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Yonder looks gorgeous, pleasant, Stardew Valley-esque, launching in July

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles sends you to the lush island of Gemea, where you can farm, craft, fish, cook, brew and befriend animals and people.

You’ve sailed to an island with diverse environments, friendly natives and adorable animals, but an evil-looking murk is invading the place. What do you do? Well, if you were in almost any other video game, you’d let your bow, guns or fists do the talking. Not so here! Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles instead takes a cue from the likes of Stardew Valley and lets you engage in activities like farming, crafting, cooking, fishing and brewing to win over the friendly natives of the island. You can even befriend animals, and they make cute heart things like in the picture above. Imagine that: arriving at an island and not wrecking it!

Yonder’s premise sounds completely idyllic, but it’s the visuals that really sell it. Lush fields of grass under bright and sunny lighting call to mind The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and Yonder seems to share the Zelda series’ sense of childlike wonder. It’s like living in a Studio Ghibli movie (and yes, I know Ni no Kuni exists). Have a look at the trailer below.

There is many a mystery to be solved on Gemea—apart from the murk, there are the ‘sprites’, a certain Celestial Compass and there’s also the subtitle of the game: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles. Is there going to be a lot of cloud catching? Is it a metaphor? Players will explore these mysteries just as they will the island’s picturesque environs.

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles is scheduled to release on 18th July this year on PC and PS4. The developer is Prideful Sloth, an Australian studio consisting of industry veterans who have worked on games like Rock Band, The Elder Scrolls series and the Batman: Arkham series.