, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, in October of 2020, and was released on the 25th of June 2021 on Steam as an Early Access game and fully released on March 11th, 2023.The story begins with the player character arriving in the titular town of Sun Haven, as the town's new farmer, only to be greeted by a strange dark magic that has befallen the entrance of Sun Haven. After becoming familiar with the town and its residence, the player is asked by the guardian dragon of Sun Haven, Elios, to help him figure out what is happening to the town.
Sun Haven is a very varied game, both in terms of gameplay, including farming, cooking, foraging, exploration, mining, crafting, fishing, magic and romance, as well as customization; the player can choose from seven different races, each with their own customization options, and the ability to decorate their farm to their heart's content.
Sun Haven is not the only town the player can explore; over the course of the game the player will gain access to the Elven Village of Nel’ Vari and the Monster City Withergate, each including their own farm for the player character.
Social interactions with the townsfolk and romance candidates are also a big part of the game, with a whopping 21 different romance candidates as of the 1.3 update, each with their own unique likes and dislikes.The game also features multiplayer with up to eight friends.
Sun Haven contains examples of:
- Air-Dashing: One of the earliest spells the player can learn is the "Air Skip" spell, which allows the player to perform a mid-air dash at the cost of a small amount of mana and makes exploring the world a lot faster and more enjoyable.
- And Your Reward Is Interior Decorating: Since customizing and decorating your farm is very prevalent in the game, a lot of quest rewards are decorations like furniture or plushies.
- Alternative Calendar: The in-game calendar has 28 days per season, with four different seasons starting with spring, then summer, autumn and finally winter.
- Bigger on the Inside: Most of the houses in the game are about twice as big on the inside as they are on the outside.
- Blood Knight: Dynus. He has shades of a Spirited Competitor who is Lonely at the Top because he's one of the three undisputedly-strongest creatures in the region and the other two are pacifists. The plot of the game boils down to him trying to provoke someone into becoming his Worthy Opponent. Complete Dynus's offerings peacefully and he'll remove the darkness on the condition that the farmer keeps getting stronger and eventually fights him, and despite all his bluster he'll never actually kill the farmer for challenging him.
- Boring, but Practical: If you work at it, you can track down everyone's favorite gift types and then buy, craft, grow, forage or whatever it takes to get them, then carry them all around giving them out. Orrrr you can just get into the last quarter or so of the mines where Havenite - a universally loved gift - is extremely common and just carry around a single stack of it at all times.
- Butt-Monkey: Pinto, one of the soldiers in the barracks, is on the receiving end of most of Roza's antics.
- Call to Agriculture: The game begins with the player character arriving in Sun Haven to become the town's new farmer.
- Cheap Gold Coins: While there are three kinds of currency, as well as community tokens and seasonal tokens, in the game, the one used in Sun Haven are gold coins, which are used for most of the transactions in town.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: The game features co-op with up to eight players.
- Dating Sim: When the game was first released there were 15 different romance candidates. Since the 1.2 and 1.3 updates a further six were added, three in each, with the developers planning to add more.
- Developer's Foresight:
- Everyone has a unique response to being regifted their own record, gift, or wedding ring. They may also have unique reactions to items that match their stereotypes, common items a player might try gifting to everyone, or objects they mention or whose descriptions mention them.
- If you read the lore books about Dynus and Withergate you'll learn the significance of the tentacle monster emblem. Unsurprisingly, anyone you give it to will have a bad time. Anyone except for Darius and Xyla, who, as the book suggests, are immune to its effects and have different responses.
- Diminishing Returns for Balance: Stat boosts from eating food will gradually lose effectiveness the more you eat them, encouraging you to cook and eat a wide variety of dishes to strengthen yourself.
- Early-Bird Cameo: The other passengers on the train in the introduction include Vaan and Donovan.
- Eccentric Mentor: Elder Gorwin is one of these to Wesley, with the goal of teaching him to be less serious and more open-minded so Gorwin can retire.
