
The Witch of Fern Island
Developer Enjoy Studio S.A.
Welcome to Fern Island! As Abrill, become immersed in the island’s culture, uncover its deepest secrets, and master magical trades. Overcome the challenges of the island to demonstrate your mastery of magic and become the most well known witch around! From the Steam store page
188 reactions from 2 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky) · newest Oct 2, 2026 · last updated Oct 7, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
117 positive · 68 negative
95% range 56–70%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 117 | 68 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 0 | 0 | 0 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
3 newer reactions are still waiting for a label.
What people are saying
Summary pending — the reactions are listed below.
Reactions
60 of 188 · most liked firstSo much wasted potential... The game has some really nice idea, it could be one of my favorite cosy farming game. But in the end, they butchered it. One problem is the technical difficulties. The game crashes so many times, it's getting annoying. Especially when I'm ready to end the day and save after grinding my soul out, and I need to start over the whole day... But what's more problematic is the gameplay itself. It supposed to be a cosy game, with farming, exploring, collecting stuff, etc.…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has a MASSIVE bug that makes playing it impossible. It was first reported in the Discussions nearly a year ago, and the devs seem to have zero interest in fixing it. THE BUG: Like many games, this one uses a "sleep to save" option. Okay, no worries. It's not particularly convenient compared to other games that let you save when you want and just keep the sleep as an autosave feature, but I can live with it. I reinstalled this game yesterday and played it. Got through the tutorial…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love cozy games. I love grindy, life simulator games. So i was really excited to play this one. Sadly, i'm dissapointed. This game is extremly slow. There are 6 seasons in the game, each with different materials to grow - harvest. The problem is, this really slows down the game. Even for main - side quests, you have to wait, some times 40-60 days to progress, limiting you from your own pace. And, there are a lot of materials that are extremly rare, with huge respawn times, for example…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →OK, I hesitated buying this game based on the reviews, and decided to wait until it went on sale. I feel that was a good choice. That being said... I love this game. Is it perfect? No. Does it have bugs? Yes. Can it be confusing sometimes, yes. Here's why I love it though: Most games these days take your hand and lead you through quests, tutorials, or tool-tips. This game is very light to non-existent on much of that save for a few small nudges. But I like this. This game very much rewards…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →loved it for 1st couple of hours, then things started going wrong eg unable to put fuel in cauldron in ANY WAY; things keep vanishing from inventory and storage; crops ive planted vanish, and worst of all when i save and then log back in next day, often some of the quests that ive completed need to be done again. only a portion of the previous day seems to save. so while i really love the game for many reasons, i just cannot carry on playing it, because the game literally wont let me.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I had this game on my wishlist for years because everything about it sounded perfect. Cozy farming? Exploration? A pretty island with secrets? Witchy Vibes, i mean - you can turn in to a voidcat!? And to be fair, the first few hours were genuinely enjoyable. The world is charming, the atmosphere is relaxing, and I really thought I’d found my next comfort game. But then the frustration kicked in. Let’s start with the smaller stuff: The translation is pretty poor, not game-breaking, but…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have a love/hate relationship with his game. I've changed this review twice already but I stuck with the game and have now completed the main quests, so I suppose a final review would be in order. First things first. This game is beautiful and addictive. The world is big, and stunning and the story is lovely (although it does come to an abrupt end). That and the cosy elements, flying, farming and crafting mean this should be one of the top cosy-witchy games on the market. But its buggy…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Let me be positive first: the game has good bones. The environment is interesting, the regional and seasonal plants make for fun variety, There's plenty enough to do, between rebuilding your witches' manor, crafting potions and spells, forging, farming, essences, livestock etc. And this is where the problem comes in. The quest structure is extremely poor. And I mean VERY poor. Quests are supposed to guide you towards the gameplay mechanics, which in this case should make for plenty of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Short answer: DON'T BOTHER, WASTE OF MONEY. Longer answer: Okay, I have put a LOT of hours into this game. I like to make sure I get my money's worth anytime I pay for a game, no matter how much of a slog it is to get through. This game, from the very beginning, was buggy. Until I went to the internet to find out what was happening, every single time I would quit the game, I'd have to start over from the beginning when I logged back in, even though I saved (turns out, you have to turn off…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love grindy, crafting games. There's quite a few out there that are awesome. This game hits the mark for me - they want it to be all about discovery - which I get - but it's not done in a way that makes sense. I already had to get the wiki out after an hour. I think this game has potential but there needs to be a few quality of life changes such as: - Add a compendium that actually helps. It would make this game so much better if it updated in a meaningful way. If, as you find plants the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Honestly, the reviews really worried me, but I decided to give it a try myself and I'm so glad I didn't listen. Is it grindy? Yeah, but as someone who already likes to walk around and collect everything I find, it doesn't bother me at all. You can get so much of that one thing and store it and then focus on something else the next day, like it's so easy to get enough stuck of the base ingredients found in the wild. I love that you start with nothing at all. The house is ♥♥♥♥. Bridges are…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →NOW I GET IT WHY THIS GAME HAS MORE NEGATIVE REVIEWS! My Review After 1 Hour of Play (I swear, I thought about it so many times before buying, but I love the theme, so I gave it a shot.) 