New farming-sim launches on Steam with solid reviews, 2,466-player peak, and launch discount

The "cozy farming" genre is quite crowded at this point. We literally just covered the launch of Heartopia, and the game is still doing pretty well on Steam charts. Every once in a while though, something like Halcyon Days at Taoyuan (or 桃源村日志) comes along and actually brings something new to the table. Launched on January 20, 2026, by BotanX and CubeGame, this isn't just another Stardew clone with a different coat of paint. It drops you into a village that’s been totally cut off from the world for a thousand years. The game itself has an ancient, mythical vibe that you just don't see in most Western farm sims.

The loop here is a lot more deep than just "tilling dirt and selling parsnips." While you definitely do the farming thing, the game is more about its RPG side. There’s a full martial arts skill system to mess with, and the economy actually works on a bartering system rather than just dumping items into a shipping bin. You're an outsider in a place where everyone has a complicated (and often pretty messy) backstory. It makes the social side of the game feel a lot more grounded, since you’re trying to earn the trust of people who haven't seen a stranger in centuries.

Right now, the Steam rating is a healthy 86% "Very Positive." People dig the "zen" atmosphere and the pixel art, which captures the rural Chinese countryside beautifully. That said, it’s got some launch-week quirks. Some of the mining is frustratingly hard early on, and you’ll definitely run into a few weird translation moments in the character bios. The devs have been pretty quick with the hotfixes, though, patching out bugs and rebalancing tool upgrades almost every day since the 20th.

You can run this on a potato - it only needs 2 GB of RAM and about 1 GB of space. If you’re a Steam Deck (curr. $665 on Amazon) user, it’s "Playable," but there’s a big "but": the text is tiny. Like, "holding the Deck two inches from your face" tiny. It supports the controller perfectly, but between the small font and having to manually pull up the keyboard for text entry, it can be a bit of a chore on a handheld. Still, for $10.79 on Steam, it’s a massive amount of game for anyone who wants a farming sim with a bit more charm and, of course, the martial arts.