- Everyone Is Bi: Downplayed. The player character is never given a gender, so it is up to the player’s interpretation, if the Romance Candidates are all Bi-, Pan- or Skoliosexual.
- Every Man Has His Price: Or rather, Guardian Dragon. If the Farmer does not wish to fight Dynus, they may instead make offerings at his altars and completing enough of them will impress him enough to grant the Farmer an audience and a favor. This especially prominent as one of them involves paying gigantic sums of all three zone's currency, Sun Haven gold, Nel'vari mana orbs, and Withergate tickets.
- Evil Is Easy: Each town has its own set of items that provide permanent stat bonuses. Sun Haven's community shop and its elixirs are gated by time, as there are only two quests per day that award community tokens. Nel'Vari's condensed mana is gated by metal, as you need single-use keys to enter the mines to get mana shards. Withergate's subway passes can be bought with tickets, not that hard to come by, and once you get a ticket counterfeiter you can mass-produce dozens of subway passes a day with easily-obtained spooky silk, letting you get tons of candy corn to buy glorite shards with. Elios will comment on whether or not you took this easy path during his end-game speech.
- Failed a Spot Check: Multiple times, and almost always justified.
- Phoebe is a spy looking for evidence that Withergate is up to something. The thing she's looking for evidence of is at the core of the game's plot and evidence for it is almost everywhere. She doesn't even notice when Dynus actually does attack Sun Haven. Justified in that evidence is only almost everywhere; the one place it isn't obvious from is the place she happens to be looking.
- Withergate's guards are easily and repeatedly fooled by someone wearing a cardboard box with a face drawn on it. Justified since, as Donovan points out, they can barely see out of their excessively elaborate helmets. Amusingly the same trick also fools King Minos, much to Darius's embarrassment.
- The same box-on-the-head trick fools Sun Haven's guards when Prince Darius uses it. Again justified as talking to one of the guards will sometimes have them complain they also struggle to see properly out of their visors.
- Fantastic Racism: There is long-standing, centuries-long tension between the day-dwelling races such as those found in the Great City and Sun Haven, against the Monsterfolk of Withergate. It's gotten to the point where the Monsterfolk were once mass-displaced from their original homes, forcing them to flee to the safety of Withergate and necessitating the construction of the highly dense urban metropolis it is now.
- Fantastic Fruits and Vegetables: Zig Zagged. While a lot of the crops are fairly mundane, like potatoes or carrots, others are rather fantastical like the "Stormelon" or the "Soda Pop Crop".
- Farm Life Sim: Sun Haven is a Farming Sim with a greater emphasis on RPG elements like skill trees and combat than most other farming games, but it still features a wide variety of farming sim style gameplay, for instance, growing crops, animal husbandry and fishing.
- Fishing for Sole: When fishing, there is a chance that the player catches trash in the form of an old boot, an apple core or a tin can.
- Fishing Minigame: Once the player obtained the fishing rod, they are able to catch fish in any of the bodies of water in the game, after succeeding in a small minigame.
- Foreshadowing: After the second act of the Music Festival you'll see Claude hanging out with Darius and Xyla. Talking to Darius here suggests he's heard Claude perform before. Much later in the story you learn that Claude is a Withergate native who used to work for Darius's father King Minos, and Darius highly values Claude's opinion.
- Fourth-Date Marriage: It is easily possible for the player to marry one of the romance candidates during the first few seasons of the game. The player just needs 100 or 125 community tokens, depending on the outcome of the second date, 15 hearts with the character they wish to marry and 15 dialog cycles.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- You could have already married Darius, Crown Prince of Withergate, and no one will mention the major diplomatic implications of this when your character is brainstorming how to try to make peace with that state and Sun Haven. It gets even worse with how Darius openly speaks about the player character becoming the royal consort and "ordering the guards around.
- It is possible to first encounter the romanceable characters from Nel'vari and Withergate in Sun Haven festivals, and their dialog in their scripted "first encounters" will never mention the characters already having run into each other before at Sun Haven.
