Review: Firefly Village Is a Condensed Farming Life Sim

Firefly Village is a farming life sim along the lines of Stardew Valley and Story of Seasons, but with the goal of making things much simpler. As in everything is shorter, streamlined, and less involved than others in the genre. While it’s a novel experiment to see how much you can cut back and still leave a satisfying sim behind, it also results in things feeling unbalanced and quality of life features being abandoned in the process.

In Firefly Village, we’re a newcomer who moves into town to take up residence in an empty shack with some farmland. Only a handful of folks live in the area and there are only a few screens worth of spaces to explore. Each season lasts only seven days, with a day being four minutes, so it eventually comes down to just handling our 54 plots for crops, handful of animals, and basically five folks living in the area. Upgrades? They’re minimal and involve things like a kitchen and deck. Animals? You probably only end up with six chickens. Your goal is to enjoy effective days that pass quickly and don’t feature a lot of busywork. 

It’s interesting. Firefly Village is absolutely every element of a farming life sim distilled down to the most critical parts, so technically a lot of what we’d expect from Story of Seasons or Stardew Valley is here. We can become best friends with the five villagers. There are eventually supplemental activities like cooking, fishing, and mining. We can collect items like scarecrows. There are festivals to celebrate occasions like Halloween. The things we expect are here, and Josh Koenig Games does show we can accomplish the full farming experience in truncated days days and seasons, still accomplishing things. 

However, a big part of playing Firefly Village makes me realize how much I miss some of the things that naturally come from larger farming life sim games like Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons. There’s the absence of quality of life features. Want to harvest things or do some gathering? You can hold 12 items, and they don’t stack. Want a cow? That will be 5,000g, and it honestly can take quite a bit of time to earn that money. Tools? Aside from your initial farming equipment, you need to wait until they randomly appear in the store and you can stock them. Need to water or gather? Sometimes your character won’t face the right direction you need to perform an action and you need to fiddle around with things.

Also, while farming life sims like Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley can have days that sometimes feel long or like we’re “grinding” through a schedule, playing Firefly Village made me realize that time wasn’t wasted. Going through those routines could be calming. I liked waiting around while fishing. Or the deeper connections that came from its socialization that weren’t present with the three-heart-level friendships here. The fact that some things did happen so quickly here made it feel less satisfying when I’d harvest crops, care for animals, or reach a relationship milestone. Yes, there’s no bloat here. But there were times I wish there were to make things feel a bit more fulfilling.

I do appreciate that the simplicity in Firefly Village also extends to the appearance. The design is minimalistic, but still incredibly effective. It calls to mind the older Story of Seasons games on, say, the Game Boy or SNES. There’s a charm to it, and I also really appreciated the artistic direction for character portraits that make them feel rustic. 

I appreciate Firefly Village as an experiment into how much you can cut from a Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons style farming game while presenting a cohesive experience. It is interesting. Succinct too! It looks great as well, with some adept spritework. But at the same time, things go so quickly that I didn’t feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment from taking my time and watching my virtual farm and life blossom over time. It’s a charming way to pass the time, but you might not get as much out of it as one of the more robust, larger games.

Firefly Village is available on PCs. 

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