## 2026-11-14 **Village in the Shade** is a farming horror game by the same team that made the **Yomawari**. So far, it is extremely good. You're a child that falls off a mountain and land in a Kagatsu Village with no memory of who you are. Kagatsu is shrouded in secrets, with 8 rules that all of its villagers must strictly follow: 1. Do not go outside after 11:00PM. 2. Cooperate for the good of the village. 3. Do not approach strangers. 4. Do not expose another person's secrets. 5. Do not leave the village. 6. Do not answer voices from the mountain. 7. Do not search for what was lost. 8. A wish requires an appropriate sacrifice. Hope you like breaking rules. By day, you engage with the game's surprisingly complex farming mechanics. You harvest crops, fish, hunt, craft, and explore a seemingly never-ending quarry for materials and items as you chat with villagers who are all completely normal with nothing to hide. By night, you solve puzzles and deal with supernatural threats to uncover Kagatsu's mysteries and buff up your character's stamina, health, and abilities. It's a fantastic, addictive loop that never leaves you bored. By the time you're ready to stop farming, you're dodging the horrors of the night. And when the horror is starting to exhaust you, you can spend a few days focusing on your farm. The two work in perfect sync, making hours of your life disappear like it would in any other farming game. I say "horror," but the game isn't **Resident Evil** or **Silent Hill** levels of scary. The game is very light on jump scares and the aesthetic remains cutesy throughout. Instead, it relies on tension and your own imagination to draw out the horror elements. I wouldn't let it deter you if you're a scaredy cat, especially because the plot is so interesting that it's worth braving the scary bits. There are only three issues I've encountered with **Village in the Shade** so far. The first is that it's a *very* slow start. The game really drip-feeds its mechanics and plot points, which is great if this is your first farming game. But it's not for me, so I was a little impatient getting to the meat of things. The second is the save system. You can only save when you go to bed, which means if you boot up, you have to commit to playing for the next 30-60 minutes if you don't want to lose any progress. I hate this in farming games, and I'd recommend playing the game on a Switch or Steam Deck so you can at least put your device to sleep if you need to go be an adult. The third issue isn't directly the game's problem, but I need to whine about it anyways. This game is very obscure, even by NIS America standards. So there's a shortage of information, with no **Stardew Valley**-tier wiki to speak of. Instead there are simply dozens and dozens of AI-generated slop guides that are completely wrong about every aspect of the game, creating info that doesn't exist out of thin air. I've [[The Glory of the Game Guide|talked about this walkthrough sloppification]] before, but this is the worst I've ever been hit by it. It pisses me the fuck off. Otherwise, **Village in the Shade** is fantastic, and despite being priced higher than its farming competitors, I think that price is very easily justified. Highly recommended if you like to do a little farming that spooks you now and then.