When your sister seemingly disappears into a portal, you jump through to rescue her. What ends up happening is you spend your time searching for clues while running a farm. You spend your life fighting through dungeons, looking for strange clues, and farming to earn money. At some point, you are going to remember there was a reason for your mission. But every day starts with caring for your plants and animals.

Everholm gives you the standard cozy RPG where you can take your time and manage your farm. There’s also dungeon exploration and a decent combat system that lets you build up your character. Unfortunately, there is a lot that isn’t explained and that makes it feel inconvenient. Everholm also doesn’t deliver an experience that helps it stand out from other farming RPGs. You can have fun and enjoy the experience, but it doesn’t step into greatness.

Everholm puts you in the shoes of Lilly, a girl investigating the disappearance of her sister. She arrives in the town of Everholm after pursuing her sister through a portal. The town’s residents already know Lilly and her sister but don’t elaborate more on that. Lilly must do everything she can to find the truth about Everholm and her sister’s whereabouts. In the meantime, she must survive by earning money through farming.

It’s a mystery story where you slowly unravel the clues. This adds a new dimension to checking out the town or speaking to residents. While you are trying to get along with everyone, you are also figuring out what they know. Every relationship is a clue towards the truth and figuring out what’s going on at Everholm. It adds a new dimension to regular farm life where you get along with residents for gifts or interesting scenes.

Unfortunately, pacing is slow and it will take some time before you get anywhere. Even if you know what you are doing, it still takes time for resources to open up. Progressing through dungeons requires an element of luck. Blueprints don’t always open up until time passes or you unlock prerequisites. Investigating everything means running into dead ends. While farming games take time, Everholm stretches your experience considerably.

There is also a lack of explanation when it comes to your objectives. For example, progressing through dungeons requires finding waypoints that let you progress to different floors. But how you get those waypoints to appear isn’t obvious. If looking for clues around town, you are told to look for “something suspicious” with no other hints. Some knowledge is revealed through daily newsletters but they don’t go into much detail.

It feels like the game is deliberately obtuse to prolong the experience. While you don’t need to be spoonfed information, getting vague or no instructions doesn’t help. This is also occasionally compounded by getting requests that you can’t feasibly complete in the beginning. You can’t control what requests you get or the items that are requested, slowing overall completion. Feeling like you can’t complete any objectives cuts into your enjoyment and discourages you.

Fortunately, you can pick up some of the basics quickly such as farming. Earning money to perform activities is always slow but eventually, you start growing more crops and raising animals. The crops and materials you harvest help you craft new blueprints or make more advanced ingredients. Once you build a foundation for yourself, it’s easy to start exploring the surrounding areas.

Everholm’s charm shines when you interact with the townsfolk and slowly build up your farm. The neighbourly affection comes through when they offer you blueprints for machines. You return in kind by taking on requests or helping with favours. Unlike other farming sims where you are left alone after the beginning, Everholm helps you out for a longer period. The town always provides a way to help you and it’s appreciated even if it isn’t much.

It’s also easier to make your farm self-sustaining with blueprints. Everholm adds new technology such as sprinklers that automate tasks. Eventually, you learn magic that contributes to said automation at the cost of a little mana. Technology can be carried and moved around with ease, ensuring you can adapt to layout changes or expansions. Starting a farm has never been easier with Everholm and it’s great to have technology assist you early on.

While it’s nice having these conveniences, they ultimately don’t stand out enough to differentiate Everholm. Apart from solving the overall mystery and finding your sister, you are still building a farm and exploring dungeons. The nice art style and calm ambience are notable but don’t affect gameplay much. Coupled with the long gameplay, you might find yourself spending more time on the farm and less time on the mystery.

Even with the mystery looming in the background, there are other games with unique characters and interesting stories. Building your farm from the ground up or fighting monsters in dungeons is nothing new. You can get lost in growing crops or fighting monsters but it’s the same as others in the genre. The mystery often takes a backseat because you can’t solve it quickly, blurring any differentiation factors.

This doesn’t mean that you won’t have fun playing Everholm or that it isn’t a cozy experience. The charm shines through and it does promise a good time to anyone interested. But the game does have flaws and isn’t too different from what’s already out there. It’s still a great choice for anyone looking for a cozy farming sim that has a few new twists. If you know what to expect and still enjoy what you see, then you will have a fun time investigating the world of Everholm.