Echoes of the Plum Grove (2024)

Developer: Unwound Games

I try to limit myself to one farming sim every couple of months, since for me a new farming sim means I’m about to get fully lost and immersed in a game for a long time. I figured it was time to pick up a new one, and I’ve been itching for a farming sim seems to do something different than the rest. That’s why I chose to pick up Echoes of the Plum Grove after watching and reading a couple positive reviews. Echoes of the Plum Grove is a light-hearted farming sim that takes place in Honeywood, a (fantastical) version of a British colony in America. It uses dark humor and historical fiction to slightly distinguish itself from others in its genre, meanwhile falling short due to cumbersome controls, tedious tasks, and lackluster character writing.

Echoes of the Plum Grove starts off like most farming sims, except in this case, you’re traveling to the “new world” from Great Britain (they don’t actually say the names of the country, but this is heavily implied). As would be expected in the 1600-1700s, your journey on a ship is a dangerous one, with a great storm destroying the ship and taking many lives. You barely manage to survive and wash up on the shore of Honeywood, where you will start your new life as a farmer. The tutorial for this game is very brief, but it does at least leave you with a tutorial “guide” that you can access at any time through your menu. This answers some questions you might have, and gets you started with farming and getting to know the town. It is a bit off a rough start without much guidance, I would imagine even more so for anyone who doesn’t regularly play farming sims. In Honeywood, you’ll have a chance to get married, raise a family, and then continue playing the game as your descendants. You’ll also discover some supernatural elements and mysteries about to the island you live on.

Within the first five minutes of the game, your friend and presumably everyone else on the ship dies in the shipwreck.

Echoes of the Plum Grove’s use of a Paper Mario art style makes for very cute and wholesome look, which is an especially interesting dynamic when combined with the game's dark sense of humor. Seeing the adorable little faces of the characters get all scrunched up for the rest of the day when you insult one of them is giving “im angy”, and when your character is sick and covered in bumps it’s more funny than gross. The character customization is simple but fairly open-ended, allowing you to be anyone even in a historical fiction farming sim. I also enjoyed the soundtrack, I felt that the early spring songs are really upbeat and enjoyable, drawing you into the game. Some can be a little repetitive, but for the most part it’s a good soundtrack to listen to from start to finish.

Attending the seasonal events is exciting, but it felt like every time I went there wasn’t much to do or activities to participate in.

Throughout this review, I will talk about the many critiques I have about this game, but before I do, I should clarify that I put 35 hours into this game. Yes, that’s a lot to play a game I have issues with; however, it doesn’t take much besides a decent gameplay loop for me to keep playing a farming sim. I like to play a farming sim for an in-game year before I make my decision about it, so much like I did with the remake Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, I decided to see this one through. My biggest problem is with the controls being a disaster. There’s something really odd I learned about this game in that if you don’t let an interaction “finish”, it doesn’t do it. For example, it’s very easy to interrupt the action of planting a seed. You press the button to do it, your character crouches over, and you think you can keep moving - but you can’t, yet. You have to wait until you’re back up, completely finished with the “animation”, for it to actually stick. This was incredibly annoying since this is a game genre where you tend to move quickly, and I kept finding I was often cancelling the action on accident. Eventually, I just learned to work around it, sometimes having to repeat myself until it actually worked. Another issue with gameplay was with positioning yourself correctly. You “interact” with any object that’s in the yellow square in front of you, and on the controller, sometimes it’s really tricky to position yourself right. If you don’t you end up doing something goofy like eating the food item you’re holding rather than inserting into a machine (ironically, because of the prior “interruption” issue I mentioned, I’m usually able to cancel my eating animation by doing something else quickly). Again, anything that slows you down when you’re trying to tend to your farm and processes is a pain, so this is the number one thing I believe the devs should be working to fix.

It's hard to see at night without a lamp, but that feels realistic to the time period. The problem bigger problem is controlling where that yellow square aims.

Mining isn't very fun. Going to mine for the day is always exactly the same, with nothing new to see, and it takes about 5 mins in and out to get everything you need once you’ve been a couple of times. You don't actually "spend a day" mining like most games, nor do you get to explore deeper every day. I am okay with having to use the lantern to see the cave, it adds a level of spookiness, but you would think that eventually you could get some actual light in the mines, as an upgrade (maybe it’s a thing I haven’t gotten to). Despite the fact that the mines aren’t really interesting, you are expected to go very often because if you don't, you'll never accumulate enough iron to make all the things you need to make. I think the core of the problem with crafting lies in the fact that the game expects you to buy crafting supplies, like iron bars or bricks. You cannot make a furnace without using something that can only be made in a furnace. In my opinion, this removes one of the most enjoyable parts of farming sims, which is slowly being able to craft more and more items and machines with things that you produce and mine yourself. I spent the whole first year buying nails, because making an anvil required so many supplies that I couldn't easily get to with everything else I needed to do. I doubt that the game expected me to not build a barn or a coop for that long. It removes a lot of the fun from crafting.

Although Honeywood is full of different personalities, it took me a while to distinguish characters from one another. Dialogue is not only incredibly boring and repetitive; it is very rarely accurate to the situation. If you talk to someone at a wedding (even the person currently getting married), the first thing they'll say might be "keep it down", but if you talk to them again they'll say something normal, like asking how you’re doing. You eventually get to know characters better and understand how their “traits” affect them. There’s a lot of options when it comes to people you can romance, but if you’re not quick, they will be married to someone else and having babies. All that being said, there were still plenty of things I liked about this game, and ways I found it unique. The ability to build dislike with villagers and insult someone everyday is really funny to me, especially when I do it to them during a special event. Becoming ill in the 1600s adds a level of challenge that I think works well, and the subsequent deaths combined with everyone having lots of babies allows for the town to always be changing. I really like that you can still buy and sell items outside of business hours if you happen to see the store person out and about, and it's a nice touch you can technically exchange goods instead of buying outright. Also, the town of Honeywood is really diverse when it comes to race, gender, and sexuality! Sure, this isn’t what 1600s British colonies looked like, but this is also a game with mermaids, so this is a very cool change in my opinion. If it was a more realistic history game, there would be serious tonal issues in trying to work in colonialism and war.

I am somewhat curious to know: if I keep playing, will I eventually end up in the revolutionary war?

Echoes of the Plum Grove is a farming sim that clearly had some quirky and fun ideas on how to shake up a farming sim, but unfortunately it didn’t execute well in a lot of aspects that are just basic to the genre. I still had a fun time with it, especially once I got past and used to some of its flaws, so I have pretty mixed feelings. There’s other farming sims I would definitely recommend above this one, but, if you’re a farming sim connoisseur and want something a little different, this might still be of interest to you. I would imagine it may play better on mouse and keyboard, and might be better suited for someone who really enjoys the family tree “lineage” aspect of a game like this. I’ve personally hit a natural stopping point in my game during winter of the first year, but I could see myself coming back to it if there’s some updates or fixes.

Echoes of the Plum Grove is available on PC, Switch, and Mac

Played on: PC (Steam Deck)

Last Played: 2/25/2025

Playtime: 38 hrs