- Gender-Inclusive Writing: Since the player is never given a gender, the characters usually call the player character The Farmer or the name the avatar was given.
- Hidden Elf Village: Nel'Vari is a town of elves whose gates are guarded from outsiders. It takes vouching from Elios and the ability to infuse mana into nature to get through the front gate, and even then, it takes some nudging from the Farmer to encourage Gorwin, the Town Elder, to open up Nel'Vari's borders.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: The easiest way for the player to recover health and mana is by eating any of the many different foods in the game with no amount limit.
- In-Universe Game Clock: The default time in the game is 20 real-time minutes for 18 in-game hours. However, this can be changed to 10, 30 or 40 real-time minutes in the gameplay settings menu. There are no disadvantages to doing so, especially as the game autosaves whenever you exit, so you'll never be stuck playing longer than intended or forced to lose progress because you had to quit early.
- Interspecies Romance: Potentially between the player and the romance candidates, especially if the player is an Elemental since there are no romanceable Elementals in the game currently.
- Item Crafting: A wide variety of items, for example: furniture, tools, equipment and food, can be crafted at the various workbenches which themselves can also be crafted.
- Life Meter: The player’s hit points are shown in the health bar at the bottom of the screen. The player can regain heath points by eating food or passively by acquiring the "Meditation" skill on the combat skill tree.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: There are seven different races for the player to choose from.
- Firstly there are the Humans who need no explanation.
- The second race are the Elves who look the most similar to humans but have pointy ears and sometimes wings.
- The third are the Amari which are the most diverse of the races with the majority of them appearing like humanoids with animalistic features, like cats or wolves, with others looking more amphibian, reptilian, avian, insectoid or even plant-like. Their level of anthropomorphisation also varies, for example Catherine, one of the romance candidates, is a rabbit Amari who, except for her bunny ears, looks like a human while the rabbit Amari of the Bunny Orchard have a much more animal-like appearance with fur and bunny snouts.
- The fourth race are the Angels, who like the elves, look very much like humans with the exception of their wings and halo.
- The fifth race are the Demons who have horns, wings, a tail, and can have unusual skin colours like scarlet or purple.
- The sixth race are the Elementals whose bodies consist entirely out of fire or water depending on the sub-race.
- The seventh are the Naga, they have humanoid upper- and snake or fish like lower bodies, some of them also have two sets of arms.
- It should also be noted that these are not the only races in the game, there exists also Monsterfolk, Vampires, Ghosts, Slimes and Dragons as well as hybrids of two races.
- Logical Weakness:
- Xyla designed a monetary system for Withergate based around fiat currencies in the form of tickets. Counterfeiting is a not-insignificant problem in Withergate as a result, one the farmer can contribute to as of 1.3.
- In the epilogue, Dynus refusing to give out his blessing means Withergate doesn't have much of an understanding of magic, leading Minos and Darius to draw the wrong, if helpful, conclusion that Lucia is harmless because she's unarmed.
- Mana Meter: The player’s Mana bar is on the bottom of the screen and shows how much Mana the player has left. Mana is used for casting spells and can be regained by eating food or waiting until it regenerates on its own, the amount of Mana the player has and the regeneration’s rate can also be increased by eating foods or completing quests.
- Manchild: Kitty is one of the nicest people in Sun Haven, but she's also easily distracted and tends to act like a small child much of the time. However, she is by no means actually stupid and is entirely aware of how people think of her.
- The Man Behind the Man: The three dragons all behave like this to some extent. Dynus doesn't care what King Minos gets up to as the tribute keeps coming while Elios likes to personally review every new citizen of Sun Haven, with Nivara being in between as a spiritual advisor.
- Marathon Boss: Krusty the Elemental. He has an absurd health bar going into the 6 digits, where the story final boss, Dynus the Moon Dragon, has HP at 5 digits. Thankfully, the Farmer can easily recruit Lynn and Nathaniel's help to steadily and almost literally grind Krusty down, and unlike the Farmer, they will work nearly 24/7 without sleep. On the other hand, you can get an achievement if you somehow chip away all of Krusty's HP all by yourself.
