Video Game / Grimshire

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Grimshire is a Farm Life Sim game in development by Acute Owl Studio. A demo, released on Steam on September 2nd, 2024, allows the player to play through the first week of the game. Grimshire entered Early Access on July 22, 2025 and will be fully released in 2026.

After being rescued from your Doomed Hometown after a disaster engulfed it in flames, you awake in the small town of Grimshire. The villagers are quick to welcome you and give you an abandoned farm to live in, tools to harvest resources with, and assurance that you can stay as long as you need. But with plague happening beyond the town's limits, it quickly becomes clear that Grimshire must become self-sufficient if it is to survive. Luckily, you have your farm and Grimshire's wild spaces at your disposal, but even that might not be enough…

The demo is available on Steam.

Previews: Reveal Trailer

Grimshire contains examples of:

• Acceptable Breaks from Reality: When the red tide comes in, you can still use the diseased water to fill your watering pail to take care of your crops, despite the water being so toxic that just standing where it meets the shore saps away your stamina.
• An Interior Designer Is You:
  • The player can decorate the inside of their farmhouse with wallpapers, flooring, crafting stations, and furniture.
• Anti-Frustration Features: You don't have to go to the pantry to keep tabs on how much food is in there: you get a nightly newsletter that tells you, and you can check on the quest tab at any time.
  • Your tools are on a wheel, freeing up backpack space.
  • Your farm buildings are upgraded immediately.
• Anyone Can Die: From the outset, the goat woman you arrive at Grimshire with passes from her injuries, establishing the game as much darker than other farming sims. Any of the 10 romanceable villagers can also die, either as the result of failing their project, not having enough food, or the result of both during the siege.
• Arc Villain: Gustavo Goldwhiskers, a corrupt official from the royals claims to have settled in Grimshire to defend the town from the plague, but it's only an excuse to demand rations from their supplies. He's disposed of by the pirates led by Greyfang, who turn out to be worse than he is, to the point that the townspeople refuse to give him their food.
• Blood Is Squicker in Water: One interpretation of Redtide, a phenomenon that rears its sickly head in late spring and makes some fish that you catch in the coastal waters (already one of your mainstay options for carnivore rations) diseased and inedible along with making the waters irritating and harmful. Combatting it requires you to choose between building a fish farm for two or three hardy species or planting mirebinding flora to reduce the natural impact.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: You have a chance of finding Bottled Surprises in the mines or buying them from Fin every week. They can have anything from furniture, random notes, food, items, to literal bat shit.
• Cabin Fever: Being barricaded in a tiny temple for two weeks, not knowing if their food or defenses will hold, while the feral pirates pound on the walls incessantly, results in the villagers becoming very stressed out.
• Carnivore Confusion: Defied. The game acknowledges that Grimshire has both carnivores and herbivores living in it, as the player must provide food for both groups. However, all carnivores eat fish and meat from fictional creatures which resemble invertebrates rather than other mammals.
• Character Customization: Players can choose to play as a variety of animals, and customize their fur colors, clothing colors, pronouns, and name.
• Close-Knit Community: The whole of Grimshire is a small village of less than fifty people who, pre-outbreak, got the majority of their food via trading after the local farm fell into disrepair. This ends up being greatly to the town's benefit, as the surrounding geography of it being set in a mountainous region with its only access point being their river port largely protects them from the outbreak spreading in the rest of the world. The terrain is too treacherous for the infected to traverse, and because the infected will not get near the water, they can't reach the sole access point, which leaves them rather safe from the infection aside from the lack of food. At least until the pirates accidentally infect themselves and crash their ship on the shore. Despite the dangers closing in on them and any smaller quarrels within the community, the residents find their greatest strength in banding together, aiding and protecting one another through these difficult times as friends and neighbors, even the ones like Fin who stop by weekly, or the protagonist who was brought in at the beginning of the year.
• Cooking Mechanics: The abandoned farmhouse comes with a stove where the player can cook, assuming they have a recipe’s required ingredients. With the right equipment and ingredients, certain foods can be dried, smoked, or preserved to extend their shelf life.
