SunnySide is a cozy RPG/farming set in a welcoming Japanese countryside filled with charming people and stunning landscapes. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
SunnySide Review Overview
What is SunnySide?
SunnySide is a charming RPG/farming game set in the tranquil forests of the Japanese countryside, where the quaint, titular town eagerly welcomes new residents. As the latest newcomer, you've just bought a plot of land on the town's outskirts in search of a fresh beginning. Here, you'll carve out your own piece of countryside paradise, surrounded by a vibrant community of characters, a bounty of plants and produce, and a few modern conveniences to make your journey delightful.
SunnySide features:
⚫︎ Wholesome and cozy gameplay
⚫︎ 20+ various seeds to plant, tend, and harvest
⚫︎ A colorful and diverse cast of characters to interact with and romance
⚫︎ A wide and expandable starting plot within an equally massive map
⚫︎ Unique drone mode for exploration and aerial photography
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about SunnySide's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefront | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
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| $29.99 | |||||
 PlayStation |
 Xbox |
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| Wishlist only | |||||
SunnySide Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Truly Stunning Set Design Endearing Characters and Setting |
Buggy Mechanics with Insufficient Tutorial Map is a Tad Too Large Surprisingly Poor Performance Directionless and Monotonous |
SunnySide Overall Score - 62/100
It's impossible to avoid comparing this game to Stardew Valley, but after experiencing SunnySide for what it is, it should consider itself lucky that it was compared to Stardew Valley at all. SunnySide is a waste of time that’s bundled up in a sweater and served with hot chocolate—cozy, warm, and extremely charming, but ultimately empty and unfinished. This game has heart and some pretty good visuals here and there, but good looks and well-wishes does not a good game make.
SunnySide Story - 7/10
SunnySide’s story is familiar territory for fans of farming and dating sims. With a straightforward, open-ended introduction, it offers great potential for players to shape their own experiences, whether they dream of a peaceful countryside life or ambitious agricultural endeavors. While the storyline isn't groundbreaking, it is filled with heart, which is what truly matters in this kind of game.
SunnySide Gameplay - 4/10
SunnySide feels and plays like an early-access game, but it isn't. Many features are either missing, bugged, or poorly explained, leaving me soft-locked or completely directionless on multiple occasions. Surprisingly, it is also quite demanding on medium to low-end systems, despite its visuals not suggesting such requirements. Overall, it's more trouble than it's worth and is best suited for killing time if nothing else.
SunnySide Visuals - 6/10
I’m catching some major Yandere Simulator vibes from this game’s characters, which diminishes a lot of its charm. That’s a shame, considering how great the set design truly is alongside its cute character portraits, but cohesion is everything when creating such an atmospheric game like this. At least the titular town is a spectacle worth the bus ride.
SunnySide Audio - 7/10
SunnySide’s audio is mostly limited to ambient nature sounds and a cool, coffee-shop-style soundtrack. Both are perfectly serviceable and help foster the wholesome mood that the game is going for. It’s not anything unique and Stardew Valley’s OST has it beat, but it’s still one of the game’s better aspects.
SunnySide Value for Money - 7/10
You’ll get your money’s worth with this game, alright, but not in the way you intended. It’s a simulator game, so it’ll be $30 well spent through sheer playtime alone if you can stomach the game’s buggy mechanics and slow progression, that is.
SunnySide Review: All Charm and No Substance
I’ll just say it outright, this game is a bit similar to Stardew Valley. That comparison might seem like it’s in bad taste, but once we get into the weeds of what SunnySide is, it’d be lucky to keep that comparison. The truth of the matter is that SunnySide is all charm and no substance, with its cozy exterior hiding a wonky, unfinished mess of mechanics. It’s not a flattering image to start with, but there’s more to it than that.
Let’s start with the game’s biggest offense: its gameplay. It’s hard to get a farming sim wrong because the formula for one is pretty clear-cut. You plant seeds in plots, maintain them in some way every day, and then harvest them once they’re fully grown to turn a profit. SunnySide does this as well with a few additions that I’ll get to, but the farming isn’t the problem.
