Stardew Valley and Pokémon-Inspired Cosy Farming Sim Has Soulslike Combat and Lets You Ride Pandas

Yes, you read that title correctly; this cosy farming sim lets you capture animals, stab giant Dark Souls-sized flaming pheonixes in the face with a spear, get married, and ride pandas.

Oh, and also there’s a fishing minigame.

I genuinely cannot believe I am only just hearing about this game. One part Pokémon, one part FromSoftware-esque soulslike, and, like, thirty parts Stardew Valley, obviously. And goddamn, does it look absolutely beautiful. It is, as the youths say, peak.

The game you’re looking at is called Halcyon Days at Taoyuan, and it was developed by BotanX and published CubeGame.

It was released on Steam roughly five days ago, and yet, for some reason, I haven’t seen it blasted on every single gaming website in existence already. Honestly, I might not even heard of it at all if PCGamesN hadn’t written about it this morning.

But, do you know what the best thing about Halcyon Days at Taoyuan is? Well, firstly, it’s actually good, according to the 83% Very Positive score on Steam. But also, it’s cheap as chips, mate.

For whatever reason, they’ve made a soulslike, cosy creature-collecting farming sim, and they only want you to pay £9.99 for it. I spent more on lunch yesterday, but you’re telling me I could have this for around the same price?

Just a downright beautiful looking screenshot from Halcyon Days at Taoyuan's Steam page, CubeGame

Alright, I should probably stop glazing this game for two seconds and address the negative reviews for this game on Steam.

From what I can tell, there are two main issues that players are having with Halcyon Days at Taoyuan: it’s a little buggy, and the minigames are a bit annoying.

The former issue can (hopefully) be solved by an update or two, but the latter one might be more of an issue of taste. Although saying that, I did watch a few gameplay videos, and perhaps the fishing minigame could do with a slight rework (by which I mean, good lord does it look infuriatingly imprecise).

Also, apparently, online multiplayer doesn’t work outside of China.

However, considering that all these do seem like issues that the devs could fix in future patches, I’d say it sounds like an incredibly solid basis for a game.

After all, even Stardew Valley wasn’t built in a day. That game has been updated, no exaggeration, well over a hundred times at this point. That’s my way of saying that I hope the Halcyon Days at Taoyuan devs continue to support this one, because I already very much like what I’m seeing.