• Creepy Crows: Come fall, Grimshire is covered in crows. This ends up being a problem since they begin eating up both your crops and what can be foraged in the wild. They can even potentially cause the deaths of either Adeline or Beryl if you fail to complete their respective town tasks in time.
• Doomed Hometown: The player character is rescued from the capital by Fin, a traveling merchant, at the very beginning of the game. Fin isn’t certain what happened there due to the smoke and flames, but when he returns to scout the area, he finds the city destroyed and feral citizens roaming the streets.
• Due to the Dead: Whenever there's a death in Grimshire, expect Edgar to speak as their bodies are laid on a pyre and cremated unless the family requests otherwise. This includes two guaranteed funerals in the first year, both concerning outsiders - the first being the day after your arrival when the unnamed goat woman succumbs to her wounds, and the second being in the wake of the temple siege in winter, concerning at the very least six bodies — all of them Greyfang's plagued crew who froze in the blizzard while battering at the temple walls — and any losses experienced during the siege.
• Establishing Series Moment: During the beginning of the game, a critically injured nameless woman who managed to escape with you and Fin dies the second in-game day, making it clear that this isn't just a farming sim, but a journey for survival.
• The Famine: With the plague cutting Grimshire off from the outside world and eliminating trade, the town suddenly faces the risk of starvation. Keeping everyone fed is the main goal of the game. The weekly pantry tax doesn't help matters either. Theo nips it in the bud come Greyfang's outrageous demands — and infection with plague — in winter.
• Fantastic Racism: It's heavily downplayed, but there are some hints at tension between carnivore and herbivore species in the world of Grimshire, even if not directly in the village. Namely from Gustavo, who makes a couple denigrating remarks about carnivores on one of his visits to the village.
• Fatigue Mechanic: The player themselves doesn't need to eat to survive, but it does restore some stamina.
• Fishing Minigame: You can fish at various locations around town, including the ocean, the swamp, and the river. To catch a fish, the player must cast close to the silhouettes of fish in the water, wiggle their line to get the fishes’ attention, and reel in once something bites and the bobber disappears.
• Furry Confusion: Averted thanks to several elements. All of the anthropomorphic villagers are wild rather than domestic species, and all of them are mammals while all birds and fish seen are normal animals. Additionally, all of the livestock the player can tend to resemble invertebrates rather than "normal" domestic animals like cows or sheep.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The unseen Empress Priscilla Snowfur is mentioned to be a despot. She, through her Master of Coin Goldwhiskers, imposes the pantry tax, which is punishable with starving the settlements. When Summer arrives, some carnivores start a rebellion against her, resulting in the tax increasing.
• Grimy Water: The Red Tide which flows into the village during Year 1's Summer. It gives the ocean water a red outline where it meets the shore, and causes much of their saltwater fish catches to become incredibly sickly and inedible. Not to mention it causes burning and irritation on contact, making it hazardous to the touch and eats away at your stamina bar, so fishing on the beach and traversing the marsh both become potential dangers. It is apparently even worse if ingested directly, and can kill within a matter of hours.
• "Groundhog Day" Loop: As the game is in early access, Winter 28 loops and no progress made is saved.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Honestly, whose bright idea was it to name the village Grimshire?
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: The game begins late at night, during a rainstorm, with Fin bringing you and another unconscious character to Grimshire’s docks after rescuing you from the capital.
• Karmic Death: Greyfang, Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist pirate that he is, ends up getting infected with the feral plague, as does his crew, when he's torching one of his "protected ports" for failing to pay "the needed fee." Then all of them get frozen to death in the blizzard while the townpeople take shelter in Priest Edgar's temple.
• Lost Toy Grievance: After the church sleepover, Poppy tells you that her favourite toy was destroyed by one of the ferals.
• Make an Example of Them: Should the player fail to have enough food when the pirates first show up, Kai and Tano angrily confront Greyfang, yelling at him that they don't have enough as is and scum like him don't deserve any of it. Greyfang stabs one of them in the gut for their insolence and they bleed out in front of the whole town.