- Mean Boss: Publicly Dynus is an ally of and partner with the Demon King, but privately he'll tell the farmer he sees King Minos as more of a pet and the only reason he even pretends to be civil with Withergate is because they're more useful to him that way.
- Meaningful Name: The three dragons. Helios is the Roman god of the Sun; remove the first letter and you get Elios the sun dragon. Dynus's name comes from the prefix 'Dyna,' meaning power, which his lore tome mentions, and most closely resembles the word dynast, a hereditary monarch, both of which fit him as one who believes in seizing power and ruling over others. Nivara's is less clear but is very similar to nirvana, a core concept in many religions associated with enlightenment and most easily defined as an end to suffering, which is in line with Nivara's teachings and philosophy.
- Mechanically Unusual Fighter: On certain days, an unusual boss will spawn on the farm, which can't be beaten with the conventional methods, instead the player either has to; win a rope jumping game, feed it furniture or ask the residence of Sun Haven for help, depending on the boss.
- Misplaced Retribution: When Doyun comes across the farmer and Miyeon talking while Miyeon paints, he blames the farmer for Miyeon 'wasting time' painting and calls them a bad influence on her. It was actually Jun who inspired her to do it, but Doyun doesn't let Miyeon explain.
- More Dakka: Several key skills and upgrades for the crossbow cause it to deal less damage per shot but fire more shots that, combined, deal more damage if they all hit. A fully-upgraded Rel'tar's Mark fires four shots with every pull of the trigger and the Arrow Storm special attack fires up to twelve shots at once.
- Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters: Withergate has smugglers Tony and Ur, with Tony playing up the gangster role.
- Nerf: The watermelon seed recipe was updated in 1.1 to require two watermelons in order to produce two seeds, making the already very questionable seed makers even worse.
- Not So Above It All: In the epilogue, Prince Darius appears in Sun Haven wearing a cardboard box on their head, causing Xyla to start giggling.
- No True Scotsman: You aren't welcome in Withergate because you're just a stinky human or elf or whatever. What's that? You're actually playing as a demon? Well, you're still not a real demon because you came from Sun Haven, so beat it.
- NPC Roadblock: Snaccoons can be found blocking access to certain areas, from shortcuts to hidden secrets. If you give them the items they want, they'll move out of the way and leave behind a plushie version of themselves. Not all Snaccoons are road blocks, however, and the types of Snaccoons that appear are seasonal.
- Number Two: Each town's leader has someone who handles the leg-work of implementing their decisions and making decisions when they're not available. Lucia has Bernard, Gorwin has Wesley, and Minos has Xyla.
- Offscreen Teleportation:
- No matter where they originally were, when exiting the game, the player character will always be teleported to the entrance of the farm and once the player resumes the game, they will start from there. This can be used to the player's advantage as they will pass out once the clock strikes midnight and they can more or less fast travel with its method. Also, when quitting the game after in-game 11 pm, it'll be 11 pm again once the game resumes.
- Lampshaded by Emmett, the cashier for almost all of Sun Haven's businesses like the General Store, the Livestock Supplies Store, the Fishing Supplies Store, and the Farming Supplies Store. The Farmer suspects that Emmett is somehow teleporting when they're not looking, as he is able to man all of his counters whenever there's a customer, from opening time early in the morning till late into the evening, but Emmett claims he just happens to know how to move very efficiently through town.
- One Stat to Rule Them All: Mana. You want as much of it as possible because it is the 'convenience' currency, letting you do everything faster and more efficiently from combat to farming to fishing, and it's needed for most Nel'Vari crafts as well as for growing grapes. It's nearly impossible to run a single large farm without a large mana pool.
- Our Elves Are Different: You got the wood elves of Nel'Vari that are wary of outsiders, as well as the more fae-like elves you can make as your character. Lucius also sticks out from Nel'Vari's society for having drow-blue skin, though that's moreso from his lifestyle discoloring him into his current appearance.
