which means "checking the temple". Basically, just head straight to the mosaic and you'll find a spool of Dreamlight Thread on the floor which you need to pick up and take back to him.

You'll convince Phil that he'll find more clues about who messed up the mosaic if he comes to Dreamlight Valley, which is all the persuasion he needs. So, head back to the valley with him and the "Welcome Phil" cutscene will play. After a quick conversation, A Real Godly Quest will be completed, and you'll be able to start making your way through Hercules' and Phil's friendship quests.

The last time I was a regular Sims player was, well, in the era of The Sims. The first one. Since those ancient days, it's my understanding that the series—or at least The Sims 4—has turned into a platform for some of the most exotic and enthusiastic sexual experimentation mankind has yet produced, largely thanks to its mega-popular Wicked Whims mod.

So I should not be surprised, but maybe lightly scandalised, that the Paralives community has quickly made a whole medley of NSFW mods for the game, then promptly made those mods the most popular among players (spotted by TheGamer).

After releasing in early access just a week ago, Paralives' most-popular mods over on Nexus are already, well, just what you expect. The big swinging champ at the moment—the most popular mod of all—is called (I cannot advise strongly enough against clicking this in public or at work) "Parapenis", if you require some sign of where things are at.

Parapenis, which I have now viewed in my work browser, boldly declares that "Freeballing is for everyone" and gives your masculine Parapeople… exactly what you'd expect. Exactly what you'd expect comes in three sizes, ranging from large to small. For a wishful definition of small. Doesn't seem that small to… a friend of mine. Who I asked about it. Ahem.

That is only one of a suite of freethinking modifications. There's also multiple de-censor mods, genital and buttock sliders (that was the name of my band in university), adult toys, more pubic hair mods than you'd anticipate, and, of course, the Parapenis companion mod: Parapussy.

Some days I write about multi-billion dollar corporate acquisitions. Other days it's Parapussy.

Of the top 10 most popular Paralives mods at the time of writing, seven are fully NSFW, and two of the remaining three are underwear mods, which might be NSFW if your W is especially square.

The thing is, on a more serious note, the proliferation and accessibility of mods like these are probably downright essential if Paralives ever hopes to carve out space for itself in the Sims-dominated life sim world. It seems fairly obvious to me that letting your freak flag fly is a key part of the appeal for these games' audience. If the Parapenises are already there just a week after launch? That suggests to me Paralives is in a pretty healthy place, audience-wise.

Once upon a time I was a creator of Sims. A moulder of virtual people. Pushing and pulling at sliders to contort pixels like putty, perfectly preening them with makeup and hairstyles and outfits that would compliment the personalities I had invented for them. As I grew older, something shifted. An internalised domestication that suddenly had me gravitating towards building and decorating houses.

First came boxes the size of mansions littered with grand pianos and just about anything willing to clog up some of the sparse, undecorated tiles.Then experimentation—smaller builds, cosier, more cluttered. Something I myself would yearn to live in. While my real-life skillset will never allow me a career as an architect or an interior designer, I've long fulfilled that fantasy in the confines of the humble life sim.

And hoo boy, no other life sim has been letting me live out those dreams quite like Paralives. For an early access game crafted by a relatively small team, I have been in awe of what has been achieved despite the numerous bugs and game-breaking glitches. It's a life sim builder's dream—I can absolutely tell that Alex Massé and the wider Paralives Studio are simmers-turned-developers, because Paralives' build mode is packed with stuff that only someone on my absolute sickest of sicko levels could conjure up.

Ow, she's a brick... house

It's a mish-mash of all the stuff I've sincerely loved across two decades as a Sims player, plus everything that I've forever found myself wishing "man, if only this little feature was present". Paralives is packed with stuff I've scoured the internet to mod in for quality-of-life, or to help fulfill whatever vision I was doing my best to lay down a floorplan for.

Always hated how making a house just one wall tile longer was too much, but forgoing it was not enough? Paralives lets you build walls as long or short as you want, unbound by the whims of the grid. Want to create the most diabolically messed up "your did it" star as a liveable abode? You can literally do that. Someone did! You can still adhere to the grid life if you want (which admittedly, I have) but just having that option for freedom is something so many of us have dearly wished for.

Just like the characters I spent so much of my childhood contorting like playdough, Paralives extends that feeling of something so malleable to almost every single decorative and functional item of furniture currently present. I can stretch windows to take up more of my walls, yoink curtains down when their drop is a smidge too short, and turn my two-seater couch into a three or even four-seater if I'm going for a real big family.

