Welcome to Elderfield Review Round-Up: Scores and Verdict

Overall the reception is positive, but it is not for everyone. OpenCritic aggregates 79, rated “Strong” across six outlets and placing in the 79th percentile, while Steam sat at 95% positive across 530 reviews (Overwhelmingly Positive) two days after launch. The gap between the highest and lowest scores tells you exactly who this is for.

The scores

Outlets mix ten-point and hundred-point scales, so once converted everything lands roughly between 75 and 100 — the disagreement is about specific feelings, not a polarised split.

What reviewers agree on

• Atmosphere and art. The hand-drawn horror-manga look, low-light rural scenes and the dark lofi score are praised almost universally. ScreenHype calls it “the spiritual dark successor to Stardew Valley”.
• The turn-based combat has real substance. It is not a minigame bolted onto a farm sim. Resource management, buffs, equipment and enemy mechanics add up to a complete RPG, and the Old Gods allegiances genuinely change which doors and gear you can reach.
• Equipment and progression. Forging plus drops support real builds, and Gazettely argues this is what makes farm output matter: farm products ultimately feed the Stone Tower seal that drives the main story.
• The absurd sitting next to the mundane. Building a talking effigy wife for a lonely man, a skeleton who took his skin off and put it back on for employment — these are the moments reviewers keep quoting.

What reviewers keep criticising

• Thin romance and social systems. RPGFan and Gazettely both note that characters barely develop as affection rises and that gift giving is closer to trial and error. RPGFan also criticises the game for having no non-white human NPCs.
• Some systems repeat. Seasonal events and the daily TV news loop around after long play sessions, which dulls the novelty.
• The in-game map is inaccurate. ScreenHype records plainly that the map cannot reliably show your position, a known issue.
• Crafting interface friction. Gazettely notes there is no simple “craft maximum” command and material totals are not visible while choosing quantities.

Should you buy or wait

Buy now if: you like the Stardew Valley or Graveyard Keeper loop and want genuinely deep turn-based combat and horror atmosphere, and you can accept romance as a side dish. The 10% launch discount runs until September 24, so buying now saves $1.80.

Wait if: you are mainly here for romance and character drama; you are sensitive to map and performance issues and would rather wait for patches; or you are price-sensitive and want a deeper sale. For all three, the free Steam demo (Steam) is the cheapest way to avoid a mistake — it covers the opening tutorial, the farm and the first dungeon, which is enough to judge whether the combat and pacing suit you.

Player-side signal

Beyond the press, the most direct signal is the Steam review state: 95% positive across 530 reviews within two days of launch (Overwhelmingly Positive, checked 2026-09-12). Reddit discussion concentrates on concrete problems — stuttering, Steam Deck controllers, portraits failing to load, quest triggers — rather than on whether the game is worth playing. That suggests most players have accepted the core design and that the friction comes from technical details and understanding the systems.

The above is a sample of player feedback, not a representative survey.

Reference video

Third-party review video: Elderfield Review - A Not So Cozy Retro Farming Horror RPG.

Update, one week after launch

Everything below is public data and comment added after 12 September 2026. The earlier scores and conclusions stay as they were; this is added on top.

The numbers moved

The four new outlets disagree a fair bit. Use a Potion gave it 9/10, calling it a game that “successfully marries the satisfaction of farming with the tension of cosmic horror”. Gameliner gave 4.5/5, SomGeek 80%. Neutral Game gave only 7/10.

Put those alongside the originals — DualShockers (8.5), RPGFan (78), COGconnected (75), ScreenHype (10) — and the spread is wider than it was. The range is still roughly 75 to 100, but Metacritic’s 86 says most outlets are kinder than OpenCritic’s average suggests.

The Steam shift is the most informative change. Positive share fell from 95% to 90%. A drop after the sample doubles usually means the earliest buyers were the core audience and later arrivals hit more friction. Reading the actual reviews backs that up: complaints cluster on late-game stat inflation, repetitive farming and mining, and performance — not on the concept.

Mechanics found in the review video’s comments

The video above went from a few dozen comments to 130. Several of them describe mechanics you would otherwise expect on a guide page.

Bathing removes buffs as well as debuffs. Player @jamestrent8949: If you take a bath, you also lose all buffs and debuffs if you have any. He adds that going several days without sleeping can be the better play, depending on your luck and buffs at the time. That directly contradicts the “bath is a free reset” intuition.

Fleeing and going home cost you nothing extra. Asked whether the game is too harsh for someone easily frustrated, @GhostofaSiren replied that you can save any time in your own home, that a warp ability with no penalty takes you home, and that fleeing a fight (a die roll) also sends you home, adding I'm playing it fine on normal difficulty.

Not every crop behaves. @annastasijaspellman2536 lists the ones that grow heads and walk away (you have to kill them to get eyes, skin and teeth), plants that grow worms, and plants that grow teeth.

The soundtrack is the developer’s own music project. @Wight_Ulfr points out that Chris Cote runs the YouTube channel Ill-Advised Records, which makes dark lofi mixing classic horror film and game samples with his own weather-channel segments. @TripleFisted adds that he has followed the music for years.

The Junji Ito comparison keeps coming up. @sechernbiw3321 wrote specifically about the occasional coziness inside Ito’s horror, comparing the romance thread in Uzumaki with Ito’s completely non-horror cat diary.

The difficulty lands hard. @tahlenri expected “just a horror Stardew Valley reskin” and came away with Very fun, surprisingly difficult. On the other side, @CattitudeGenX, @mint5438 and @kirbyjoe7484 all say they could not put it down, one of them after 18 hours in the pre-release demo.

People are still waiting on consoles. One comment asks Is this coming to the Switch? and the channel replies that it might, one day, in their opinion. That is not official. Confirmed console status is on the Switch page.

Late-game friction in new long reviews

New long-form Steam reviews get more specific about the late game. A player at 25 hours complains that every night takes several cutscenes and text boxes to get through, and every single kill rolls for loot. A player at 19 hours reaches the opposite conclusion, calling it Definitely in my top 5 games of the year and only wishing those sequences moved faster. Chinese-language negative reviews focus on broken late-game numbers, farming that cannot be automated, and mining swings that can drain HP or apply curses.

Set against the 12 September verdict, the direction has not changed. It suits players who like the farm loop and want real turn-based combat, and it does not suit players who came mainly for romance or who want light, quick controls. The one thing to note is that with a larger sample the positive share slid from 95% to 90%, which suggests the late-game balance and pacing issues are more visible than they were on launch day.

Facts checked 2026-09-16. Scores, Steam ratings and discounts all move, so re-verify before buying.