• Mayor Pain: Theo isn't an evil person per se, but it's readily apparent that he's little more than a mayor in name only and functions mostly as a tax collector while passing most of his responsibilities of the job onto his assistant, Percy, whom the rest of the town respects far more than him. Even so, he will still occasionally find his spine and do his job to keep things peaceful and exhibits some leadership, such as when he steps between the villagers and Gustavo's soldiers when an argument over them taking their food comes about. None of the villagers are particularly happy about still giving the soldiers more of their food in tribute, but they do acknowledge that Theo stepping in prevented the situation from escalating to a dangerous point.
• Mix-and-Match Critters:
  • The livestock are a mishmash of farm animals and invertebrates.
  • The protagonist character is one of sorts; due to character customization, the player's avatar can have the traits of several different breeds of animal from the same general species category, rather than being any one specified animal unless designed that way.
• Neglected Sidequest Consequence: A "failure to do a quest properly" type happens if you fail to complete a character's selected sidequest for the season. In this case, that particular character will attempt to do it on their own, and perish as a result.
• No Hero Discount: Grimshire being closed off to the outside world entirely won't stop its shopkeepers from charging you gold for their goods, even when you're the one everyone is relying on for food. Although since Fin is still able to buy some items from other surviving towns, it becomes justified since money hasn't lost value yet. Unlike other farming sims, the lack of a shipping bin means the player must go up and trade limited gold back and forth.
• Nothing Is Scarier: There are no active ferals shown on screen, with only bits and pieces of what's going on in the outside world filtering in from Fin and the tax collectors. This leaves the player to imagine the disintegration of society outside of Grimshire.
  • After the first day of Winter, Greyfang lays down a ludicrous tax that convinces the villagers to fortify the temple instead of give in to his demands. Come Saturday and Fin doesn't show up, and the pirates don't show up on Sunday either. A whole week goes by until Fin finally arrives and tell them the pirates are indeed coming, but they've been infected.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The "zombies" of Grimshire appear to be of the "infected" variant of monster rather than the undead, the closest approximate condition to their current state being an aggressive rabies infection. Bites can turn people, but if they die of their wounds before it sets in, they don't rise back up. They can be killed by normal means without needing special conditions like headshots such as freezing to death in a blizzard, but they can keep going for days without food or water. Most notable of all, one symptom is an extreme aversion to water, including the ocean. This last point is what keeps Grimshire safe until Greyfang's ship full of infected crashes on their shore as the only way in or out of the village is through their ocean port, and they will not enter the water of their own accord.
• Sadistic Choice: On the final quest of Year 1, if the player fails to find enough food or properly fortify the building, they will be forced to let Logan or Oliver distract the feral pirates, resulting in his death.
• Snow Means Death: The final quest of Year 1 concludes with Greyfang and his fellow pirates frozen to death, with either Logan or Oliver dying too if there's not enough food or fortification.
• Tempting Fate: After the villagers barricade themselves in the church and hear Greyfang's ship run itself onto their shore, Theo tells everyone to be quiet to not draw their attention. He wonders in a whisper if there might be any way for them to know that's where they're hiding, only for the entirety of the church to be surrounded by roaring voices and pounding fists seconds later.
• There Is Another: It's apparently been quite some time since Kai and Tano have met other Feline species in their world. When greeted by a player using a Feline model character for the first time, both brothers will express how nice they think it is to have a new Feline in the village.
• Wizard Needs Food Badly: A main mechanic of the game is growing, foraging, and fishing up food to provide for Grimshire’s townsfolk. Percy’s newsletter, which appears at the beginning of each day, tallies up the food in the storeroom and what percentage of the townspeople have been fed.
• World of Funny Animals: Everyone in Grimshire, including the player character, is an anthropomorphic woodland animal.
• Zombie Apocalypse: The plague suddenly affecting the world seems to be a form of this, with townspeople suddenly becoming feral and attacking each other. Unlike most examples, the victims don't become walking corpses and hate water, implying it's a form of rabies. The village gets a nice taste of this when Greyfang accidentally infects his entire ship, only saved because the feral pirates froze to death in a blizzard while they sheltered in a fortified building.