That Evil Farming Game

About

That Evil Farming Game is the colloquial name given to a video game rumored to exist which was said to be like popular farming simulators Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley but with a twist: at the beginning of the game, the player character stabs their wife, and spends the rest of the game going about their lives while hiding the corpse from police. The game was first mentioned on r/tipofmyjoystick in 2016, but interest in the game surged thanks to videos from Nexpo and Whang.

Origin

The game was first mentioned on r/tipofmyjoystick on April 30th, 2016 by user u/sparta213, in a post titled "This Game Was Kind Of Like Harvest Moon."^[1] Their post reads:

I know almost nothing about this game. All I can remember is that it's kind of like Harvest Moon but with a dark twist. The game starts out with you and your wife, one night you get in to a fight and you end up stabbing her to death. Now the game revolves around you farming to stay alive while trying to keep the town from finding out about the "incident" that happened. Every now and then the cops come to search your house and you have to hide her corpse.
Edit: I have no recollection of what console this game was for or when it came out. I know that it was released after 2000. I know this is so vague but it's really hard to remember something you forgot! Also it had to be before mid – early 2015. Graphics were not 3D. I'm 100% sure it wasn't a browser game.

Spread

In the ensuing thread, users suggested it could be an RPG maker horror game or even a dream of the OP, but no conclusions were reached. On December 16th, 2018, another user posted about the game on the subreddit. User DavidSpaceAMA^[2] wrote:

There was this game I used to have downloaded in about 2006, before I upgraded my computer and lost it. It was a farming, Stardew Valley style of game, where you murder your wife, and then you try and pretend you never killed her, and that was the whole game, keep farming and make sure no one finds out you killed her. There was fishing minigame, and I specifically remember fishing up evidence of your wife’s murder and then you pass out.
Edit: It wasn’t pretending to be a kids game, it wasn’t RPG Maker and I got it off some indie devs website. There were screens between each “day” that showed the date (in the game) and one of the characters was an old dude with a white beard.

Again, users in the thread suggested similar games and creepy farming simulators but none featured the "wife killing" plot. Over the course of the following year, more leads on the game came from people recalling aspects of the game and where it came from. Users thought the game may have come from a now-defunct eastern European shock site perhaps named ashnremains. On January 20th, 2020, a subreddit devoted to uncovering the game launched, titled /r/ThatEvilFarmingGame.^[3] The subreddit quickly grew to over 2,000 members in less than ten days. The surge in interest in the game was aided by videos by Nexpo, whose January 16th, 2020 video including a summary of the search gained over 650,000 views (shown below, left), Whang, whose January 29th video gained over 169,000 views in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

Vinesauce Explanation

On June 13, 2021, a redditor^[4] found an animation video^[5] (shown below) based on a game suggestion made up by Vinesauce Joel during a livestream. The idea pitched matched the premise of That Evil Farming Game exactly.

Speculation immediately ensued on whether the original suggestor, u/sparta213, could have misremembered this idea as a fully-made game. One day later, the user did confirm that it fit the premise perfectly and that he used to fall asleep to Vinesauce videos.^[6]

Search Interest

External References