Until recently, farming-centered games have ranged from cozy and cute like Stardew Valley, to realistic and technical like the aptly titled Farming Simulator franchise. We Harvest Shadows separates itself from the typical farming simulators by dipping into the horror genre to deliver a thrilling, narrative-driven experience that mixes psychological dread and supernatural scares with the beauty of rural farming and satisfaction of simulator progression. 

We Harvest Shadows debuted at Gamescon 2024 and was received with overwhelming positivity and later went viral across Youtube as content creators played through its demo on their channels. It was also recently featured in LudoNarraCon’s 2025 list of upcoming indie games.

We Harvest Shadows’ Seasoned Developer 

The developer’s name, David Wehle, may sound familiar from his hit indie success The First Tree in 2017. Two years before that, Wehle released his first game on Steam, Home is Where One Starts…, a short narrative-driven story that ignited his career. Since then, Wehle has evolved as an indie developer and journaled his experiences on his Youtube channel. He also started Game Dev Unlocked, a site where he shares free assets and educational resources on game development for aspiring creators.

Wehle is as much a storyteller as he is a game developer. We Harvest Shadows is his biggest project so far and a culmination of his passion and years of experience in game development. Like the rest of his games, We Harvest Shadows has a deep and personal connection to Wehle. He briefly touches on what drove him to create this unusual game in his developer note (via We Harvest Shadows):

“Maybe one day I’ll explain more about how I’ve actually been doing the past few years, and how it resulted in this game. It was borne of pure self-hatred and desperation, which makes it my most personal work yet. I’m kind of embarrassed by the things I’ve felt and gone through, but it felt good to put those feelings into this story.” 

Demo Gameplay Synopsis

We Harvest Shadows follows a man named Garrett who runs away from his troubled life to live as a farmer in isolated wilderness. Garrett deals with the challenge of living off the land in solitude and faces strange occurrences around his farm.

The setting of We Harvest Shadows is inspired by the life of Christopher Knight AKA the North Pond Hermit. Knight secluded himself to the cold wilderness of Maine in 1986 until his capture in 2013. Author and journalist Michael Finkel interviewed Knight about his isolation and published his story as the novel The Stranger in the Woods, which Wehle read during the game’s initial development. Wehle also pulled elements of horror from Silent Hill, farming from Stardew Valley, and storytelling from What Remains of Edith Finch. 

The Farming 

The farming loop is intuitive and typical of the farming simulator genre. You plant seeds, water crops, care for livestock, and sell your harvest. There are multiple resources to farm in the demo such as tomatoes, chicken eggs, and chopped wood. The initial progression is reminiscent of Stardew Valley. You first clear wild grass and stray trees to make space, then build new structures and farm operations.

Next, you trade your hard earned cash for new tools, supplies, and blueprints. Unlocking some items requires collecting unique materials scattered around the map, while others are locked behind narrative progression. Making your way through the shop catalogue naturally progresses the game’s story.

The Haunting

The haunting mechanic directly reflects the narrative themes of the game. It draws inspiration from Knight’s nighttime hallucinations in the wilderness as Wehle explains (via We Harvest Shadows):

“Sometimes, on the brink of death, [Knight] would see a cloaked figure in black standing off to the side of his campsite, staring at him with a menacing smile and asking him to come closer… he would consider approaching the cloaked figure… but he chose to ignore him and kept warming himself up.”

Similarly, in We Harvest Shadows, as the night shrouds the forest in darkness and the strenuous farm work drains you, you begin to see, hear, and feel things that may not actually be real, but are very real to you. Rather than managing satiety or energy, you have to maintain your sanity similar to the sanity meter in Don’t Starve. As your sanity drops, the threat of hostile encounters increases.

The Creepy Painting

Your sanity levels and changing mental state are indicated by a dynamic painting on the first floor of your homestead. The painting reverts to its baseline image of a closed door at the start of each day. As your sanity drains, the painting morphs and deforms, like a fluid Rorschach test, into more horrific imagery. The intensity of the horror indicates the likelihood and proximity of a hostile encounter. However, you can ward off bad energy by completing daily tasks before sleeping, expanding your farming operations, and tidying up your homestead. 

