Read Time: 3 Minutes
If you’ve ever played the cozy farming simulator game “Stardew Valley” then you’ll see many similarities between that game and this cozy slice-of-life story. Violet, an eighteen-year-old girl from Earth was studying for her college entrance exams when she decided a quick game of Adventure Incarnate was in order. One of her friends in the game, a user notorious for finding exploits, loaded up Violet’s inventory with stacks of rare ingredients, crafting materials, weapons and so-forth.
Not just stacks of 999. The largest number that could fit: 2,147,483,647 (see Wikipedia if you’re not sure why). And it’s with this loaded-up inventory and a decent knowledge of how to play the game, Violet is suddenly transported into a world where the game is the reality.
But most of the stuff in her inventory is useless since she’s a level 1 noob and the good stuff is level locked. So she sets out to build her life in the game from scratch. Ignoring all the adventure stuff, Violet decides the farming life is what she wants. Nobody else knows it’s a game world, and Violet has all the cheats including access to the in-game shops to purchase upgrades.
Most of what she can do comes off as magic to the people in the world. Building and demolishing farming structures and houses in minutes. Planting and growing crops of incredibly rare fruits and vegetables. All done with typical game logic, like chopping down a tree just means striking it a few times after which lumber is added to your inventory and the stump disappears.
Along the way she picks up some orphans to apprentice to her to help out, as well as a large entourage of helpers for cooking and looking after her household. The entire story is very similar to what you might expect if someone wrote a story that followed the logic and ideas of Stardew Valley or other farming sims. Some parts and ideas even feel lifted directly from the game.
Other parts like being visited by the ghost of your dead relatives to judge you after year one or delving into mines and using constructed staircases to quickly move between levels. The mines have safe levels and a treasure chest every ten floors, just like in the game, along with ladders hidden under rocks and levels that reset on exit.
Besides the farming, there’s a minor romance side plot involving a prince that Violet helped save early in the novel. Prince Baiyu comes across as a bit of a creep with how much he’s crushing on Violet some of the time, but it wasn’t a deal breaker.
The narration by Rylee Kuberra was certainly enthusiastic. She had the upbeat style that worked well with the eternally optimistic Violet. I did notice some odd pronunciations at times that I mostly wrote off as regional differences, but there were a few that I am sure were straight up mispronounced. No issues with retakes or background sounds, so generally easy to listen to.
Overall, this was a pleasant and easy to listen to story. Most of the time is on the farm doing the slice-of-life style stuff or performing system quests. More action in the latter part of the story when levelling up by battling monsters in the mine comes in, but even that is pretty relaxed. With cheats and cheese tactics, life for Violet is easy. I’m rather looking forward to the next one!