Everglen

I wanted to play something in the vein of Stardew Valley, but I just didn’t have the time for a massive hundred-hour commitment. Everglen scratched that exact itch. It’s cute, minimalistic, and features very simple mechanics. Best of all, you can finish the entire game and grab all the achievements in about 3 hours.

It delivers exactly what you expect from a cozy game, but with the mechanics stripped down to the absolute essentials. There is no day and night cycle, and there is no energy bar to limit you in your actions. Since you don’t need to sleep, you can just keep working indefinitely. Whether you are chopping trees, mining iron and gold, fishing, or planting crops, everything is designed to be super casual and easy. It rains so often that you rarely even need to use your watering can. Resources respawn incredibly fast, too. Trees grow back in mere minutes. Minerals spawn in batches of 5 or 6, and by the time you clear the last node, the first one has already regenerated, so you can mine in a continuous loop. You don’t even have to click on crops to harvest them; you just run through the field, and they fly to you like a magnet. There is no stress, no time pressure, and no waiting around for morning to sell your loot. Because of that, the gameplay loop becomes incredibly satisfying and addictive. I wasn’t able to put it down until I reached the end.

The fishing minigame is probably the only weak spot. While fish bite almost instantly, the minigame asks you to stop a fast-moving slider inside a green zone. It is not overly difficult, but the slider moves just quickly enough that about 10% of attempts end in a fail. Toning down the speed a bit and adding a few minor quality-of-life features would make this little indie gem perfect.

As for the progression, a few NPCs give you quests, and you can uncover the story of the island by fishing up messages in bottles. The tasks are mostly basic fetch quests, but they happen naturally while you gather resources for your achievements anyway. Aside from this, there’s one wholesome secret to discover, involving some cute capybaras.

All in all, I really loved Everglen. It’s short, sweet, and the perfect bite-sized farming sim to devour in a single sitting.