Talking with NPCs shouldn’t be hard either and, again, SunnySide accomplishes this well enough for it to not be a problem. So if it executes the two main aspects of its gameplay premise well, what’s dragging it down? Execution. For as solid as these pillars of SunnySide stand, they do not fit well together, and this incompatibility is what makes the game feel cheerful and welcoming while being completely empty and unfun.
Take the farming mechanics I mentioned earlier for example. It follows the basic idea to a tee and even innovates on it by giving your character companion apps to access seed purchases and plant information. This eliminates the need to head out and buy seeds, which streamlines your daily proceedings around the farm. Therein lies the problem, but let’s talk about more examples first. The farm itself has plenty of space and plenty of things to clear out for your activities. It’s expandable in the late game and you can even build your own structures on it once you’ve acclimated. Therein lies the problem again, but we can do one more example.
The social aspect of this game offers a wide cast of characters to interact with, all of whom can be contacted via cell phone at any time. This eliminates the need to talk to them in person apart from your first meeting, which makes socializing a breeze. Are you starting to see the pattern yet? I’ll break it down for those who haven’t yet: SunnySide lacks the routine and roughage of farm life we’ve come to expect from this genre. While it keeps things unique, it removes the spirit of the game and leaves you with nothing to do.
There’s no need to go to a store to buy seeds, you can just order them from anywhere and be done with it. There’s no need to find your friends and give them gifts in person because you can just chat them up on your phone. There’s no need to visit the carpenter because you can just make your own house on this empty plot of land. All of these innovations make things easier, yes, but they also remove your chance to socialize, explore, and become a true member of the town you’re in. There’s no impetus to go past your own property when everything you need is already right there.
I appreciate the premise, truly, I do. It makes sense for the setting to be this way, but I’m left with little else to do but water my plants and sleep until the next day. Additionally, the seed packets need to be opened through a separate command before being usable, which feels unnecessary. Each packet contains around a hundred seeds, so unless you're planting acres of crops, you'll only need to buy a few for the first few days. There are pests to watch out for while you lack the resources to guard your crops, but they’ll never destroy more than a couple of them at a time and you’ll have hundreds of seeds leftover to recuperate anyway. What I’m saying is that this game is easy, too easy, even. Of course, you can crank up the difficulty, but the over-execution of this game’s quality of life is the least of its worries.
The game suffers from poorly implemented mechanics. Almost every gameplay element is either buggy, poorly communicated, poorly executed, or simply unfun. Resource gathering is a chore due to slow and janky animations; exploration is tedious because the map is too large; selling produce is confusing since there's no sale box on your property. These issues and more combine to make a game that feels like a time killer bordering on a time waster. The current tutorial is insufficient, and frankly, I don’t see the point in having one if it's going to be this ineffective.
It’s not all bad for SunnySide though, as it does have a few ups to go with its downs. While I’m not a fan of the 3D anime style of the characters as it evokes too much of Yandere Simulator for me to appreciate, I do think that the set design is quite stellar. SunnySide is built like a real small-town area in the mountains and much consideration was given to its architecture. The audio is the coffee shop-style music we’ve come to expect from wholesome games, so no complaints there, although I’m not giving it any praise either.
Above all of this, however, is the game’s heart. I can see that a lot of effort and passion was poured into this game. The devs were thoughtful about the culture they were trying to reflect and it shows in the writing and world-building quality of the game. My first few minutes into SunnySide evoked the same emotions that Stardew Valley did all those years ago, I’m just sad to see the feeling dissipate as the days went by. A fresh start, yes, but one that didn’t last very long.
And that’s SunnySide in an eggshell for you. It’s a good idea that was executed poorly and, much like a starting farm, there is much work left to be done here. As it is now, SunnySide is more charm than substance and its innovations prove to be more detrimental than helpful. Perhaps in the future, when the bugs are taken out and the mechanics are overhauled, I might pay SunnySide another visit. For now, though, I’d rather just be a city slicker dreaming of a fresh start.