It's one of those things I never knew I needed until I found myself deleting items and cycling through furnishings, telling myself "Ahh, this doesn't quite fit the space" until the realisation hit me that I could simply make it fit. This seemingly small power allows me so much depth in the way I choose to build, and it's a shocking realisation just how limiting not having this freedom has been prior to now.

Brick by brick

And I am so happy to see glimpses of The Sims 3—arguably EA's most creatively freeing entry in the series—with its colour wheel and texture options for infinite swatch possibilities. I popped a full-length wavy wall mirror into a Parafolk's bedroom only to realise I wasn't that keen on the vibrant swatches offered by default.

Popping in to create my own and I was able to transform the mirror from a bright acrylic frame to a more sophisticated brass metal one. While Paralives may be nowhere near fellow life sims Inzoi and The Sims in terms of raw number of items available to build and decorate with, it's felt like I've been able to do so much with so little just because of how diverse a single object can become.

It's given me that same sense of excitement and awe I felt all the way back in The Sims 2 for the first time—that sense of wonder at the perceived vastness of creativity that awaits. Even just being able to scale a little piece of clutter up or down to better fit a small counter, or having unfettered access to just about every surface for cluttering up has given me a sense of giddiness I haven't felt from the genre in a helluva long time.

It's one of those feelings that's only going to grow as Paralives continues to build and evolve—both from Paralives Studio itself and from the wealth of community members who are beginning to trickle in their wonderful custom content creations for us to devour.

For years we life sim players have stood 'round the summoning circle, chanting the ritual words: "The Sims really deserves some legitimate competition, you know?" Despite our efforts to manifest, likely competitors just kept getting delayed or outright canned. Now that Paralives has launched—and is, in fact, good—I think maybe the variety life simmers have been yearning for is finally here.

Late last year I lamented that the life sim revolution never came because what was supposed to be a boom year for the genre became a litany of insults upon injuries. The delays (Paralives) and cancellations (Life By You) were one thing, but then The Sims series just kept punching itself in the face between the EA buyout and consistent Project Rene leaks. The beginning of this year didn't get much better with the final confirmation that yeah, Project Rene is just a mobile game now. Oh, and Jake Solomon's life sim got cancelled too.

Inzoi launched last year, it's true, but unfortunately I just didn't click with it at all. A lot of life simmers did, but regardless of whether it scratched your itch or not, one legitimate competitor to The Sims does not a healthy genre make. Even just a month ago I'd started looking ahead to the early access launch for Paralives with mounting dread. Much as it had an art style that felt more my vibe, I was fully prepared to be let down again.

Well, Paralives has launched. And… I'm loving it? I think Paralives is totally worth it for life sim fans in general, but as a Build Mode girl I am ecstatic. Customizing furniture swatches and dynamically resizing everything from couches to curtains is everything I'd been hoping for. Even the Live Mode, bare as it is right now, has brought back the strategy roots in the genre that I'd been missing. Heck, I lost an entire night just messing with the animation sliders in photo mode.

Folks, I think life sims are flourishing.

Am I changing my tune because now there's something for me on the table? Yes, I absolutely am—but that's the point! There really is something for every flavor of life sim fan to get excited about now. The Sims 4 is an old reliable with a free base game that, despite the expensive DLC menu, has benefited from years of free updates. Inzoi's hyper-glossy realism has been perfect for the simmers who like cooking up drama for their digital dollies. And Paralives is a heaven for builders like me who yearn for the return of The Sims 3's Create-A-Style tool.

After being Stockholmed by The Sims for—well essentially forever—having two strong alternatives is incredible. Three's a structurally sound number. Enough to prop up a genre by? It may just be.

All three life sims have earned their defenders and detractors. My complaints about Inzoi don't make it any less loved by quite a lot of players. Anyone (correctly) saying that Paralives' Live Mode needs a lot of work can't stop me from having a whole lot of fun with it. If you're determined to dig on The Sims for its backlog of bugs, you too are correct, and yet so many people who've been with the series for decades are still clocking thousands of hours. If none of the above are working for you, please let me tell you about Tiny Life too.

At last, The Sims series has the competition that we deserve.

There's a reason that we're in 2026 and still see so few life sims on the market: they're incredibly freakin' hard to make. That's not just me spouting my opinion, it's something that the developers behind games like The Sims, Inzoi, and prematurely cancelled Life by You have said in the past. There are so many moving parts in the ways life sim characters interact with the world, their peers, and themselves. Making something functional, believable, and fun? It is not an easy task.

