Welcome To Elderfield Key Art
Image: Chris Cote & Kwalee

Trends in indie games inevitably flow into each other, and one place where the streams have undeniably crossed is horror farming. With recent titles like Besmirch plus upcoming titles like We Harvest Shadows and Grave Seasons, this is a fertile little field. The latest addition to this bumper crop is today's Welcome to Elderfield, coming to us from mostly-solo developer Chris Cote, and launching today after a successful Next Fest demo run.

While many of its peers are focused on adding a little subversive creepiness to the basic farming game loop, Welcome to Elderfield splits its attention between basic farm life stuff and a more traditionally story-driven RPG with loot, levels, and JRPG-style turn-based combat. The town itself is decrepit and half-nonsensical, filled with cults, monsters, and a mixture of friendly and unfriendly local cryptids. And while a giant glowing-eyed skeleton might be an ideal neighbor, there's every chance that something is going to try to murder you, switching the game from classic 16-bit style overhead JRPG graphics to some really gnarly Junji Ito-inspired combat sprites, rich with scribbly pencil shading lines and a sickly washed-out palette.

The tone of Welcome to Elderfield feels heavily inspired by the similarly-titled (and similarly logo'ed) podcast Welcome to Night Vale. A horror-comedy epic presented as a local community radio show from a town where the secret police are the least secretive thing around, a five-headed dragon is running for local government, and NOBODY talks about the Dog Park, which does not exist and should be avoided at all costs.

All this strangeness is just part of daily life for the people of Elderfield, too, where your neighbor might be undead, but the weird thing is them leaving out festival lawn decorations out of season. It's another clear instance of homage, but I'm not complaining. I've always wanted a Night Vale game, and this might be the closest thing we've had yet.

So far, the game has seen a glowing slate of reviews from both professional critics and the Steam crowd, albeit with a few technical issues pointed out. Some players have encountered gnarly bugs (like the game helpfully giving you near-infinite items), and others have called for some additional quality-of-life features to help you find quest-giving NPCs or otherwise speed up wandering around the town. But overall? This one looks like it's hitting the mark, even if it's an obvious homage to a half-dozen different other games and pieces of media.

Welcome to Elderfield is out now for £16/$20, with a 10% launch discount running until September 24th and further discounts if you've got either Bloomtown, Graveyard Keeper, or my personal 2025 Game of the Year, Look Outside. Really, you should play Look Outside.