Sun Haven is a cute fantasy farming sim. Farm, fish, explore, mine, craft, and (optionally) fight while you get to know townsfolk, go on dates, help people with mini quests, and try to save your town from an encroaching darkness.

Official Description:

You have just arrived in Sun Haven… only to find it’s been struck by dark magic! With only a handful of money and some rusty tools in hand, it’s up to you to build the farm of your dreams. Grow crops, raise livestock, craft items, mine ores, defeat bosses, catch fish, cook recipes, decorate your farm, complete quests, fall in love, and explore what lies beyond the forests of this medieval town. Can you become the hero of Sun Haven and stop the darkness before it’s too late?

Long Review:

Update (3/1/24): It’s past update 1.3, and I’ve considered redoing my review, but my original below is still true. I do want to add though, having played a few other farming sims now, I didn’t give this one enough credit for how great it is. It’s packed full of characters and decor and character customization and locations, there’s so much you can do, there’s so much freedom, it’s so cute, and it’s so chill. Also, the newer romances added in updates are even better than the original ones with a bit more depth. Despite this being my first farming sim and having to look up how to do some things, I didn’t struggle to make money or feel overwhelmed or confused. It always felt like I could take my time, and it’s not an overly complicated game. So if you’re looking for a challenge, maybe not for you. But if you just want to date cuties and decorate and do some farming or fishing or exploring, you’ll probably love it. It is, overall, a lovely game. I’ve played 300+ hours at this point. I feel attached to both my characters and the NPCs, and I keep coming back to it and having fun! Now onto my original review…

***

This game is so cute and chill, and I love it! I’ve had a lot of fun in the 150+ hours I’ve played so far, and I’m sure I’ll have fun in the hours I’m still going to play. It makes me feel cozy and comforted. I love picking a new outfit and hairstyle for each season, making cute little meals and drinks as gifts for my boyfriends, chatting with people around town, collecting fruits, decorating my house… But my recommendation does come with some complaints and one big caveat—mods and cheats have been a necessity for me to deal with bugs and tedious things. So though I love it, I want anyone who might spend money and time on this to know what they’re getting.

Note, this was my first farming sim, so I’m reviewing it entirely on its own merits.

Also note, some of the images have edited sprites (the outside house decor, the centaur, some furniture).

What I Liked:

– So cute and relaxing!

– Cute pixel art style. I also love how much the world changes for each season.

– Lots of dateable characters, men and women, and they’re all so lovable. Just a bunch of sweethearts. Well, all the ones I’ve romanced, at least. Is the romance super deep? No. But it’s still sweet! Also, you can date as many as you want at once up to 15 hearts. After that, you can either use a mod or propose to all your lovers on the same day, though only one will move into your house.

– You can build your relationship with other NPCs as well, and it actually has a small impact on their lives.

– There is so much to do in this game. You can do it all in one playthrough, or you can do multiple games and take the time to focus on different things. For example, I still have more characters I want to date, and I didn’t really explore Nel’vari or Withergate, so I’m going to do a game focused in each city. (You just still have to start the main quest to unlock the other cities, but then you can just chill. Or, if you want to skip straight there, you can do it by teleporting. I use a mod from Nexus that allows cheats, not sure if you can use cheats without it. Then just open the cheat box and type “/teleport nelvarigeneralstore” or “/teleport withergategeneralstore” or “/teleport generalstore”. You can teleport anywhere, but you have to know the codes. Once in the city, you can decorate your house, romance characters, and do all the normal things.)

– Character customization is cute. There’s only so much you can do with such small, chibi-esque pixel art, and I think it’s good considering that. It’s also fun choosing a fantasy race and getting to have horns or a tail or whatever else (though you’re not able to mix and match too much, unless you use a mod). Also, I’ve never gotten to be a naga in a game before! There’s no gender choice, but you can choose any hair/clothes, and you’ll be referred to with they/them pronouns.

– I had a lot more fun decorating my house than I thought I would. There’s a lot of little clutter that just looks so cute!

– Combat is optional. Just turn on invincibility in the settings and choose the peaceful end route. I can’t comment on combat because I didn’t do it.

