
Wytchwood also bears a striking resemblance to the unique 2D art style and survival gameplay of The Flame In The Flood. While the narrative of Wychwood gives players objectives to complete, it is easy to lose hours just exploring, crafting, and amassing goods in the colorful biomes of each location's map. The process of foraging, crafting, and stack-crafting items encourages exploration to find new ingredients and unlock new recipes. Most potions and reagents are crafted using just a few items, with many recipes calling for other crafted items to increase the difficulty. Wytchwood mimics this easy crafting system, and even takes it a step further, removing the need for crafting benches so players can create items anywhere they are exploring.

Related: Animal Crossing Bell Glitches That Still Work To Make Money Fast While there are areas for improvement in New Horizons' crafting process, it is one of the key factors for the game's success with simulation fans and makes both foraging and crafting a great way to unwind after a stressful day. The numerous items are often crafted with only a handful of forageable ingredients, making the process rewarding and satisfying for players making items to decorate homes and islands. While Wytchwood and New Horizons are very different in storylines, they have a few similarities in gameplay mechanics. One of the biggest strengths of Animal Crossing: New Horizons is its simple crafting system. These heavy topics make the story easier to connect with, but also make the overall feel less carefree. Both games also handle difficult subjects, with the characters in Stardew Valley overcoming anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and difficult marriage struggles in multiple storylines, while Wytchwood includes the struggles of age, deception, and innocence. This same underlying chill can be found in Wytchwood, as the player creates concoctions to tackle creatures lurking in each map or convince major NPCs to assist in different quest requirements. While many of the narrative subplots are optional, it still gives a spooky and mysterious atmosphere to the gameplay of Stardew Valley. There is also a Witch that can be encountered through random events, as well as through Rasmodius' storyline. The wizard Rasmodius also has several subplot narratives that can be unlocked throughout the course of the game, insinuating that magic runs deeply through the foundations of both the town and the surrounding areas. To communicate with the Junimos, the player must speak to the wizard, who lives in a tower in the forest outside of the town. These sprite-like creatures aid in the rebuilding of the local community center, as well as playing a part in the player's ability to connect with spiritual parts of Stardew Valley's map. In Stardew Valley, players are able to interact with spirits called Junimos. Wytchwood and Stardew Valley both utilize magic in their main narratives. With no memory of how the witch became involved, she travels through biome maps meeting intriguing characters and solving the mysteries of the story. In order to uncover the mystery, she must follow the directions of a possessed goat, tackling the monsters that wronged the woman before she fell into the old witch's care. The main character, an old witch living out her days by her home's hearth, becomes ensnared in a mystery surrounding a woman sleeping in a temple near her home. While Wytchwood has many of these same mechanics, including foraging and crafting, other elements like Happy Home Paradise's town management have been replaced with a rich, spooky narrative. Related: Animal Crossing Villager Tier List: Which Villagers Are S-Rank However, neither game has a particularly in-depth narrative, making gameplay largely self-driven. This therapeutic simulation-style gaming removes high-stakes challenges like enemy mobs and world-ending catastrophes and replaces it with casual objectives like filling museums and collecting crafting recipes.

Both Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Stardew Valley offer players a chance to escape the struggles of everyday life by sinking time into elaborate home and town designs, as well as farming, cooking, fishing, and getting to know local NPCs.