📍BAD SIDES: 1. So, an hour after I started playing, I encountered a bug where I couldn’t do anything, and there was no quest available. I restarted the game, and it worked fine after that. Overall, the game is nice, and I enjoyed it. Now I get it—these bug issues are probably the major reason why this…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to love it. I wanted to love everything about it. But 13 hours in, I realized my cozy witch game was just another Stardew Valley knockoff and I was grinding so hard my wrist was throbbing. It's a good game if you want to get sucked in for endless looting and crafting. I'm old, I don't have time to chop trees and catch fish FOR A YEAR just to fly a broom around.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I wanted to clear some things up in case some reviews are swaying you in a negative direction. I am chronically ill and that means I have brain fog and get frustrated with games that aren't very clear or intuitive. While there are some things about this game that aren't completely obvious, this game isn't like that. It doesn't hold your hand, but it has plenty of tutorials and if you're paying attention, you'll know what to do. This game sort of starts off like the Stardew Valley types of…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TLDR: While Fern Island is certainly beautiful, I was let down by the lack of engaging gameplay mechanics and a sporadic quest line that leaves huge gaps in meaningful and interesting interaction. PROS: ➕Nice cozy vibe ➕Magical elements add quality of life ➕Graphics CONS: ➖Performance issues ➖No voice acting ➖Disjointed story quests ➖Excessive collectable items with limited storage/inventory space ➖Very rough animations Content (Game world/Narrative) – [5/10] The game world from a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game was a really cute concept and had a lot of potential but sadly it was left in an unfinished state. It is done enough to get a fair amount of enjoyment out of it, but there are not going to be any more updates on it. Last update was in November of 2024. It is abadonware by the devs, but not for the usual reason of cutting and running with the money. From what i can put together, Enjoy Studio S.A. has moved on to different games and has signed on with Bohemia Interactive (Dev and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game looks promising, the world is there, but this should have still been early access. - Performance - Absolutely terrible even on a high end pc. It stutters constantly every few seconds while moving, but also has a specific stutter when picking up anything (and this is a game about picking up a lot of things all the time). The stutter also accumulates over time so as you pick things up, every action stutters longer and longer. - Dialogues - Severely lacking. Most NPCs in town say the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Achievements: Multiple broken/impossible achievements. "Riches Everywhere" did not trigger for me. "Tzoru Master Breeder" seems to require content that is only available to Kickstarter backers. There's a missable achievement depending on which ending you choose, although it's possible to get both achievements in one run if you make sure to quit without ending the day. My disappointment in this game can be summarized by a quote from the game itself. The description of an item called the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I love witchy games and this is one of my all time favorites! This game has my two favorite things: wandering around a pretty world and collecting things. So if that's what you enjoy, I definitely recommend this game! That being said, there are some things that could use improvement in the game. It is very hard to know where you are supposed to go and what to do, though they are at least adding in quest area highlights in a new update. Still, it is frustrating to get a quest and spend hours…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Revisited review after finishing the game (270 hours playtime). ____ TLDR ____ Looks cute, flying is fun, lore is alright and unique. Not much magic farming, too much RNG, grindy, confusing, not intuitive, frustrating quest progression, disappointing rewards. Wouldn't recommend the game. If you do end up wanting to play it there's some serious things you need to know about, so read my full review if you don't want to have a bad time like I did. ____ FULL REVIEW ____ This game was gifted…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Good premise, poor execution. I like the cottage core aesthetic. But the core systems of the game like limited sales, magically respawning resource nodes, save only by sleeping, robotic looking models, and the weird UI layout makes it difficult to enjoy, let alone recommend. It feels like an asset flip at best, while trying to sell you on the witchy theme without actually immersing you in anything of that variety. As far as farming simes go while it has unique situations, mechanically the game…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →TL;DR - Unfinished game that presents itself as finished, not early access, unsure if it'll even be updated again atp I was sincerely disappointed by nearly everything I discovered in the 100 mins/3 days I played. The system of keeping all purchased / DLC clothes