Pine Lily Village

I was wary of picking up yet another early access game, but I'm glad I did!
From just playing for a few hours, it seems obvious to me that the dev is a huge fan of the genre. A lot of QOL stuff that is sometimes missing from other games is here, like crafting from storage, unbreakable tools, saving anytime etc. I can see the inspiration drawn from a wide range of other farming/life sims (without being a direct copy) and it's good to see a game being made by someone who actually cares.
In terms of gameplay, the farming is very classic Stardew-like stuff. The mines are almost a roguelike experience, with choices of rooms to advance through, some with monsters, some with puzzles, some with riddles etc. The turn based battles are well done, and the boss battles feel just the right level of challenging for me personally - a noticeable step up in difficulty but still knowing I have the tools to win. I love collecting, so having the museum and the temple to complete (akin to a community centre in SDV) is great. I also love that when I'm about to do something stupid, like sell an item I haven't donated yet or eat a food that has no benefit to my situation, the game tells me to reconsider. This has saved me a couple of times!
I am happy to have invested in this games future and definitely recommend it.
Some things I'd like to see in the future, and some small issues I would love to see fixed:
1. Cloud saves! I like to switch between PC and steam deck and currently I can't do that.
2. Full controller support - I am playing fine on steam deck but there are a few things that bother me that could be tightened up. Sometimes trying to move between dialog boxes or shop windows feels like my thumbstick just rolls a dice and decides which one to land on randomly, and same when selecting enemies in battles.
3. Being able to use tools while moving - it feels weird to have to stand still to use the sickle instead of just mowing through the grass.
4. When you buy something from a shop, you are returned to the top of the item list. I would personally prefer if you stayed where you were in the list after purchasing, which makes it easier for buying a bunch of seeds etc. Similarly, when I hand over a quest item or donate to the temple, it would be nice for the cursor to automatically move to "confirm" instead of having to move it manually.
5. Some hairstyles look a bit weird imo because the player character doesn't have ears!
6. Some way to see things that could be donated to the temple but haven't been yet would be nice - I'm constantly keeping one of everything just in case and then making runs to the temple to check. Or maybe this does exist and I've missed it?
7. Being able to interact with NPCs and chests from any angle instead of just from in front
Excited to see this game develop, congrats on the great launch!

I could recommend it for the accessibility features alone. Being able to make days longer when you need or want to makes this game so nice to play. (can also be shorter for people who want a challenge) You can also make the fishing game easier- it's fun exactly as it is, but overall the game lets you play how you wish to play and that's just perfect. Those settings can be change at any time while you play.
Plus I love the mines, combat is usually not my favorite thing in this type of games but this one is turn-based, with elemental interactions, it suits the genre very well.

Please ignore my current playtime! I also played the play test for a couple of hours. I absolutely love this little farm sim. The art and sprites adorable, the story is fresh, and the QOL of life for a farm sim is great. You can save any time you want!!!
It's extremely polished for an early access, and the developer has a detailed roadmap.
Fun bonus: solo female developer who started working on this as a hobby. How cool is that?!
Second fun bonus: runs well on Steam Deck.

One thing I'd like to highlight, since it's unfortunately so rare in farming games: you can save at any time! No need to wait until autosave when you sleep at night. I wish more farming sims did that.
It's still too early for me to say much about the story etc., but my first impression of the game is very good.
Lots of accessibility options, you can e.g. also adjust the day length.
I appreciate that the town is pretty compact. You don't need to travel big distances to visit several villagers, they're all nearby (at least those in the area I have access to so far).
The combat is really interesting to me, as it's turn based. You have action points and can use them to cast spells or use items to heal etc.
The dungeons in general are cool, between the fights there's also puzzles, fishing, bug catching etc.

