🌱 Welcome to Fairhaven
Press this page flat and keep it close, traveler — it is the first leaf in your journal. Wylde Flowers (Studio Drydock) is a cozy life-and-farming sim that first bloomed on Apple Arcade in 2022 before spreading its seeds to Nintendo Switch and PC. You play Tara Wylde, who steps off the ferry onto the small island of Fairhaven to care for her ailing grandmother Hazel and to coax the family farm back to life.
That is the story on the seed packet, anyway. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find the tap root: Hazel is a witch, an Elder of a masked coven that meets in secret — and Tara has inherited more than a farm. Your days become a lovely double life: tend crops, chat with the townsfolk, and cook in the sunshine; then, when the moon rises, fly your broom to the coven and learn the craft. It is, quite literally, farming by day, witchcraft by night.
🌿 Lore aside: Fairhaven’s coven has kept itself hidden from the townsfolk for generations, its members masked even from one another’s neighbors. Much of the story is about whether those two halves of the island — the everyday and the enchanted — can grow together in the same bed.
What makes this flower different
Plenty of games let you water turnips. A few things set this one apart, like a rare cultivar in a hedgerow:
- Fully voice-acted, story-first. Every resident speaks, and the writing carries the game. This is closer to a warm interactive novel with farming than a numbers-driven sim.
- Seasons wait for you. Time passes day by day, but the season only changes when you perform the coven’s season-change ritual. There are no missed festivals, no crops lost to a calendar you didn’t watch. See Energy, Time & Seasons — it changes how you plan everything.
- Witchcraft as a second craft. Cauldron potions, spells and rituals, weather magic, and broom flight all unfold as the story does.
- A genuinely warm community. Fairhaven’s residents are diverse in age, background, and identity, and the game’s themes — acceptance, belonging, and mending the divide between coven and townsfolk — are handled with real tenderness. There are eight romance options at present, and friendship with everyone is worth cultivating.
- Cozy by design. No combat, no fail states, no clock breathing down your neck. Struggles here are the human kind: grief, prejudice, change, and community.
no other sim lets you put the seasons themselves in your pocket 🌿
Who you’ll meet
A quick sampling from the field, properly catalogued in the Character Directory:
| Resident | Found where the… |
|---|---|
| Hazel Wylde | …farmhouse hearth glows — your grandmother, and the coven’s Elder |
| Lina Dahl-Johnson | …general store bell rings — shopkeeper, and the coven’s High Priestess |
| Amira Syed | …clinic lamp burns — the island’s doctor |
| Kai Hoapili | …harbor breeze blows — a friendly merchant |
| Kim Izumi | …butcher’s block stands — the island’s butcher (they/them) |
| Sophia Moretti | …diner coffee steams — cook and proprietor |
| Natalia Kuznetsova | …forge sparks fly — the blacksmith who upgrades your tools |
| Cameron Conner | …sermons get loud — a former child actor with strong opinions about the “unnatural” |
| Cleocatra | …sunbeam is warmest — a cat of consequence |
Later seasons of play bring newcomers too — a hairdresser, and stranger visitors besides — but those are pages for another day.
How this field guide is organized
- Getting Started (you are here): Your First Week, Controls & Interface, Energy, Time & Seasons, and Beginner Tips.
- Farming: crops, animals, bees and orchards, fishing, and mining & foraging.
- Witchcraft: the coven, potions, spells, rituals, and familiars.
- Characters: friendship, romance, and gift preferences.
- Story: chapter-by-chapter walkthroughs, clearly marked for spoilers.
- The Island: the map, shops, and festivals.
- Crafting and Reference: cooking, money-making, achievements, and a glossary.
This is an unofficial fan guide, pressed together with affection by players, for players. Story sections carry spoiler warnings; getting-started pages like this one stay deliberately vague about the plot’s biggest blooms.
Sign-off tip: don’t optimize your first playthrough — talk to people, poke into corners, and let the story set the pace. The turnips will keep. 🌸