A farming RPG on an island with a choice to make
Pumpkin Days is a traditional farming RPG where you settle on an island and build a life at your own pace. You pick one of three towns to start in: Wahoo Beach for a tropical setting, Pumpkinvale for a simple river town, or Diamond Falls up in the snowy mountains. Each town has over 30 townsfolk, and you can travel to the others later and buy property there. The mayor puts you straight to work on your farm, where there are over 90 crops and over 60 flowers to grow. Beyond farming you can fish over 100 kinds of fish in rivers, lakes and oceans that change with the seasons, catch over 100 bugs, mine over 70 types of gems and ores, cook from over 600 recipes, raise and breed animals for milk, wool and eggs, and keep cats or dogs as pets. Cats bring home bugs and dogs bring home fossils.
The island's story gives you a real decision. Jounce Corp. wants to build a factory. You can side with the townsfolk and fill out the museum to stop it, or side with the factory and get rich fast, with some consequence. Alongside that, there are over 100 dateable characters, same-sex marriage with no gender restriction, polyamorous relationships where you can marry multiple characters with up to three in the wedding ceremony, or simply have a roommate. You can raise a family and have up to eight kids.
Playing together with your group
Pumpkin Days has two multiplayer modes, so your group picks how competitive to get. Farm together with a friend and you share resources and help complete quests on a shared farm. Or farm separately with an optional competitive points system that scores all the players, keeping things friendly while still tracking who is ahead. Both modes are online, so your group can join up without being in the same room.
What to know before starting
The character creator is non-binary: nothing is gender locked or specific to the player, and body sliders let you shape your character. There are four difficulty modes, from a relaxing farming game up to a harder challenge, so a group with mixed tastes can settle on one. The game carries a Sexual Content tag alongside its dating sim elements, so keep that in mind. House customization is wide open if you like tinkering: paint the roof, window frames, walls and floor with a variety of patterns, mix and match without restriction, and craft custom clothes from pattern wallpapers that the shops do not sell. Crafting also covers hundreds of textures and pattern wallpapers for furniture.