'Stardew Valley meets Twin Peaks' in this 'gritty farming thriller,' and if you don't find all of those words appealing I don't know how to help you

We know the trope of the cozy life sim: you've inherited a tumbledown farmhouse from a distant relative and need to grow crops, make friends with the locals, and restore the farm to its former glory.

That's not quite the case in Crop, the "gritty farming simulator" developer Carbonara Games described to me as "Stardew Valley meets Twin Peaks" when I saw a demo of it last month at GDC. First of all, you're not inheriting your farm from a beloved family member: you've just crawled naked out of the trunk of a crashed car in the woods, wandered onto some farmland, and found the previous farmer dead.

The way you learn to use your shovel in the tutorial is by digging the previous farmer's grave. Welcome to Crop!

Despite the grim setting and horror elements, there's plenty that fans of cozy farm games will recognize in Crop's gameplay loop. You can sell the crops you grow, you can meet and interact with people who live in the town, you can set up irrigation systems and improve the soil by composting, and an unfinished bridge at the edge of your property can be repaired to unlock a new area.

But there's the lingering question of why you'd been stuffed into the trunk of a car in the first place, and why this grim little town seems to be cut off from the rest of the world. As you protect the town from starvation by growing food, selling it, and spending the profits to upgrade your farming tools and equipment, you can begin investigating the mystery of what you're doing here and why here is such a weird, disturbing place.

Among the townsfolk are a local cop and an expert in the paranormal who can slowly help you piece the clues together, but not everyone may be so pleasant. "One villager tries bribing you into giving crops directly to them," Carbonara Games said. "Conflicts escalate, tummies are rumbling, and villagers seem increasingly agitated."

From what I saw of the demo, Crop looks like a creepy good time, containing both a compelling farming system and an intriguing mystery. The farming thriller is being published by 11 bit studios, makers of Frostpunk and This War of Mine. There's currently no release date for Crop, but Carbonara Games said it won't be out in 2026.