– Seasonal bosses and pests are optional too.

– I loved the fantasy elements! Dragons, demons, griffons, elves, magic.

– You can have lots of adorable pets, real and fantasy, and place them all over your farm and house.

I was trying to get a picture of the edits I made to the house, but the pets wouldn’t go away, and it just made for a funny screenshot.

What I Disliked:

Keep in mind, some of these can be fixed with cheats and mods (which you can find on Nexus), and some may be fixed in updates, and some are not a problem, just a thing that could be improved.

– There are bugs. I’ve only encountered a few, none game-breaking, but some (like disappearing furniture, and sometimes not being able to place anything in that spot again) are frustrating.

– There are little things that get tedious. Having to refill the watering can, not being able to jump over little rocks in your way, having to constantly swap out inventory items in order to craft things, dealing with snaccoons, etc. But there are mods or cheats for most of the tedious things.

– You can’t move chests when they have things in them.

– The game does not do a good job of explaining how things work. I had to look a lot of things up online.

– No recipe catalog. You just have to unlock them sort of accidentally and then find them in whichever crafting table they’re in.

– I would love more incentive to make meals. They’re so cute, but the only ones worth making are the few your love interests like and the few used in quests. If you’re doing combat, some are helpful, but even then, you’re probably going to make the same few meals. Some make a bit more money than individual foods, but not all, and placing things into the shipping portal isn’t that satisfying.

– You can’t rotate most furniture. It makes furnishing your house tricky, but there are ways to make it work. There’s also large footprints for some of the items, so you can’t place them near each other or against the wall. There is a mod that can help with placement, but it’s not perfect.

– No furniture catalog. I never knew if I should spend money on *this* or if I would find something better, but *this* might not show back up for three seasons. But now there’s a mod that adds a catalog.

– You have to go very slow with romance, or you’ll likely miss things. I could be wrong, but it seems that events (first date, second date, receiving gifts) are triggered when you hit a certain heart level with an NPC, but if your relationship increases to the next trigger level before you do the event, that event just gets skipped. So you end up getting a second date but no first date, etc. When it happened to me, I fixed it by using cheats to set the relationships back and re-hit those triggers. With the next character, I just went slow, and it worked. So without cheats, don’t give gifts after you’ve just increased hearts through conversation because that might cause too much increase in one go, and immediately agree to dates when the opportunity comes up. But also make sure you don’t ask for a date the day before a festival, and don’t miss your date.

– Maybe nitpicky, but sometimes I’d ask a character what they’d like as a gift, or they’d just tell me about something, but then I’d give it to them, and their response was clearly not enthused. Why did Jun say he wanted a house plant?? Why did Wornhardt tell me about how he missed mangoes???

– The story is nice, but it doesn’t have a ton of substance and relies on making the player gather large amounts of items or currency, not to mention travel between buildings and cities a lot, to stretch it out.

Everything Else:

– Multiplayer is available, but I have not tried it.

– I’ve played for about 150 hours at the time of this review, and I’m still going to play more.

– I bought this on sale on Steam for $19.99.

Overall:

A lot of small issues or things I think could be better, but ultimately the good far outweighs the bad for me with this game (at least, with the help of mods), and I genuinely am having a lot of fun playing it!

Short Review:

– Super chill
– Cute pixel art
– Cute character customization
– Cute house decorating
– Lots of sweetheart characters to date and talk to
– Combat optional
– Some tedious things, but can be fixed with mods
– No catalog for crafting or furniture
– Story relies a lot on gathering large amounts of items and money
– Overall, a lot of small things could be improved, but really fun and cute!

Accessibility:

(May not include everything)
– Not accessible for blind players or screen reader users.
– Can change key bindings.
– Requires use of mouse and keyboard, or controller.

More Info:

Steam

Miscellaneous:

Here’s some fan art I made of one of my characters with Vaan and Wesley:

Here are screenshots of my character’s Sun Haven farm all decorated (using the “Decorate Anywhere” mod and a few of my own sprite edits—the centaur mod is linked below):

I also made some mods you can find on Nexus:

Seasonal Farmhouse
Centaur Player