[Peaceful Life Mode] A child descends from the mountains. The scene of a rural village, centered around a child who looks no older than an elementary school student—their gender ambiguous—is bathed in warm light. In the well-tended fields, onions and carrots, grown with care, sprout from the earth, and the child chases a chicken that has hopped over the fence. Soon, the child enters the ruined, ancient shrine, and the logo appears amidst the chirping of birds: 'Village in the Shade'.
The same beginning, but a story that unfolds in entirely different atmospheres. The developers of 'Yomawari' crafted 'Village in the Shade' in these two distinct branches. The base is a life simulation game centered on farm management, maintaining a bright atmosphere. The other branch adds a layer of horror, weaving in secrets and various types of dread.
These two branches form the game's dual pillars. If either side lacked appeal, the result would be a half-baked experience. However, Nippon Ichi Software's new attempt shows a level of craftsmanship that avoids such anxiety. These two branches are not merely placed side-by-side; the keys to expanding the farm happen to be located beyond the very rules one is meant to follow.
The game design, direction, and Character design from the 'Yomawari' team previously evoked a cruel and gloomy atmosphere. Yet, even in those horror games, the uniquely charming Character design and background art served to lighten the mood. This strength is highlighted even more when shifted to the life simulation genre.
For the core life simulation part of 'Village in the Shade', the developers chose a straightforward approach without unnecessary gimmicks. This means they implemented detailed systems while staying true to the genre's established grammar. Since many successful games already exist in this genre, excessive variation would risk breaking the framework of managing a farm in a quiet rural village.
Consequently, the life simulation portion of the game is filled with honest, practical content. You are equipped with tools to maintain fields and paddies, from hoes and sickles to shovels and watering cans. You buy seeds or seedlings, plant them, water them, and pull weeds. For anyone who has played this genre before, no further explanation is needed.
However, the actual sensation of performing these familiar actions is not entirely smooth. While convenience features for fine-tuning direction or parallel movement exist, aiming precisely at a single plot of land is often more difficult than expected. It is manageable early on, but the stiffness accumulates as the farm expands.
Crops have a concept of succession; you can choose to grow crops like cucumbers, which take a long time to grow but can be harvested multiple times in a season, or crops like ginger, which you plant and harvest once for a quick initial profit. There is also a concept of rice paddies. Crops in paddies do not require watering, but weeds must be removed consistently to prevent growth from stalling.
Furthermore, raising livestock like chickens, ducks, cows, and goats contributes to farm development in different ways. Cows produce milk and chickens lay eggs, while ducks, if left outside the coop, roam the paddies to remove weeds that hinder grain growth. Eggs and milk can be used as cooking ingredients or processed into goods like mayonnaise.
Processing works similarly. The results from pickling jars, stoves, and furnaces flow back into cooking, tool crafting, and upgrading farm equipment.
Thus, the life simulation is less a list of content and more of a circuit. Crops harvested from the fields become food, food becomes stamina, and stamina becomes the time you can spend in the mountains and mines. Minerals extracted there go through the furnace to become better tools, which then return to the fields. It is a structure where farming, animal husbandry, mining, and logging are tied together by money and materials, each fueling the next stage.
This circuit is faithfully implemented 'within' the traditional life simulation genre, which began with 'Story of Seasons' and continues today. In other words, it does not venture outside the genre. Therefore, rather than feeling excessive, it feels familiar.
This familiarity blends naturally into the game's setting of a quaint rural village. Within the framework of farm management in a quiet village, the unique graphic style seen in 'Yomawari' creates something fresh. The direction, which previously only dealt with darkness, shines even more beautifully when it meets the light. The warm, subtle lighting, the orange fields at sunset, and leaves blowing across the screen expand the world's expression from merely 'cute' to 'warm.' The sound follows the same direction; the music enveloping the fields is consistently calm, keeping your hands busy until the sun goes down.
This creates a life simulation that is ordinary, yet not entirely the same. You can experience sufficient game density from this life simulation part alone. Although various processed goods and seedlings for the same crop are counted separately, with over 2400 items in the encyclopedia, your playtime is well-guaranteed.
In fact, due to the nature of the genre, I became so engrossed in the life simulation part during the mid-game that I almost forgot to push forward with the main story.
