Balrum Old-school RPG with a farm

Between quests you come back to your own patch of ground. Plant crops, tend them, and harvest with a double click once you know the trick. Raise animals, including tamed ones, and let the farm pay for itself: growing food and brewing supplies is a steady way to make money, and it feeds straight into alchemy and cooking. None of it is mandatory, which is part of the charm. You can buy what you need and never touch a hoe. But after a long stretch of dungeons and spiders, watering corn and checking on the pigs is a genuinely welcome change of pace.

Survival here is woven into the RPG, not bolted on. Hunger, thirst and fatigue tick along as you explore, weather rolls in, and night changes what the world throws at you. You could ignore most of it and buy your way through, but leaning on your own production makes the hard stretches far more survivable.

Your animal companion is more than decoration. Pets are fully controllable in combat and add real depth to your tactics, and the game lets you tame various animals, each with its own skills. A bear hits hard, other creatures bring different tricks. Your pet grows with you, so the partnership lasts the whole game. Choosing which animal to hunt for and how to use it in a fight is one of the more personal decisions you make, and it shapes every battle after.

The story starts quiet: twenty years after your village fled the kingdom for Darkwood, the woods' evil finally reaches you, and you set out into a chaotic world where people are counting on you. It carries an epic main quest, dozens of side quests with actual purposes (repairing a burnt wall, fixing a neighbour's fence) and three separate paths to the ending. Learning points are scarce and trainers must be found in the world, so every skill you pick up is a real commitment. The writing is better than the retro look suggests, and the quests reward reading them.