We Harvest Shadows’ Haunting Allegory

Wehle uses the haunting mechanic to express the allegorical themes of the game’s narrative. Garrett impulsively isolates himself on a farm in the wilderness to escape the trauma of his old life. His painful memories weigh on his psyche and convince him of the reality of the horrors around him. Conversely, focusing on his new life seems to heal his mind. There is an emphasis on keeping yourself busy to stay safe in your solitude. Sticking to a routine and revamping your abandoned homestead lets you freely enjoy the map without worrying about being attacked. However, abandoning your tasks and staying out at night risks opening your vulnerable mind to nightmarish creatures.

Unique Tone of Serenity and Dread

The eerie sense of dread that underlies the calm beauty of farming in a forest is the strongest quality of We Harvest Shadows. If you’ve ever been camping, you have probably experienced the dread this game captures so accurately: 

The sun sinks into the horizon after and your eyelids droop from exhaustion. The flickering flames of the campfire kiss the edges of the darkness around you and cast wicked shadows of the twisting branches above. Once in a while, you catch something moving along the tree line. Usually, it’s just a swaying branch or a small animal, but sometimes it’s not. You know it’s there; you just saw it right behind the bushes. You confidently shine your flashlight into the darkness to reveal what it is, but you see… nothing. Your heart drops and your stomach churns as your eyes and intuition fight over judgement. You crawl into your sleeping bag and pray that whatever you saw… or think you saw… was really nothing at all.

A Looming Threat

We Harvest Shadows was scariest when it tapped into this exact fear of the unknown. In the first 15 minutes, I was constantly on edge. I rushed my tasks with urgency, incessantly ran in and out of the house to check on the painting and flicked my camera around frantically at the slightest audio cue. Every time I saw, or thought I saw, something on the corner of my screen, I would freeze and nervously pan around the forest if I wasn’t already blindly swinging my axe around me. The jagged and busy design of the trees often tricked my eyes into seeing shadowy figures. The dynamic painting kept teasing me by displaying new terrible pictures throughout the day. This dread kept me focused and motivated to keep the shadows away, in parallel with the narrative story beats. 

Dread > Jumpscares

Despite the dread, my fears were deflated when the scary monsters were finally revealed. I was no longer wildly imagining what’s out in the forest or worried about being watched. I could simply track a tangible creature on my screen as I ran away. This made for some enjoyable moments of pursuit similar to Slender: The Arrival and The Forest. However, the survival horror aspect was underwhelming in comparison to game’s eerie atmosphere. I’d like to see We Harvest Shadows add more escalation to its encounters to really capitalize on its unique sense of dread.

Wehle is fully aware and committed to this exact idea (via Steam):

“Do you know what truly scares me? Feeling totally alone in a forest, and suddenly seeing a normal face hide behind a tree. Disfigured creatures which look human but aren’t really scare me. I think catching a glimpse of something you can’t quite make out in the darkness is the scariest thing of all.

There’s not really much horror in finally seeing the monster that’s following you (that’s actually the release), but it’s in the build-up and the tension. That’s also because the scariest thing to you is what your mind imagines when it fills in the blanks.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have any payoff or release in a horror game… But I really want We Harvest Shadows to be an elevated, beautiful type of horror game which takes its time and marinates in the atmosphere. I want the monsters and entities to look like something you’ve never seen before… and to symbolize the deep trauma that Garrett’s going through.”

Final Thoughts

Blending together contrasting genres can lead to an underwhelming experience as a game navigates an identity crisis and struggles to decide what it wants to be. We Harvest Shadows overcomes this conflict by carefully balancing and capturing the best aspects of both farming simulators and horror games. The game elements felt cohesive and indicative of a well thought out vision. I hope We Harvest Shadows will lean more into its eerie atmosphere and its intriguing narrative to really stand out against other horror titles.

Judging from the demo, We Harvest Shadows is shaping up to be an innovative entry in the horror genre. I’m optimistic of Wehle’s vision and excited to join the thousands of others in supporting and wishlisting We Harvest Shadows.

You can follow updates on development and the release date of We Harvest Shadows on its Steam page and official website.