A child named You, younger than the protagonist, visits the farm. They want to see the chickens—at night, of all times. The next morning, the chickens are gone. Only a large amount of blood and scattered feathers remain.
What 'Village in the Shade' layers on top of this solid life simulation is the sense of folk horror, where bizarre customs persist. Like Hinamizawa in 'Higurashi When They Cry' or Kuge Village in 'Gannibal', it captures the emotion of discovering something everyone knows but you were never meant to know. It is not just horror that looks scary, but a dread that plays on the curve between familiarity and disgust. The quaintness of a quiet rural village becomes the very ingredient for this horror.
The protagonist, a child who lost their memory, enters Kagatsu Village. Resembling a child who went missing in the village, the protagonist is placed in a farm at the edge of the village under the guidance of Rin, the young village head. In exchange for living there, they must not break the rules.
The rules include: do not go out after 11 PM, cooperate for the sake of the village, do not approach strangers, do not expose others' secrets, do not leave the village, do not answer voices calling from the mountains, do not look for lost items, and understand that wishes require a corresponding price.
These rules are not just for show. The curfew after 11 PM cuts the daily playtime, and the prohibition on looking for lost items keeps a character trapped in the village. The voices calling from the mountains drive the entire narrative. The other clauses are generally tied to specific people or events, making the list of rules read like a list of the villagers themselves.
In reality, the people are bound by these rules. Even though a young child who lost their memory came down from the mountains alone and lives by themselves on a remote farm, the villagers do not readily answer when the child approaches them, labeling them an outsider. A city official who visited the village to persuade them to install solar panels was cursed to be unable to leave the village after losing their wallet. Unable to find the lost item—which would be the key to solving the problem—they are forced to find temporary lodging in the village.
The protagonist hears voices from the mountains telling them to break these rules. As the story progresses, they realize how a large-scale past event, the curse known as 'rules,' and the villagers' relationships are encroaching upon this quiet, beautiful village.
Except for Tobari, a girl who hasn't adapted to the village, the people are generally kind. However, each harbors a secret within the boundaries of the rules—a secret that could lead them to break those rules. Between their obsession with the rules and the secrets that could shatter them, people often lose their composure. In those moments, the calmness that enveloped the fields early in the game is abruptly cut off. It is replaced by something eerie and desolate. In the silence, the villagers corner the protagonist.
To become a member of the village, the protagonist offers vegetables. These are the very crops they worked so hard to plow, water, and weed. Shortly after, a baby goat is thrown into the well. Without hesitation. Only then does the meaning of the rule 'wishes require a corresponding price' become clear. It is the moment the cuteness of the ranch simulation is inverted into the ingredients for a sacrifice.
The rules act as a constraint, but also as something that must be broken. This ironic process serves as the core narrative of the game. The rules are depicted as things that must be followed. Beyond simply saying 'don't do this,' the game creates situations where you shouldn't, and by showing the problems that arise when you break them, it emphasizes why they exist. At the same time, it explores the question of why one should follow these potentially unreasonable rules, and what the people themselves are trying to protect by breaking them.
The first rule, the curfew after 11 PM, completes this horror aspect within the gameplay.
By consistently showing through the game's story that going out after 11 PM can lead to death, the game sets 11 PM as a constraint for daytime gameplay. All daytime content—farming, animal husbandry, fishing, and socializing—must be completed by 11 PM according to the rules. Usually, time limits in life simulations are devices to regulate daily actions. In 'Village in the Shade', it is depicted as something that has been observed for a long time.
However, this time constraint is also the rule broken most often. After 11 PM, spirits visit the small cabin at the edge of the village. The spirits wake the protagonist from their sleep and disappear, and spirits appear in the village at this time.
The spirits that appear change daily, as do the ways to deal with them. As in 'Yomawari', there is no way to fight back, so the methods are limited to four: playing tag, hiding, running away, and repelling them with light. For the Daruma spirit, which follows the rules of 'Red Light, Green Light,' you must hide behind a rock the moment it opens its eyes, while other spirits are deterred only by the light of a red candle. Some spirits appear only when you swing your sickle, while others grab your feet from a pool of blood and cover the entire screen, blinding you.
Aside from narrative-heavy periods, wandering the village at night to avoid spirits is usually done to obtain 'Jumul' (relics). At the shrine, you can upgrade various growth elements, such as recipes or increased gathering probabilities. In particular, items that significantly improve gameplay convenience, like sprinklers, are upgraded through this shrine. The materials for these are the relics.