editing to say that the ability to save whenever I want is the most important part of any game like this for me. Love that this game has that and everyone else needs to catch up bc this is basic QoL stuff, honestly.
Cute game, wish there was a bit more to do. Thumbs up because it scratches the itch and it isn't unplayable on day one. I have played for 5 hours straight with almost no issues and absolutely no crashes or game breakers. Movement is a bit slow, but not miserably so. Art is cute as far as pixel graphics go. Don't love the resource gathering being so iffy or that crafting everything requires base materials plus a special crystal, but that is me nitpicking. It is a fun little farming sim with a wee magic pet. After Pixelshire, this is gold.
My one real gripe is the chest situation. I've just quit after losing 7 small health potions and 2 large ones painstakingly collected over the last 5 hours. How did I lose them? I put them in a chest which opened while I was holding a tool, allowed me to place items, and then broke when I closed it because of the tool I was holding. Just weird that it opens at all if it is going to break. Weirder that the things already in the chest went back into my inventory, but the ones I was trying to put in disappeared. Something to be wary of when dealing with chests.

Yes and no on the recommendation of this game.
Do you have lots of time to kill and like to do copious amounts of repetitive grinding? Then this game is for you.
Its not a terrible game all things considered, but it could use a lot of quality of life upgrades and pacing.
1) Story : its kind of blah. The intro tells you that this war happened and now you gotta help restore the town....great.....cool...im on board... but you do very little to any real 'restoring'. I've put 20 hours give or take into this game. The town you end up in- the buildings are all already there and fully erect and what not. The only thing to 'restore' would be to get trade routes re-established which you do random questions for or MAYBE the temple once you unlock that pillar by putting in items. Other than that... you add some wood to singular bridge, plink with your pickaxe down a path in summer, and then wait around to trigger a mushroom grove event later in summer. There is a random portal you see very early on around the village but you need to submit a RIDICULOUS amount of items to unlock it -_- I've yet to unlock it, I have no idea whats behind the portal or whether its worth it.
2) Items & Upgrade Pacing : Okay... like... c'mon. First upgrade for your tools is a hefty 2k each, then the next upgrade shoots up to 10k?! like cmon, its not like theres any decent way to make money that isn't super grindy. In this game you don't collect the ores/ingots to upgrade your tools - oh no, thats for super expensive crafting later. There isn't even a crop that produces in 2 days, the quickest is a 4 day crop. Fishing takes forever and the gil even WITH the 75% increase to fish money making is laughable. The skill tree is ridiculous making you choose between stats and seems arbitary.. like okay we give you choice of 1 of 2 skills every 3, 6, 8 or whatever levels so no 'fun' surprise when you level inbetween the marks and it doesn't seem to do any additional stat boost. Like your magic attack doesn't hit more when you get a level up unless its one of the 'goal' levels to which you can choose one of two skills to 'keep' which may increase your damage. Also upgrades kind of suck, yeah you hit things faster and can hit the harder word or stone in your yard... but it doesn't do any area affect / you cannot plow down a whole mess of rocks or trees.
3) Ingot Making / Ritual table : .....this just seems to add another level of grind element because you need these blue crystals to use the ritual table (which is separate from your crafting table but you need to use the ritual table to make some ingredients to use in the crafting table.. yeah I know). Unlike other games where your main purpose is to grind the mines for ore and then get skill tree upgrades or special moves that drop the coal you need to use the forge, this game makes you get the blue crystals to use the ritual stone but you don't really want to grind rocks because theres other ways to get iron and gold and ONLY blue rocks will drop the blue crystal, otherwise you have to grind dungeons. or fish for treasure..I had to stop 2-3 times doing whatever I was doing to grind up some blue crystals, because a ton of recipes use gold or iron ingots that you want to use to make stuff...like idk early sprinklers which brings me back to the grind again. To purchase the cheapest seed which takes 4 days to harvest... its 50 gil a piece. Not cheap by any means, especially when GEMS which are supposed to be valuable sell for 33-38 gil a pop.. so even if you sell 1 gem it won't be enough to buy the cheapest seed...which means if you want 'cheaper' seeds you have to grind again fishing for treasure or plinking at the plants in your yard or the occasional tree
