#dread fields

[atrearts]

Fanart of Chicha the cat from the small game Dread Fields

This game can be found on steam

[marennya]

yummy

[gebo4482]

Dread Fields

[lovelessfa1ry]

this is the future liberals want!

[zitherskeleton]

you know, every so often in the steam tags you really do find some kind of hidden gem in the horror tags - some sort of indie game that tragically doesn't have the perfect combination of advertising budget, large-scale appeal, and sheer luck to go viral. trust me, guys - dread fields is a gem.

Dread Fields is a slow-burn horror game with farming simulator elements. You step into the shoes of someone who bought an isolated farm property in the ominously-named "dread fields" to escape from the stress of the city life. of course, you're familiar with the horror genre, so you know that the farm is probably going to be more stressful. the game takes an almost ddlc-esque approach, disguising the horror for the first few levels with simple mechanics around tending to your farm before the horror creeps in. i know there's already a very niche subgenre of "cozy games that have a psychological-horror-inspired atmosphere and art style, leading to a constant feeling of unease even if no true horror elements really appear", but i find dread fields to be just a bit more welcoming than that. the gorgeous art direction sits in the uncanny valley between cute and creepy, which gives the devs free reign to choose which of those to lean into at any given point - or, in short, just slap a layer of fog onto the farm in the creepy level and suddenly it's terrifying.

a farming simulator is always gonna be a rough game to sell me on, personally - no offense, it's just not a genre i normally go for. luckily everything here is simple enough and clearly explained enough to be welcoming to non-farming-savvy players. the levels are short enough to not feel tedious, the farm animals are surprisingly endearing, and of course, if you're truly heartless enough to not care about your cow or your cat, then the horror elements slowly creep in at just the right pace to keep you intrigued until the end.

it's rare for me to say this about a game i like, but i actually think Dread Fields would be a perfect stepping stone or introduction into horror - for the very real demographic of people saying "i want to get into horror games but if i think i'm going to die during fnaf i have to leave the room 5 minutes before i can get jumpscared". is it scary? sure, at points - but there's no real gore, no graphic or confronting violence, and the jumpscares aren't particularly strong. it's a rare feat for a horror game to be engaging all the way through without relying on gore or violence, though i admit that to those more desensitised to horror than me it probably wouldn't register as scary.

a combination of Stalker 2 and various unpolished indie games has gotten me used to the phenomenon of wandering around an area for long periods feeling like an idiot, not knowing how to proceed. none of that here! game design is one of those things that, when done right, is barely noticeable at all. just to get to the main ending, there's almost always clear instructions written in your in-game notebook, and when there isn't or when you want to uncover the game's secrets, there's always some sort of indication as to what you're supposed to do.

there is a bit of the typical Low-Budget Game Unpolish. there's one section where the collision was wonky and i kept falling through the ground, though this was a pretty minor issue because it would just take me back to where i was after a moment. i found the maze section to be a particularly frustrating piece of trial-and-error gameplay. still, this game does a lot with what it has, and it's one i can see myself going back and replaying - which is a really good sign coming from me.

spicy 4 stars. for those who care, you can pet the cat

[zitherskeleton]

i think there was some rule for which games are long enough to write an Early Thoughts review before finishing it and i think i forgot that rule a long time ago. i also think that saihate station is objectively longer than either of the games i've recently started and i didn't put early thoughts on that because i thought it would be quicker than it was. oops, queue is empty! time for early thoughts on Dread Fields.

i've had some Mishaps with dread fields so far. first of all, when i got the demo it was apparently totally incompatible with the steam deck and refused to even open, breaking my heart. ages later i saw the store page again, saw that they were trying to make it deck-compatible, and decided to give it a scond chance. then i managed to delete the game from my deck accidentally while fucking around in my files and had to reinstall it. it took ages to reinstall even though it's less than a gig, i think i have a storage problem.

was it worth it, though? so far, actually, yes. the reason i stopped playing this was because i actually wanted to save it for later, it seemed like such a perfect game to play outside my staffroom before my shift starts. the atmosphere is great, the way the sky looks is proof that you don't actually need unreal engine 50000 and 1 william gigs of storage to make a game that can double as a stargazing simulator. of course the creators must have known that once the novelty of the atmosphere wears off i usually cannot stand Relaxing Games, so they made it spooky as well. great slowburn into horror going on here.

of course there is always always room for a horror game to fumble. but at the moment? ddlc walked so that cooking companions could speedwalk, and it looks like cooking companions may have speedwalked so that dread fields could run. somewhere along the way the baba yaga became canonically bisexual, which was a bit odd but i support her i suppose. bland 4 stars

as far as the devs' journey into becoming Deck Compatible is going, it's alright. it's fully functional as far as i can tell, but a bit awkward. having to use the d-pad for items while using the left control stick to walk means you have to stop moving every time you change items, and using R1 instead of R2 to interact with things is a bit unintuitive for players who are used to R2 acting as a mouse click equivalent. really seems like it could benefit from the devs being reminded that the deck actually has two easily accessible top back buttons on each side (plus a few more if you need them). these controls would be perfect if the L1/R1 functions were swapped to L2/R2 and then the d-pad functions were swapped to L1/R1

[cannibal-yearn]

Dread Fields

[gebo4482]

Dread Fields