It's a sentiment that has now also been echoed by Alex Massé—creator of the newest life sim to hit our Steam libraries, Paralives. During a recent Q&A, the head of Paralives Studio delved a little bit into just how much goes on behind the scenes in an interaction as simple as instructing a Parafolk currently holding a baby to go to sleep.

"The game first needs to wait for the character to finish their current interaction, gracefully drop the baby they were holding, play an animation to turn around by 180 degrees, walk to the bed by avoiding obstacles on the way and not cutting corners too sharply and be sure to play the proper animation while climbing the stairs because taller Paras need a slightly different animation while doing so," Massé starts off.

He then goes on to list every other little nuance the game has to factor in, like:

• Ensuring Parafolks are in their sleep clothes
• Checking if one side of the bed is occupied or against a wall
• Randomly cycling through sleeping animations
• Replenishing the sleep meter, dependent on age and personality
• Automatically canceling the interaction when the sleep meter is full
• Having the Parafolk get out of bed, animations dependent on age and height
• Playing idle animations reflecting a Parafolk's current needs or personalities

Massé clarifies that "this is all just for the 'Sleep' interaction," and doesn't even factor in what the game is trying to do when you're instructing multiple Parafolks to do this at the same time, or when you attempt to cancel the interaction halfway through. It's almost 20 different things being considered in the background for one task!

That complexity behind crafting a fully fleshed-out live mode has reared its ugly head in terms of a boatload of bugs in Paralives. When asked how many reports the team had received since the game's launch at the beginning of this week, Massé says the team has "received over 100,000 bug reports so far." I do not envy whoever is having to sift through those in the slightest.

It's certainly worth remembering that Paralives Studio is made up of a team of just 15 developers, which feels ridiculously small considering it's managed to carve out a space in a genre known for having about a gazillion different moving parts at any one moment. It's the reason I'm still so surprised by how put-together Paralives is even with having to wade through its buggy early access state.

While Massé says it's "very possible we recruit a few more people to help soon," he says that ultimately "we like working as a small team so we don't plan to grow the team too much." Despite a small team and a mountain of bugs to squash, Massé says the team will continue to chip away at improving live mode over the coming months. For now, at least I can hang out in the game's genuinely fantastic build mode.

As someone who is slowly burning out on The Sims 4 and bounced off the uncanny sameness of Inzoi's world, Paralives was my last hope for a new direction in life sims. No pressure to the small indie team at Paralives Studio, but I was feeling very "this hits, or I'm over the genre for a while," so thank goodness Paralives feels like it's got the makings of a winner.

It's got the early access jank, sure, but even those day-one bones outline something I'm finally excited for—a life sim that isn't a bland attempt at recreating the success of The Sims. Instead, it's real admiration for the original Maxis formula, which includes a few features outlined in the Paralives roadmap that have me hopeful the team will go back to expand on more features its cousin abandoned years ago.

My mom would tell me not to count my chickens before they've hatched, but the Paralives roadmap reads like my life sim dreams come true. The only problem is that it's a little hard to follow between a sparse infographic and a detailed Notion outline, but that's easy enough for me to solve and present here.

When is the first major Paralives update?

The Paralives roadmap notes its first major update is planned for Q4 2026, so that's a tentative October to December window. We don't know what the update entails just yet, but we do know it's my favorite price: Free.

Until then, the rest of the roadmap outlines a period of hotfixes, bug smashing, and existing feature improvements from June to September 2026. Then there's a broader "within ~2 years of early access" note for more major updates, including a system for weather and seasons, pools, pets, and more.

The Paralives roadmap

What's coming to Paralives while it's in early access

The Paralives team estimates they've got about two years of early access development ahead of them before it's 1.0 ready, but some of the updates include features that The Sims 4 would package as a new expansion. There are also things the Maxis series abandoned in its older games, like cars, working garages, and houseboats.

I've highlighted and consolidated the most interesting details found in the Paralives Notion roadmap, but as the team explains in their Patreon blog, it's by no means exhaustive, and plans may change as development continues.

Paralives early access features

What can you do in Paralives early access now?

No matter how much fun I'm having with Paralives, I'm not going to stand here and act like it isn't buggy as all getout in Live Mode. There are glitched menus, failing interactions, and wacky texture glitches, which are all the sorts of things life sim players pretty much knew to expect from an early access game. What we didn't know was that we'd be hounded by some naked lad sneaking into our save files. Their name is Charlie, and like some ghost of life sims future they've now visited my save game too.

I first saw Charlie in a Reddit post on Paralives' launch day, which I promptly sent to my fellow PCG life simmer Mollie Taylor to have a little chuckle over. Today, naively believing I couldn't also become a Charlie target, I was messing around with Paralives cheats working on our guide to trying for a baby in Paralives. After adopting a baby, I quit to the main menu without saving so as not to keep the messy testing I was doing in my save file.

