Village in the Shade Review - RPG Site

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Nippon Ichi Software's farming sim debut is an instant classic

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It would have been easy for Village in the Shade to just be another farming sim, but with a twist. The genre is a dime a dozen these days, and while not every dog has had its day - it's hard not to feel that Square Enix may have tipped their hats just a bit too early with Harvestella, for instance - it's clear that there's an insatiable desire from players to envision a cozy farming life. Carefree, beyond the simple need to tend your crops and feed your animals; not a real worry in sight.

In typical NIS fashion, Village in the Shade is decidedly not that type of farming game. While there is a "Village in the Sunshine" mode that turns it into one, this is a trap; what makes Village in the Shade special are the moments where the game looks directly at the player and asks you what drives you to pursue a peaceful farming life, and exactly what sort of friction you'd be willing to deal with in the name of that peaceful existence.

That's not to say that the game slacks on its farming sim chops, or just uses it as set dressing for the nuanced story it's trying to tell. Village in the Shade's farming does far more than the bare minimum. You don't just have basic tilling, but multiple levels to accomodate specific crops; you have composters that can be used to fertilize plots, you have the ability to make paddys to grow rice and other specialized crops. You can craft machines to process materials; to pickle vegetables, smoke meat and eggs, or brew alcohol. You can craft sprinkler systems to help water crops for you; discover magic scarecrows that will let crops from different seasons continue to grow around them. You can upgrade your home and furnish it as you like, Animal Crossing style.

As far as animals go, yes you have your cows and chickens - but you also have ducks, and other more exotic livestock. These even come with their own unique attributes; while you can leave feed growing on your farmland to save time and neglect having to manually feed animals directly every day inside their barn or henhouse, ducks for instance will also feed off of weeds that infest your paddies when left to roam during the day.

Even at a baseline level, Village in the Shade is a great farming sim. I have some small quibbles with the controls - I wish we at least had the option to use the dpad instead of the analog stick, as the game's perspective can make managing vegetables a little less intuitive than it otherwise could have been with a more decisive input method - but even if you ignore my advice and wanted to only pick it up for the Village in the Sunshine mode, the game still gets a hearty recommendation.

What elevates it is everything else, however. That includes hunting with your bow in the mountains - players can purchase hunting licenses to hunt anything from squirrels all the way up to bears - as well as mining and fishing, but what really sets Village in the Shade apart is all of what happens once the sun goes down. In usual farming game fare, once it's dark out you have no choice but to retire to bed; take too long, and you'll usually lose some of your precious daylight in the next day. Things aren't quite so simple here.

A big part of Village in the Shade's story revolves around untangling the meanings for each of Kagatsu Village's rules. The first to be unraveled is the one that states "do not go outside after 11 PM"; the answer is simple, Yokai and all other form of spirits inhabit the village and surrounding areas. Set foot outside after dark, and you'll be given a short interlude to let you know what sort of spirit you're dealing with here. Maybe it will be the Daruma, maybe it will be prowling lanterns; no matter which, they all have their own gimmicks to them, and resources that can be salvages while avoiding their ire.

Find enough cursed items and you can donate them to the shrine outside your farm to gain upgrades; new recipes for crafting, or permanent buffs to things such as your sale price for specific items, or an increase to how quickly you'll build affection with your animals. With each season, players can find a fox that will guide them to an ethereal shrine; donate the requested items - which includes seasonal crops, forageables, and more - and you'll receive the aforementioned magical scarecrows. Complete a shrine's request before the month is up to receive a permanent upgrade to your stamina, which will be essential both for farmwork as well as further exploring the mine.

Fish overnight and you might find a cursed fish; plant mysterious seeds you find for a chance to grow a cursed crop. After unraveling the method, these can be spent to permanently upgrade your health. While most of these overnight excursions revolve around avoiding conflict or finding the one specific trick to drive off spirits - books discovered overnight and which can be donated to the library after it opens include folk stories that offer a hint for how to deal with spirits if you can't discover it on your own - key moments in the story do include boss fights, so it's well worth the effort to seek out these upgrades.

Instead of being two separate experienes, Village in the Shade fully embraces how the things that we keep out of sight do in fact have an impact on our daily lives. This applies to both the story and the gameplay; and it's what transforms it into something truly special. It's almost frustrating how well it's able to swerve from showcasing the beauty of a hand-drawn rural Japanese mountain village, to flipping the script once the lights are out and how unsettling that same locale can be. Combined with what's easily my favorite soundtrack of the year, even with the 70 or so hour runtime. 

Do I have my complaints? Of course. While I enjoyed the boss fights, I did think that a few went on just a bit too long. The story, while genuinely incredible once it gets going, does take a while before it starts taking off - and once it does, I concede that it does start getting in the way of the core gameplay. That's part of the point, and I won't say that's a bad thing, but while this is a great farming sim outside of my complaints with the controls (which certainly could eventually be patched, or addressed with a mod on PC) I could see how anyone looking for just a farming sim might find themselves frustrated. 

Some of my favorite NIS games have been the result of the team taking a wild swing on something different from their usual fare; Labyrinth of Refrain and Mad Rat Dead come to mind, but I'd be hard-pressed to argue that the team hasn't exceded their prior works with Village in the Shade. It might just be the very best game they've ever released; certainly, it's one of 2026's crowded Fall game releases you won't want to miss..

Versions tested: PC (Steam), Village in the Shade is also available on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2