SunnySide Impression

Provided the game gets the continued work to make the most of its grand goals, there could be something special here eventually.

RainyGames’ SunnySide is an ambitious farming sim. The game provides plenty of welcome ideas and some impressive depth to both its systems and farming options through its modern-day setting and conveniences. However, an abundance of technical issues and some clunky or lacking implementations of other aspects suggest it’s a game that perhaps bit off a bit more than it could chew. In its launch state, the elements don’t quite come together as well as they could, but provided the game gets the continued work to make the most of its grand goals, there could be something special here eventually.

SunnySide sees players controlling their own customised character, who decided to move from the city to the eponymous rural Japanese village, though it is still a short bus ride from the city of Higashi. Leaping into the unknown and deciding to become a farmer, they purchase a spot of land, discovering that it comes with fewer amenities than they expected. Fortunately, the locals, while encouraging the new arrival to do most of the work themselves, are more than forthcoming with the information, tools, and blueprints necessary to get themselves set up.

Players have lots of options in character creation.

The game features a huge deal of flexibility in its character creation, including an interesting approach to gender selection. Rather than a blanket male or female choice, players are given a sliding scale from maximum femininity to maximum masculinity, with neutral/non-binary in the middle. It’s a nice touch, but works a bit awkwardly with the cast’s romantic preferences. Each potential romantic companion has a range of preferences on this scale — not necessarily contiguous — and won’t be interested in those outside of it. This means players almost need to decide who they might want to romance and set their character before the game starts as there’s no apparent way to change it later.

During the tutorial sections where the player is introduced to the basics of farming, building, crafting, cooking, resource gathering, etc., they find themselves exploring an old cave/mine. Here they uncover an enigmatic floating robot dubbed Sparky. Sparky is a creation of an alien race called the Zant, which ostensibly travels the galaxy and aids in the creation of life on the planets it encounters. However, Sparky and other Zant became trapped hundreds of years ago, with unknown causes turning most of them hostile.

This leads to the game’s RPG element, as players explore the caves to gather vital resources, they also must restore power to the Zant facilities at the best of Sparky, while engaging hostile Zant in very straightforward turn-based combat. The turn-based combat, with some deckbuilding elements, starts off interesting enough, but it ultimately feels a bit unnecessary. The game’s balancing means that players don’t need to engage with it very much at all, as all regular encounters can be run away from and the difficulty options make the early boss fights at least a doddle. It feels like it would’ve been fine with straight exploration and resource gathering.

A welcoming community gives players all they need to get started.

Fortunately, while the combat isn’t very exciting, the farming options at the player’s disposal are deep and flexible. There are loads of potential crops for players to choose from, as well as the options to raise animals. The biggest issue early on for players will be to find the resources needed to create the buildings and infrastructure for them and any animals to live in, as well as for keeping crops safe from roving wildlife. Most of the elements needed for building — such as wooden beams and clay tiles — need to be crafted by certain residents in SunnySide from the resources provided to them by the player. It helps foster a good sense of community and gets players moving around nicely as they become familiar with what needs to be collected and where it needs to be taken for them to get what they need.

Caring for crops and animals offers just the right balance between engagement and ease of use early on, even if it will obviously get a bit much to keep on top of manually as their farm expands to cover the full available area. However, there are options down the line for players to set up their own irrigation and other systems to help take care of everything. There is a lot for players to work on as they wish, be it engaging with a fairly intricate cooking system, helping the local university research the local fauna, spending time with the citizens of SunnySide, and more. However, some of the controls can be quite clunky, especially when trying to use a gamepad. The game uses a smartphone-based menu for a lot of its interactions, which works decently enough, but a lot of the finer elements are just a little bit awkward, and the inventory management gets a bit frustrating, especially with the limited bag size.

Having a hose makes watering the plants a lot easier.

The writing of the game so far is good. There’s an impressive variety to the cast, each with their own personalities and goals, and some interesting backstories behind them where influences from Persona Social Links clearly come in (alongside certain presentational elements). The 3D graphics work well enough, even if they are a bit bland sometimes, particularly on the character models compared to their 2D artwork, but the music is both enjoyable to listen to and catchy. However, these are currently let down by significant performance issues. While the optimisation and other issues are being actively worked on, players will expect significant slowdowns in various areas, while there are noticeable bugs and quirks such as texture pop-ins.

In its present state, recommendations to SunnySide come heavily caveated. There is massive potential for the game, and the development team has been pushing out plenty of post-launch updates. It certainly feels like extra time will benefit the game greatly, both in terms of fixing the issues it currently has and for the potential of additional content down the line. Farming sim fans with appropriate hardware will be still able to find enjoyment, even if not as much as hoped quite yet.