Pros of SunnySide
| Things SunnySide Got Right |
|---|
|
Truly Stunning Set Design Endearing Characters and Setting |
Truly Stunning Set Design
For all its flaws, SunnySide is genuinely a picturesque town filled with stylish Japanese homes, cool bamboo forests, and one of the most stunning sunsets I’ve seen in a long time. The devs really went out of their way to make this town feel small and welcoming despite it being physically too large to traverse comfortably.
Endearing Characters and Setting
I’ve said what I’ve wanted to say about the game’s shortcomings, but its NPCs and characters are not among said flaws. The game actually has pretty decent writing for its townspeople, with dialogue reflecting the place’s history and personalities that are both nuanced and varied. It’s far less archetypal than what Stardew Vallet or My Time at Portia has, so it feels like you’re conversing with real people a lot of the time. It’s a shame that the rest of the game isn’t as great, but I’ll take a win where I can get it.
Cons of SunnySide
| Things That SunnySide Can Improve |
|---|
|
Map is a Tad Too Large Buggy Mechanics with Insufficient Tutorial Surprisingly Poor Performance Directionless and Monotonous |
Map is a Tad Too Large
This game’s map is a tad too large to traverse comfortably. There’s a good minute and a half of travel time between your property and the nearest convenience store, so god forbid you forget something from your shopping list because you’re in for a journey if you do. Your character is way too slow to justify this much space and, honestly, I don’t see the appeal of an overly large town if the streets are empty anyway.
Buggy Mechanics with Insufficient Tutorial
Apart from game mechanics being poorly executed in terms of design, they’re just poorly executed in general. A lot of the menus bug out at times, with some of them never opening again unless you restart a save. The overworld traversal is mostly okay, but I do find myself clipping through ledges in some instances. Worst of all, these mechanics are poorly communicated and expressed chiefly through pop-up instructions and weirdly non-specific quests. Some mechanics just aren’t communicated directly at all, like pests attacking your crops.
Surprisingly Poor Performance
Not that this game’s graphical quality would ever indicate as much, but this game requires a beefier setup to run smoothly. I assume it’s because of the large amount of NPC simulations, but going into town could turn into quite the frame-dropping ordeal if your system isn’t up to snuff.
Directionless and Monotonous
The biggest hit to this game’s quality is easily its monotony. While the comparison is overdone, Stardew Valley never runs out of things to throw at you. If it’s not a new quest, it’s a new area or a new event. New NPCs could appear out of nowhere, and clever secrets keep the game exciting. I never feel this momentum in SunnySide. I never ride out the day to its last minute because I have a novel idea for my farm, nor do I ever try to eke out just another day at the end of my play session because I was "this" close to a breakthrough. It’s all just meandering, which is a far cry from the slice of life I was promised.
Is SunnySide Worth It?
Yes, But You Should Just Buy Stardew Valley Instead
Sad as it is to say, SunnySide simply isn’t worth the $30 it’s asking for. You’ll get your money’s worth, sure, but it’s only because this game kills time like there’s no tomorrow. Other games like Stardew Valley, Lightyear Frontier, My Time at Portia, and My Time at Sandrock offer as much, if not more, play time, but are also of higher quality than this. You shouldn’t buy this, but if you already have, you might as well make the best of it.
| Digital Storefront | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
|||||
| $29.99 | |||||
| PlayStation |
Xbox |
||||
| Wishlist only | |||||
SunnySide FAQ
Will SunnySide Ever Have Voice Acting?
According to the game’s developers, although voice acting won’t be available on the game’s full release, they eventually hope to have it in the future. To that end, the game’s developers recently released a casting call for all interested VAs.
Is the SunnySide OST Publicly Available?
Yes. All of SunnySide’s music is available on RainyGamesUK’s official soundcloud.
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SunnySide Product Information
 |
|
| Title | SUNNYSIDE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | June 14, 2024 (Steam) August 16, 2024 (PS5, Xbox Series XIS) |
| Developer | RainyGames |
| Publisher | Merge Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam), Xbox Series XIS, PS5 |
| Genre | Farming Sim, Dating Sim |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | SunnySide Website |
