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The Grave Seasons demo I'm playing at Summer Game Fest begins like the first bite of ice cream. It's innocent, but I prepare myself for the moment it becomes obvious why the horror masters at M3GAN studio Blumhouse are publishing a cozy farming sim.
I decide to get in the mood for tragedy by being as much of a bitch as possible. A supernaturally buff townsperson, Hari, saunters by to welcome me to Ashenridge, a seemingly quaint country town which the previous owner of my little cottage happened to flee without warning. But Grave Seasons' protagonist, like myself as a horror obsessive, seems attracted to fear.
Perfect Garbage co-founder and Grave Seasons narrative director Emmett Nahil tells me Grave Seasons' particular brand of fright is influenced by folk horror, '50s Hollywood Hammer horror, and – I could cry when I hear this – my favorite werewolf movie, Ginger Snaps (2000).
So, I vow to ignore the splotch of what looks like dried blood on the edge of the chimney, and when Hari questions why I, obviously not the tomato-planting type, decided to move in, I tell him, "None of your business."
What's my business, for now, is plucking some of the fresh strawberries and bamboo shoots out of my already fertile garden plot and chucking in some carrot seeds instead. I go through the motions, pulling out my watering can, testing out the pickaxe, and finding a strange signet ring in a pile of trash, in a moment that reminds me of horror fishing game Dredge. I walk around sand pathways, tree roots, and make myself a vegetarian snack – passing time until the moon is high, and I can meet my new friend Pilar in the woods to pick night-blooming herbs.
Nahil prefers Grave Seasons' occult crafting, too, which yields things like "prevention items, which may help you prevent attacks by the killer," he says. "Any of those [occult] crafting moments are always really fun, because there's a lot of tension behind them." Since Grave Seasons features multiple killers and monsters, I predict there aren't any amulets that can guarantee 100% safety.
Plus, "one of the really fun things about the game," adds Perfect Garbage lead programmer Nikky Armstrong, "is, when it launches, everybody's getting a different experience, because every time you start a new game, it's randomly selected who the killer is going to be."
In these words, I sense unrelenting danger. This makes me more eager, and, without me asking explicitly, Nahil informs me that "you may potentially be able to romance the killer." As I'm still nursing my celebrity crush on Katharine Isabelle, Ginger Snaps' mean girl werewolf, I'm comforted by this.
So I keep waiting for the sun to set. Eventually, blue daylight gives way to Halloween orange, and then dusk finally falls and turns Ashenridge black. Then, I notice the world has started sounding different – angrier.
"As you play through the full game," Nahil says, "[the sound design] will change as the town itself changes, which is really cool."
"Not only through the seasons," he explains, "but through specific romance arcs, or through specific instances of how many kills have occurred. How dark is the town by the end of the game – those things will change the sound."
I don't let it deter me. Just as I did in the comparable pixel art, horror life sim Little Goody Two Shoes, I allow myself to be led into the witch's woods. When I get there, I see Pilar fending off absolute darkness with her soft-glowing lantern, and then I see her succumbing to a werewolf who's snuck up behind her. It takes her in its mouth and crushes her body like flower petals.
Her blood and parts are strewn all over the grass, and my heart twitches, but I'd be lying if I said this wasn't the kind of moment I live for in games. Sometimes I think art doesn't feel visceral to me unless I can see actual viscera. These moments of fragility force me to confront my own, and it's meditative. That's why the horror genre is one of the only things I can rely on to make me feel better about the actual threatening, unkind world, every time.
On that note, Nahil says fans who are considering playing Grave Seasons should know that "if you are a cozy gamer, and if you love farming sims, we are really hoping that you'll let us take you someplace a little bit different," says Nahil. "If you are a horror gamer, let us take you someplace maybe a little bit cozier."
"Our goal is to match genres and bridge that gap between those players," he continues, "because we really believe, as a studio, that they're maybe not so different after all."
Grave Seasons is now available to wishlist on Steam, and it'll also eventually arrive on all major consoles, including Switch 2.