4) Health - to make the same 3 dungeons constantly challenging.. the game doesn't let you upgrade your health at all, which makes no sense since you can upgrade your damage, your energy, your tools, but not your health? Which means boss battles take about the same amount of useless time and of course several quests make you get to the end each time.
5) Guild battle quests - great concept to make extra money, if it didn't require multiple trips to complete 1 and thus increase the grind factor. The most expensive one I saw (which seems to randomly trigger because the same mob can be 1.6k one week or 900 the next) is to kill 6 of some mob type. Which you are like... cool I see a lot of this mob when I go into the cave. Except of course when you go into said cave, you will go through all the number of fights possible for that run and only get 2/6 - if you are lucky 3/6, so it takes you 2-3 runs to complete this quest and of course its timed and you can only have 1 at a time... so you have to literately want to go into the dungeon consecutive days in a row to want to complete one of these things. Why didn't they just add a 1-2k battle mark for the boss battle 1x- idk, they should. Even the gathering ore's to fill a measely 300-600 gil one can't be done in 1 cave crawl. I thought 'oh theres a lot of iron ore' - presides to go in and only 2-3 spawn but need 6-8
6) The characters - kinda boring tbh. Theres no dating aspect, no level up or perks aspects with the characters and you have to do their quests because you can't obtain certain items or recipes otherwise. You can only talk to them once and the restaurant guy doesn't even sell you food which would have been nice early game, especially as there is no easy way to get energy boosts early game.
7) book gathering - nice concept, no great reward
8) objects in the game - you see things you should be able to destroy to get extra items...guess what.. they aren't destroyable at all
9) temple - what a let down. It is so difficult to get these items, especially the bugs which involve extra solving, theres no hint as to where to get these items and the game is so new there is no wiki either. You don't get any reward until you complete a 'set of 4' in the box, but you don't get any movement in the temple (aka water) until you complete all 4 sets of 4 on one piller. The only one you can really get 20 hours in, is the cave one, theres of course a money one - lol - a farming one...which you can't get until you reach all seasons and make the crops, theres a bug/fish one thats so difficult its ridiculous, then theres a town people one (?) again no idea what this does but of course again who knows where you get some of the items as it seems random and again difficult. They should include a fishing book too - to tell you where and what 'rarity' fish you need for each spot and there should be hints as theres a million bug and fishing spots.
Game checks the box on a farm sim but the grind aspect is way too high (and I say this as someone who grinds a lot and has put 100 hours into games) with not enough rewards sprinkled in for the player at all. The pacing and 'ease of difficulty' that should be happening over time is not happening at all, it needs to be better balanced. And you know many farm sims include berries or destructible items to give the player 'free' things, going to the 'fishing' island to grab a random 1-2 items in the cave IF it has respawned is not the same as getting free berries or easy to grab items instead of grinding for everything and the portal should reward you or SPEAK OR SOMETHING!! Who cares that 'whispering gets louder' EVERY ITEM even 20+ ITEMS LATER! Also why does the player need 3 of this, 5 of that, 1 of this - it should all just be 1 and there should be a checklist or something with rewards every time you put something in

I am really enjoying this game. The dev lists Stardew as an inspiration, and that is very obvious, but I think in a good way, not just a straight rip like some other that have been released.
The farming in this game doesn't do anything to unique or new, but it works and it's fun
Mining/combat is one of the most unique for this type of game. The mines progress from room to room, and you can sort of choose your path to the next room that has either combat, mining, fishing, or puzzles. I like it a lot. And the combat is turn based with spells cast from your magical spellbound animal companion, because why not!
The fishing mini game is also cool. It is quick, you either catch it or don't. I think it works really well because you aren't battling fish forever, but it's also a challenge and not just press button, catch fish.
I WOULD NOT recommend this game for folks who play these games for NPC interactions or romance. That is one area it is really lacking. That isn't my favorite part of these games, so while it was noticeable and a bit of a bummer, it didn't ruin the game or anything.