Living with your family on a remote island, you discover a sinister purpose of your existence. Look for a way to escape your idyllic farm life. Offer your Harvest Offering to the gods to keep up with the façade. Question everything and fake your blissful farming days.
You start with a small farm that already has cows, chickens, goats, and sheep. Expanding the farm and animal pens is crucial for progressing your operations. The farming itself is simple - you plant crops in designated plots and harvest them once mature. However, you must use a sickle to clear dead crops before replanting. While basic, the farming provides a satisfying loop of tending to the land and animals.
Thorough exploration is key, as the game features a maze-like layout with many hidden areas, caves, and pathways to uncover. You may find valuable resources, blueprints, or other important items in these out-of-the-way locations. The dynamic day/night cycle and weather also impact the island, with new areas becoming accessible or dangerous depending on the conditions. This creates a sense of the island constantly evolving, further encouraging you to keep exploring.
The crafting system allows you to create various tools and upgrades to aid your exploration and farming. Things like ladders, ropes, and fishing poles can be crafted to access new areas, while bag and chest upgrades provide more inventory space. Crafting these items requires collecting the right materials, creating a satisfying loop of exploring, gathering, and using those resources.
You can interact with, pet, and feed the various wild animals on the island. Developing relationships with them provides a sense of companionship and helps flesh out the island's ecosystem. Some animals may even reward you with items or lead you to new discoveries. However, their strange behavior or disappearance can also hint at the island's darker secrets.
Statues around the island request specific items as "Harvest Offerings." Providing these offerings grants you "blessings" that can be used to upgrade the farm, craft items, or potentially progress the story. This system encourages you to thoroughly explore and collect a diverse array of items, as the offerings can be quite varied and unexpected. It also adds an element of resource management as you decide how to best utilize your blessings.