This cute but spooky farm sim starts unlike any other: in a town where you don't remember all the locals who somehow already know you

As it is in Groundhog Day, so it is being a farmlife sim fan. In many lifetimes I have woken up as the inheritor of an overgrown property, been given a watering can, hoe, and five carrot seeds, and been the new-in-town novelty to a bunch of rural neighbours. Everholm isn't different there, but it does come with its own extra layer of surrealism. Because everyone in Everholm already knows your name.

This new farm sim that launched this week actually begins just before you wake up in your new fixer-upper. Protagonist Lilly wanders through a nightmarish landscape searching for her sister Melanie, steps through a portal, and wakes up in a town where a bunch of people she's never met all seem to know her already. It's as if she's been living here for years and she's the weird one for forgetting everyone's name.

Everholm initially continues on in a recognizable fashion: Lilly is encouraged to clear out the rocks and rogue trees on her property, plant and harvest her carrots, learn to fish, and begin selling the fruits of the farm. Beneath it all is a looming sense of wrongness. The townsfolk make cryptic comments about "the darkness," shadows, memories, and intentionally forgetting things.

I played the demo for Everholm a while back, which included just seven in-game days, and was already quite interested in it. The full version that launched this week is even more enticing.

Everholm does its own thing within the farm sim space in lots of little ways that I appreciate. I enjoy its isometric angle visual style, not commonly seen in farm sims, and its vaguely witchy vibes too. There's a daily paper delivered to my doorstep that includes an optional quest, weather forecast, and a daily fortune prediction. Diving through the floors of its spooky netherworld combat zone—the "mines" equivalent combat zone from other Stardew lineage farm sims—feels familiar but also seems like it's going to be related to the main story about the mysterious darkness.

Not everyone may love getting stuck with a preset character (Lilly) and storyline, but when so many other farm sims offer customization and an everyman village hero story, it's nice to see something a bit different on occasion.

Everholm does start out a little slow and weirdly paced, I will say. I was left twiddling my thumbs partway through week one while I waited for my carrots to grow. Most other early quests it gave me were for longer term goals while the community bulletin quests with time limits were often for items I knew I couldn't procure in time. In the meantime I didn't have much cash to throw at buying other seeds, so I wound up at a loose end more often than I wanted, in the beginning.

Gamepad is usually my personal preference for farm sims but I'd recommend sticking to keyboard and mouse for this one because knowing which tile you're going to use a tool on is a bit finicky with a controller. On the whole though, Everholm feels good to play. Using my tools is satisfyingly snappy and it's a treat of a little world to explore.

So far since launch day, developer Chonky Loaf has released three different hotfix patches for bugs and feature requests. There's more to come as well, it seems. In its release date announcement last month, Chonky Loaf said "New content and features are on the horizon, so stay tuned for even more exciting updates!"

For now, you can find Everholm on Steam if a slightly spooky and lightly witchy new farm sim is up your alley.