When I loaded back in… Charlie was there. They were in my family instead of that unwanted infant. Charlie is bald, butt naked, and staring directly into your soul. I found them loitering out on the industrial side of town browsing their cellphone, which it seems like they shouldn't have—obvious jokes about where they must keep it aside.

I needed to know more. I used the "editcharacter" cheat to open Charlie up in the paramaker to find that their legal name is Charlie Default, they are nonbinary, and they have no personality stats. Not suspicious at all.

I went looking for other players visited by Charlie where I found others also referencing misplaced kids. One describes accidentally abandoning a child after asking her single father to move in with his partner, having her claimed by child services, and finding Charlie ominously in her place after rolling back the save file. Another says their game crashed after adopting a baby who was also bodysnatched by digital faeries and replaced with Charlie. You can try to reload your save but Charlie will be there waiting.

Charlie's true purpose is probably just as a debug character that misplaced paras will fall back to in the event of simulation errors, if the other Charlie sightings are anything to go by.

In the meantime, I feel like maybe Charlie deserves to stay in the family. Perhaps I'll make some outfits for them and bestow some character traits on them as well.

There's two things I know life simmers love: having affairs and having babies—sometimes all at once, you sloppy drama hounds. Having a baby in Paralives isn't quite as straightforward as you'll be used to coming from The Sims. You've got to spot the right "together cards" in your conversation and then use Paralives' special method for doing actions together to actually try for that baby. Here's the quick guide to having a baby in Paralives followed by a walkthrough on each necessary step.

How to have a baby in Paralives

• Earn the "lovers" relationship label with another para
• Flirt together and discuss the state of your relationship by asking to have children together
• Select both paras in a group together and interact with a bed to "try for baby"
• Alternatively, adopt a baby at the hospital

Earn the lovers relationship label

This part isn't hard for any seasoned life simmer. Use every opportunity you get while talking with your paramour to choose flirty together cards until your storyteller offers you a card to gain a point in the "lover" relationship label. After becoming lovers, you'll be able to choose wants and together cards related to having children together.

This part may not actually be strictly necessary, but it'll be a lot harder to draw the "try for baby" flirt card or succeed in convincing someone to have a baby together in a premeditated fashion without being lovers first, according to the success percent breakdowns for that card.

Ask to have children together

After getting flirty with your lover, you've got a couple options to open up the procreation conversation:

• Use the "ask if they want to try for a baby NOW" flirty together card
• Toggle through the "discuss state of relationship options" and choose the flirty "ask if they want to have children together in the future" card

"Try for a baby NOW" will send your paras immediately off to do the horizontal tango in bed together. This is a spur of the moment thing though, and doesn't let you just try for a baby again whenever you like. For a little more consistency, instead of a wild fling, talk about your relationship first.

When you get the "discuss state of relationship" stack of together cards, which is a neutral white card on top, cycle through the options with the arrow button to find the pink flirty card that says "ask if they want to have children together in the future" (a classically flirty topic, I know). After selecting it, you'll be notified that your two paras can now try for a baby "at any time, when they're ready!" Except, wait, how?

❗ You can also use Paralives cheats "getpregnant" and "pregnantstatus" to make a para conceive and check the time until birth.

How to try for a baby

After discussing the emotional and financial demands of parenthood like a responsible paradult, how do you actually try for that baby? It relies on Paralives' system for doing actions together. You'll need to select both paras by clicking and dragging a box around them (if not in the same household) or holding Shift and clicking both portraits (if they are in a household together). With both paras selected, click on a bed and select "try for baby".

After trying for a baby, you can send your conceiving para to any toilet with the interaction "take pregnancy test" which will let you know whether to expect a baby.

❗ To try for a baby successfully, you'll need to have a Para who can get others pregnant paired with one who can get pregnant. You can use Paralives cheats to "editcharacter" and check the detailed gender info for your paras if you aren't sure. Same sex paras can actually "try for baby" in a bed together but presumably won't ever succeed. Look below for details on adoption.

❗Open your settings menu and look at your "storyteller" to double check the likelihood of becoming pregnant and the duration of trimesters and labor to find out how long your para will be pregnant based on the options you've set.

How to adopt

Instead of getting pregnant, or for paras who cannot get pregnant together, you'll still want to have the conversation about having kids together in the "discuss state of relationship" card stack, as above. You'll gain the label "prospective co-parent" in your relationship menu.