Relics like the four types of magatama, bronze mirrors, and bronze swords can only be picked up at night. The keys to making life easier are dropped in the darkness, meaning the Player must break the rules and encounter terrifying beings. You are essentially pushing yourself into horror.
There is also the reverse. Red candles and seasonal offerings for the Fox Shrine must be collected by roaming the mountains and fields during the day. How long you can survive at night is determined by what you gathered during the day. Relics found at night make daytime farming easier, and what you collect during the day helps you survive the night. Day and night, life simulation and horror, thus become each other's preparation processes.
However, the danger at night is not as great as one might think. Even if you are caught by a spirit and lose your health, you usually wake up in the hospital. While this removes hesitation in heading out into the dark village, the night becomes less scary the more it is repeated. It is a trade-off: lowering the entry barrier at the cost of tension on the night road. Thus, the game's horror lies more in the uncanny nature of the beings and people you encounter than in the gameplay itself.
The balance of this cycle can be adjusted by the Player. Since game events are mostly structured as incidents, once the farm is established, you can reduce the time spent on the life simulation part and focus solely on the story. Conversely, you can stop the story and just expand your fields. This is why the two axes are interlocked without holding each other back.
Peaceful Life Mode' completely removes the horror elements. Since the life simulation itself is complete enough to meet genre standards, you can enjoy the game with this part alone, accompanied by beautiful graphics. But how can you experience the narrative gaps? 'Village in the Shade' does not simply leave the space vacated by the horror part empty in 'Peaceful Life Mode'.
In 'Peaceful Life Mode', the development of important events is depicted differently. Basically, the rules are the same, and the framework remains identical. For example, the village head Rin instructs the protagonist to run errands for the villagers as a penalty for breaking the rules. In 'Peaceful Life Mode', these errand tickets are introduced as local specialties to build rapport with the villagers. Naturally, Rin's overbearing and rule-obsessed demeanor is also portrayed as being a bit more caring toward the protagonist in this mode.
They refined the story within the larger framework and diluted the eeriness of the characters by removing the horror elements. Furthermore, the game contains unexpected, comedy-focused stories throughout. As this aspect is emphasized, you can approach the game as a complete healing simulation.
The option to purchase relics at the Shop exists in both 'Peaceful Life Mode' and the regular 'Quiet Mode', and the quantities available for sale are more generous. Even if you don't venture out at night, if you diligently increased your funds through the life simulation part, you can use that money to promote growth.
Of course, the horror elements of the entire game are not deeply profound, so playing in 'Quiet Mode' is also worth a try. You cannot change modes in the middle of the game, after all.
Although they built a life simulation on a framework based on the visuals and game design of the 'Yomawari' series, the center of gravity is placed on this new life aspect rather than horror. Thanks to this, the horror in 'Village in the Shade' does not pressure the Player. It sits quietly at the edge of the fields or at the village entrance after 11 PM, waiting for the Player to approach of their own volition.
There is a price. The life simulation part is only faithful within the genre's grammar, so there is little new for those who have played this genre for a long time. Because of the structure where you wake up in the hospital even if caught by a spirit, the tension of the night road fades as it is repeated. The horror of this game lies in the atmosphere and the people, not the gameplay.
Nevertheless, it was not a half-baked product. 'Peaceful Life Mode', which completely removes the horror, is proof of that. Even if you remove one axis, the remaining side is full enough to stand on its own, and the removed space is filled with rewritten stories rather than blank spaces.
A red opening and a blue opening. 'Village in the Shade' does not make you choose one or the other. The daytime fields where the sunset settles in orange, and the night when you cross those fields to pick up relics. Moving between those two screens is what this game is all about.
- A rural life that faithfully fills the genre's grammar
- The moment 'Yomawari's' direction meets the light of day
- Music that fills both rural life and horror
- The eeriness and sticky horror created by people
- Peaceful Life Mode' that leaves no empty space even without horror
- A farm that is faithful within the genre but lacks novelty
- Directional controls that occasionally miss despite convenience features
- The tension of the night and spirits that dulls with repetition
- A gameplay structure where progression feels slightly sluggish
Review Platform: PS5 (Release Version)
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