in a chest to be able to wear them instead of being able to put them in the wardrobe with unlimited space is also piss poor. The translation(? assuming its original version wasn't in English) is also abysmal. I've played a lot of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I recommend this game with a "but," and that "but" is that while I recommend this game, it's better to get it when it's on sale for reasons I will list later. Things I love about the game; - It's a weekly gift system, I enjoy that cause I'm terrible at giving gifts every day. - They display when the friendship level goes up, for my visual havin' self that's great. - You can form deeper bonds beyond just a regular town NPC and MC, the people have depth and scars, they have things they don't…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game had the potential of being absolutely awesome BUT it is painfully slow going, and very frustrating to play. you can only sell items on your witches stall, you cant sell anything to shops. You get recipes for cooking, crafting and potions BUT you can not get every item needed for the cooking crafting and potions because every plant flower weed herb is seasonal. You are able to get a witches broom BUT the items needed are like 4+ seasons in to the game and each season lasts 20 days. I…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have tried to play this game because I had kickstarted it and it looked fun and the story seemd fun.... Unfortunately.... It's not the fun kind of clunky/goofy/indy. My problems started when I booted the a new game. The animations were rough. but not just that : The starting cutscene doesn't even play properly. Then the characters have no animation.... Like they don't even blink. Why don't they even blink? They are super realistic characters but they don't blink! If the camera was active and…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →They tried to make a cute game I'll give you that, but npcs are robotic, dialogues are boring, the gameplay is clunky af. And the only resolution the game supports is 1280x720 not even 1920x1080. I don't even remember when I got the game, all I know is it's not recently, if it was I would have returned it. Cause it is also very much abandoned honestly after coming out of EA (the last update seems to be november 2024). I do not recommend it unfortunately. There are other games better than this…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Even with all it's bugs, quirks and never being updated... I love it. Not sure why the developers gave up on it but it is a no pressure, long haul, cozy game. It does have issues, and it lacks a ton of directions. ( does have discord and wiki page) I really wish they would pick this game back up, there is just SO much to do and keep busy. If farming, crafting, ingredient hording, exploring, picking flowers, fishing, animal breeding, house decorating is your thing, when it is on sale,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →EDIT: It's now been over 2 years since the last update to this game and the devs now suddenly want to make mroe money of this game by giving you a discount. DON'T give them anymore money for this game. Even at the discount they are giving it's not worth it. I really want to like this game. The Base premise is essentially a harvest moon knockoff mixed with some magic and a bit of a storyline. Really great ingredients to make a good game. And the game does deliver on the base promises. But it's…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This recommendation comes with some caveats. While I enjoyed the hell out of this game, it's definitely not for everyone. There's some jank. I didn't run into anything game-breaking, but I may have just been lucky. I did have several annoying bugs like rain not watering crops appropriately, not being able to transform using the sounder, and snails that I couldn't pick up. Restarting the game resolved all of those in the moment, but, again, an irritation since I would lose all progress for…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A cosy game that is just not fun. Or cosy. The gameplay is really confusing and I had to Google everything, including how to progress the main story. It's a very janky, buggy, boring game, that pretty much consists of gathering 999 items on a daily basis. It feels cumbersome and sluggish, and after 42 hours I'd still not unlocked the broom or fast travel. The character models are awful as well. In summary, this is the Elden Ring of cosy games, except the devs forgot that a game is actually…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →My god is this game GRINDY. Think My Time at Portia but with less clue about what you’re supposed to do and no idea where anything is. It’s such a shame because I can tell it could be great, and I know I’ll end up playing longer because there’s still a little bit of hope that once I’m over the initial lag of crap tools and no money, things will start to feel fun. As it stands now though, I’ve been on the wiki constantly for further guidance and spent what feels like forever trying to traverse…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really wanted to like this game but the grind was too much and quests were tedious i really regret wasting my time
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Rough game of grinding that can be confusing. It's cute and all, but quite the slow burn, mostly because it's hard to explore and find ingredients when you have to go to bed before you "die" every "day." An easy mode would be nice, or at least the ability to make "all nighter" potions so you can get stuff done.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is very charming. There are a lot of reviews that complain about the lack of clarity on what to do, but I found that to be part of the fun! You play as an apprentice witch that is stranded on a strange island. You must learn the island inside and out either on foot, by Tzoru, or eventually (my favorite mode of transport) by broom! This game is about adventure so please don't be fooled by shallow reviews! Come to Fern Island and learn what it takes to be an apprentice witch!!