After that, either prospective parent can interact with the hospital or the pharmacy in town and select "adopt baby". Your para will be busy for two hours and then exit with a new baby to name.

Life simmers have been chronically bored for years—so much so that asking "how do you keep Sims 4 interesting for yourself?" is a bit of a cliché. My theory is that life sims need to be harder, or at the very least get back in touch with the strategy roots that made The Sims so enticing way back when. I truly thought I was just yelling at clouds, and yet Paralives has just launched into early access and it is, in fact, doing the exact thing I was begging life sims for.

Before you jump into Live Mode for the first time, Paralives asks you to choose from three default "storytellers," personified figures who hand out nightly gameplay effects, personality upgrades, and pull the strings of the game's difficulty from a laid back experience to a more challenging one.

Unlike The Sims 4, which avoids stepping on my toes in Live Mode so much that it often feels like nothing interesting happens, Paralives just starts with the option for tune-able difficulty. What a concept!

By default, Stella the dog gives new households slightly higher starting funds and ensures that they automatically eat and use the restroom while away at work. The more challenging storyteller Ricardo does not recognize workplace bathroom breaks and also makes the rate of conceiving twins lower. You can also create a custom storyteller to adjust values like the ratio of in-game time to real time, the length of life stages, and the threshold for getting "strikes" at work for poor performance.

They don't play drastically differently right now, but Paralives notes in-game that it plans to expand the storyteller customization options even further, which I'm quite psyched about. I'm hoping to see controls for the rate of broken appliances (currently quite high, honestly) and Paras falling ill, or even controls for things like speed of skill gain and relationship gains.

Diet strategy

Even without using its custom difficulty settings, Paralives has folded the kind of lite strategy gameplay I've been craving into its core experience. Starting with the basics—two Paras talking to one another—I've got to strategically consider how to progress a conversation. Instead of spamming any interaction I want from a radial menu, I have to wait for my Para's conversation meter to fill and then choose one of three interaction cards that are given based on their current mood and the state of their relationship.

While chatting up a new acquaintance, I might have a flirty option to "discuss the best food for a date night" because of my Para's Food talent, but it's only got a 22% chance to succeed, which the menu tells me is a result of five different factors including my Para's traits, our compatible vibes, and the fact that we barely know each other. I look at the time and realize it's already 10 pm and my Para needs to get to bed for work in the morning. So do I risk it for the flirt, possibly taking a mood hit for failing, or play it safe and friendly and try again next time?

Personality trait effects, percentages, and simulated events are all over Live Mode in Paralives. My child Para caught a digestive bug at school (classic) which greyed out his hunger meter and cut his sleep and bladder meters in half, meaning he was constantly low on both, waking up in the middle of the night to potty and unable to fall asleep again. His dad's "good at taking care of others" social perk gave him the option to make some chicken noodle soup, but then he caught the bug (also classic) and they were both laid up at home.

As I've made more households, I keep being delighted with the way that some personality traits and perks nudge the way I need to play each Para. My "energectic" Para has a bonus energy meter that means he's tired less often and can take power naps but when that surplus energy meter is full he feels stressed and is more likely to draw negative interaction cards during conversations. My "good at being alone" Para has a "me time" meter that depletes while with others and refills while alone, making her tense when it's low—relatable. Each of these traits and perks also have the ability to morph with new effects and perks as my Paras complete daily "wants" and level up their personalities.

My Paras moods aren't just for flavor, either. If they're upset enough they'll be locked out of gaining experience for any skill actions they do. Being stressed or flirty or happy will influence the types of interactions they draw as possibilities in each conversation. I've found myself actually considering my Paras' moods as a strategic part of playing.

That's the big win in Paralives. All these little bits of strategy with visible effects and percentages that I can see reflected on my Para's face are genuinely influencing the way I play. It's making sure I always have a challenge to overcome and a motivation to play so I'm never stuck staring at my screen wondering what to do next.

Paralives has just hit early access, and while it is very much a work-in-progress right now, it's also the most fun I've had playing a life sim in a hot sec. As a lifelong Sims player, I've been noticing loads of neat stuff in Paralives that you just won't find in The Sims 4, even after all these years. Not that the two games have to be exactly the same or completely different, but the Venn diagram between Simmers and Paralivers is basically a circle, y'know?

It's been really cool seeing unique little things in Paralives, stuff that I either wish was in The Sims (without needing mods!) or stuff I never knew I wanted out of a life sim until now. I've gathered up the coolest bits about Paralives you won't find in The Sims (or at least, in The Sims 4) for those of you who are interested in what stands out about this new cosy newcomer in the genre.

Neat stuff in Paralives that isn't in The Sims 4