- Physical God: The Guardian Dragons, also known as Guardian Deities, are the protectors of their respective regions. There are three of them, though Dynus does not consider himself as such, and each one watches over particularly mana rich areas. The fourth such area is the Great City belonging to the humans, which does not appear to have any such entity.
- Polyamory: The player is able to date every romance candidate simultaneously, as long as they have the required amount of hearts, but the player is only able to be married to one of the romance candidates at a time.
- Poor Communication Kills: A humorous example in the epilogue. The ancient Nel'Vari text in Sun Haven's library was written by a young Gorwin to promote friendship and understanding between Nel'Vari and Sun Haven but it was mistaken for an ancient and valuable relic because nobody in Sun Haven could read it. When the now-Elder Gorwin realizes this he laughs so hard Wesley thinks he's fallen ill.
- Power at a Price: Eilos states that glorite is this as mining it destroys the ecosystem yet the powers it grants ensures people will always try to do so. It's implied to have other dangerous properties as Wesley and Miyeon, the two most-educated romanceable characters, have unique negative reactions to it and the glorite miner's description questions the cost of using it. The one area that makes regular use of glorite, Withergate, is a dead wasteland. You can still go nuts using it yourself, but Elios will call you out on it.
- Power-Up Food: Most of the foodstuffs in the game, in addition to healing or restoring mana, give permanent stat increases to the player's stats once consumed.
- Properly Paranoid: There's a minor NPC human in Withergate who believes she has successfully infiltrated the city and that no one can see through her (nonexistent) disguise. She's trying to uncover information that Withergate is planning to attack a human city and you can point out that they don't care enough and the people probably know she's human. It's portrayed as a joke, but Withergate does attack Sun Haven during story events and are pretty xenophobic overall, so it's a reasonable attitude for her to have.
- Relationship Values: How much the romance candidates like the player can be seen by the amount of hearts they have filled. Once five hearts are full, the player will be able to enter the character's home and 10 and 15 hearts are the threshold of dating and marriage, respectively.
- Shop Fodder: Most items dropped by enemies have no use except to be added to the Museum or sold directly. 'Golden' items from livestock and fruit trees are the
Junk Rare version as they require specific skills to get and are mostly only ever needed for the museum bundle, though a few are useful in making powerful food. - The Social Darwinist: The higher-ups of Withergate are all like this, but Dynus is the biggest example. He believes that the power can only be gained by taking it and forcing the submission of others and if nobody can stop him he's entitled to do whatever he wants. Fitting to his philosophy, he'll acquiesce if the farmer proves to be a Worthy Opponent.
- Take Your Time: Despite the looming darkness threatening to consume Sun Haven and the rest of the day-dwelling world with it, causing untold amounts of chaos and suffering, the player character is able to delay the main quest for as long as they want to or just ignore it altogether and become a successful farmer or what have you in Sun Haven. Even Elios, the Guardian Dragon of Sun Haven that grants the player their Chosen One status, encourages them to take their heroic path at whatever pace they please.
- Utility Magic: Some of the spells in the game allow the player to till soil, water crops, chop wood, break rocks or catch fish.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: While you could continuously give Disliked gifts, you can go extra-strength dickery by giving back the romance candidates' records, keepsakes, and even their wedding ring. Doing so gets you a unique dialogue line filled with disappointment.
- Waddling Head: The "Leafie" monsters which look like leaves with eyes and a pair of stubby legs.
- Weakened by the Light: Zig-zagged, Demons & Monsterfolk have historically struggled to function in the daylight, but demons who settled in places like the Great City have developed an immunity to this with the generations. The Farmer, being a native from the Great City, is potentially one if created to be a demon, as well as Felicity.
- World of Technicolor Hair: Discounting the Farmer's hair color choices, a lot of the characters have very unusual hair colours. For example, Kitty has bright pink hair, Catherine's is a dark purple which fades into a lighter purple, and Lucia's is a fiery red. Jun's is both black and blue, though his hair is explicitly said to be dyed.
