Cozy game nerds can keep their Stardew Valley, I'll take this "nightmarish life sim RPG" with Zelda dungeons from Celeste's pixel artist where you're "the immortal herald of a dead god"

I love cozy games. As someone pretty much chronically stressed out, they're great blood pressure regulators and I love the gentle pace of just wandering around, meeting weirdos, fishing, and cooking food. That said, as if I have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, there's a depraved, cobwebbed part of my brain that's constantly aching for the macabre, and newly announced horror life sim RPG hybrid Neverway seems like it could scratch two very different itches at once.

The debut game from Coldblood Inc., a studio co-founded by Celeste pixel artist Pedro Medeiros, Neverway really does appear on the surface to be a Stardew Valley-like with RPG elements and a thick coat of eldritch horror paint. Nothing appears terribly original, but I don't care, that's a genre smoothie I'll gladly slurp down any day of the week.

"After quitting her dead-end job, Fiona starts over on a farm and becomes the immortal herald of a dead god," reads the game's Steam summary, tickling every single one of my fancies. "Make friends, fight through horrors and pay your debt in this nightmarish life sim RPG."

Neverway - World Premiere Trailer | The Triple-i Initiative - YouTube

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Judging from Neverway's reveal trailer, it seems you pretty much get what it says on the tin. After waking up from a nightmare, you arrive by boat to your new spooky farmstead and start chopping down trees, tending to crops, and fishing. Tired after a long day, you hit the hay and wake up in an even spookier farm that's crawling with cosmic horrors looking for blood.

We also see plenty of footage of what look to me like Zelda: A Link to the Past-inspired dungeons with, you guessed it, a horror twist. It sounds like the game divides these portions of the game into different times of day, with the player having the ability to advance from morning, afternoon, and evening as they please.

When it's not all dark and spooky, you can just hang around, do some farming, make food, and decorate your place. Or, if you're smart, you'll craft items to prepare for the night and make friends with or date the colorful cast of moody characters inhabiting your farmstead, as doing so unlocks combat abilities through friendship bonds.

With a proven indie dev at the helm and an original soundtrack by Hyper Light Drifter composer Disasterpeace, not to mention elements from many of my favorite games, I'm unabashedly hyped for Neverway, which is bittersweet because there's no release date or window to speak of. Regardless, this is one I'll be optimistically keeping on my radar.

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