Nippon Ichi Software’s new farming simulator Village in the Shade finally released in Japan on July 30, with a Western release coming in the fall of 2026. The title has been garnering a lot of attention ever since it was announced, mostly due to being promoted as a wholesome and cozy game, while simultaneously foreshadowing the kind of dark twists and turns one would expect from the team behind the Yomawari series.
Just four days after its domestic release, on August 3, the developers announced that the cumulative sales of Village in the Shade had already topped 100,000 copies, with physical editions of the game already going out of stock across numerous stores in Japan. The publisher apologized for the inconvenience and said it was preparing new shipments.
Village in the Shade is set in the remote Japanese mountain village Kagatsu, where you, as the protagonist, will settle down and dedicate your daily life to cultivating crops, fishing, hunting, raising animals and interacting with the local community. However, the village has some “secrets” and “rules that must never be broken,” and it seems that carelessly going out at night is a bit more dangerous that one would think.
With a CERO C rating (for ages 15+), the game does dabble into the horror territory reminiscent of Yomawari. But as the developers told us in one of our previous interviews, rather than going for classic horror tropes, like gore and jumpscares, Village in the Shade focuses on the “uncanniness” of the Kagatsu Village and the hints of folk horror revolving around it.
On the other hand, for those who aren’t big fans of horror, Nippon Ichi Software has also prepared a Peaceful Life Mode, which allows you to completely focus on the farming simulator portion of the game without having to worry about triggering scary events.
The global version of Village in the Shade is set to release in fall 2026 for PC (Steam), PS5 and Nintendo Switch systems. The PC version will support English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Traditional Chinese and Korean, while the console versions will support English, French and Spanish.
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