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Attention: This game takes so much time to start that you reach the 2-hour refund mark before you are even able to say that you do or don't like it. I was at 3 hours when I knew that that's it, so, bummer. I haven't really done any refunds on Steam but unfortunately, with The With of Fern Island, I wanted to. The pacing and structure is off: you have a seemingly too large map that you can take a stroll on, but you cannot do much at first. You can pick up a miriad of seemingly random items that…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Why introduce stamina while gardening? So i garden for 3 min, Stamina depleted. In order to fill it you eat something or go to sleep. In order to cook food you need to harvest.....which uses Stamina, which you do not have, because you need to eat something. Which you can not cook because you can not harvest the ingredients, So the only way out right now in the beginning is go to sleep every 3 Minutes. This puts me off this game SOOO much ! So maybe some say, it gets better later on. Which…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Just started the game not long ago. Suuuuuper long game play and beyond confusing. Even with the Wiki page AND the steam comments page up, the puzzles won't work (Even after following instructions), stamina gets used IMMEDIATELY when tying to mine, farm, chop wood, etc. and then it takes forever to find and put together ingredients needed to make food to replenish stamina. It's super difficult to find materials needed to travel faster, and everyone on the tips pages just say, "fly over it with…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really do like this game a lot - it has some great stuff in it. Unfortunately, it also has bugs, especially in some of the important quest lines. And since some of the recipes come from the quest lines, you can get to a point where something you really need or want is just not available to you. This is a problem since there does not appear to be another update forthcoming. On the other hand, maybe there will be another update and if so, I will revise my review.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →DEV'S need to fix this frustration festival. opps caps got stuck Fix broom quest found pieces on beach then it says find flower and contact through stone for blueprint. Too bad they dont tell you that flower only grows in the next season and too bad if your only a few days in. So while i was waiting for season to change i thought keep going, and i noticed i needed a blueprint for a furnace , oh no!!! that blueprint is stuck behind the broom quest , the person i want to buy the blue print from…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I LOVE THIS GAME!!! Now, this might not be surprising as I'm a sucker for witches and also have over 550 hours played on Stardew Valley, so I'm probably the very essence of the target audience. Nevertheless, I hesitated for a while before aquiring this game because the reviews are, let's say, not that awesome. But I had to know for myself. Here's what I found out: Most of the negative reviews criticise the game mechanics which are actually the same exact thing as in Stardew Valley (i.e.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I truly wanted to like this game. I love the idea behind it and was so ready to load tons of hours into it. The first night I played it for about an hour and a half, but it was glitchy and the trees kept flickering. I looked online and tried all of the solutions to get the flickering to stop. It wasn't just that it wasn't aesthetically pleasing, it was also making my game lag. Finally, after an entire day of trying all of the solutions I found online, only to be met with constant crashing of…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hypothetically, this could be a really good game, it has fun magic, good graphics, and a world that *could* feel alive, but it feels like the creators got half finished with it and said "okay, that's good, don't mind the bugs or incomplete gameplay, time to sell!" I could even forgive them if they released it so they could get funds to keep working on the game, but it's not e even being updated really, just given more paid cosmetic DLCs.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Loved this game! It's very exploration heavy, and I appreciated the diversity of plants that you can harvest. The house and farm decorating is fun. The outfits are fun. The puzzles are fun. Two cons would be that I found the socialization aspect to be lacking. If you're looking for a dating or friendship sim, this isn't it. Also, there were times in my play-through where I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to be doing. I spent 95% of my game not realizing that you're supposed to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was really enjoying this, but until the game breaking bug I came across 32 hours in is fixed, I can't recommend it. I've tried posting in discussions on here and discord, placed a bug report but no answer yet. Will keep my fingers crossed.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I was hesitant to buy this game because of all the negative reviews, but it was on sale and I was really in the mood for a farming sim, so I decided to give it a try. I'm so glad I did!! 125 hours in and still hooked. I've had a couple of crashes and minor bugs, but overall this game has run with very little issue. Pros: If you, like me, love hoarding things in games, this one was made for you. Dozens of different mushrooms, herbs, weeds, flowers, fruits and vegetables, fish, seashells,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you have a laptop, don't bother with this game. I will repeat: Even a gaming laptop will not run this game. I can run a fully modded Balder's gate but not this game. The recommended is 16 gigs of ram. I think it might be trying to render every single object and you can't tell it to knock down the render distance. No wonder the reviews are mixed and crashing is frequently mentioned. Cute game, not worth the chugging. This studio just really prefers to only have high end PC users as their…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I usually like those slow-paced cozy games with grinding and making your home area cozy, etc. And I gave this game quite a time to try it from different angles and it felt pretty slow even for me. So many seasons and I was still far from the end of the year and crafting a broom. But I have alredy dealt with main part of the map and cannot say that the game gives you many interesting quests/explorarion details which would make me go around another 50 days to find everything. I even checked some…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a very cute concept, but it just feels unpolished. It's clunky and the controls are a little abnormal. It honestly feels more like an early access that anything else, especially with the typos and translation errors. They make it feel unfinished
