
If you were to put Stardew Valley and Skyrim into a pot and mix it up, I'd imagine that the video game soup you'd create would look an awful lot like Hawthorn – an adorable upcoming sandbox RPG from a group of ex-Bethesda, BioWare, and Naughty Dog devs.
Hawthorn is the debut game from indie studio NEARstudios, which is led by Heather Cerlan (who previously worked as a senior artist for Starfield and a texture artist on The Last of Us, amongst many other things) and Jason Richardson. Richardson was a gameplay designer for Mass Effect Andromeda and a systems designer on both Starfield and Fallout 76. What's more, Game Developer reports that Skyrim's lead designer, Bruce Nesmith, will also be helping out with Hawthorn.