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It's a good enough game that it is possible to enjoy it, especially if you rellay like this genre. However, this one is mediocre, really. It has absurdly high specs requirements yet it looks ugly. This genre of game has a huge social aspect yet all of the NPCs are stiff, most are decorative, their activities make no sense like people in swisuit on the beach during a storm... The game's interface is often counterintuitive, like the build menu, it also seems to not work properly like the craft…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Overall, I had fun in this game and in this world. The graphics are great, the story is unique and flying through the world is highly relaxing. I found myself itching to craft everything and collect everything. However, the game is almost unplayable without the online wiki that fans have compiled - too many ingredients in too large a map without much in game direction. Too many seasons for planting too many plants. In the end, I became bored with the constant tracking down of items, quests…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Unfortunately i really could have enjoyed this game, but the types of flaws it has ruins so much of the fun for me I'm going to give it up while still in early game. First the save system just SUCKS, literally the only save function is to sleep. There is no auto save. I only played the first 25 or so days and experianced 5 game crashes basically 5 lost days, without any auto save that was a lot of lost progress. The game doesnt have much of a tutorial explaining some of there more indepth…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is the worst cozy farming game I've ever played, to put it bluntly. It used to be early access, so that says all you need to know that this game was clearly taken out of it never polished/fixed and just abandoned. Ignoring the uncanny valley character designs and animations, bad writing, unlikable characters and you being literally the only witch, which makes this game not have any witch-y vibes at all (you're just some weirdo on a broom that makes potions sometimes basically), the…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I really want to like this game. It has and does everything that you'd want in a comfy game. It is really unfortunate that because of its end-of-day saving, game-breaking bugs you encounter pretty much erase your entire day's progress. Aside from the minor bugs like mushrooms/herbs spawning below the floor or inside trees, not letting you gather them, it's the game-breaking ones like getting stuck under the floor, stuck in dialogues with NPCs and unable to leave the room, stuck unable to…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Do not buy this game, unless you are ready for a bunch of bugs that prevent you from progressing in game. I have emailed support and have not heard anything back. I have 45 hours in the game and I have not completed a quest I got in the first hour of playing. I fall through the map, when i go into a cave that i need to complete the quest, and die because of fall damage. And i have tried multiple times on different days to try go in but the same thing happens.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very difficult to play this game without access to the wiki. There is just too great a variety of resources to keep track of where you will need to go to harvest them, let alone find them. This is part of the game's overall lack of guidance. The game itself does not do a good job of letting you easily sort through pre-requisites for upgrades and buildings; early in-game quests require harvestables from future seasons but doesn't do a good job of telegraphing this fact. Rather frustrating for a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Not even worth the sale price! I got through the initial cut scenes and gameplay and then quickly realized I should've believed all the bad reviews.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Yes it needs work. However, the amount of work that went into this game can be seen. From the environmental details to my favorite broom riding mechanics. And because of the little details I give this a recommendations. However, again, it needs polishing. A lot of quests I had to google because it was hard to figure out where to go next or what to do next in some cases. And some quests require waiting a couple of seasons. Also, if you get motion sickness...good luck! I could only play a…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I loved the game for the most part. However the there was one problem I could not over look. And that was the save system. You can only save by going to bed. The days are about an hour long in real time. That means sleeping mid day or having at least an hour to play. I do not have that kind if time so for that reason I no longer play it/ Would love to come back if they ever fix this.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The vegetal lore is huge, the recipes are great too same with all the moon's phases. But the world seems very empty and the NPC creep me out badly. So if you can deal with devil-dolls looking NPC and a world without animal-human life, you can like it.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I bought this game to get back into gaming in general. Totally worked. There is much to explore, craft and harvest. Everytime I got a bit tired of the game I noticed that there was something I could do for the quests. Like befriending the people or gathering special ingredients. The fact that not everything is available in every season can be a bit annoying in the beginning when you don't know where to find the stuff (and don't want to look it up online) The game doesn't explain everything,…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →
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