Don’t scratch too far beneath the surface, and it’d be easy to write off Harvestella as a somewhat undercooked mashup of JRPG and farming sim. Indeed, I’ve seen more than a few comments asking such lines since the game launched a few months ago (sorry for this extremely late review!), …
“A farm life sim but you’re a witch” is an extremely enticing proposition. Games about settling down in a quaint little town and running a farm while getting to know the locals—the old Harvest Moon model that’s grown so popular in the wake of Stardew Valley—are delightful. Being a cute …
When you win a dance battle in Ooblets—because dance-offs are how these particular collectible monsters compete—you get a chance to collect a seed from the leader of the other team. But rather than snatching the spoils from a vanquished foe, or ensnaring them in a little ball, you give a …
Start getting those leave requests in, friends: you’re going to want to make sure you have September 20 free to play games all day, because that’s the release date Studio Drydock announced today for the Switch and Steam versions of cozy magical farm life sim Wylde Flowers. A quick, back-of-the-envelope …
At first glance, Wylde Flowers doesn’t stray too far from the farming life sim conventions that Harvest Moon laid out some 25 years ago. I don’t say that as a complaint: this is a genre where, more so than most, there’s comfort in familiarity. A new setting, a new group …
Are you sick of the quaint, laid-back charm of Story of Seasons-esque farming life-sims yet? I know I’m not, but even if you are (monster!), there’s a new one on the horizon that you may want to keep an eye on. Coming soon to Steam Early Access is Kappa Bits’ …
Since February this year, Apple Arcade subscribers have had the joy of Studio Drydock’s cozy magical farming sim Wylde Flowers. Life sim fans outside the iOS ecosystem might have looked on with envy, but the good news for them is that Fairhaven will soon be opening its gates much wider, …
A decade since the last new game in a series with a dedicated fanbase—and with the bankruptcy of one studio and formation of another in the meantime—there’s some weight on the shoulders of Rune Factory 5. With expectations riding high, it’d be easy to get overly ambitious, to try to …
The premise behind Staxel is simple, but compelling: what if you mixed the farm life sim of Story of Seasons or Stardew Valley with Minecraft’s block-building creativity? It seems like a natural fit: disparate as the genres are in a lot of ways, they have similar rhythms to their relaxing …
The steady stream of chilled-out farming games continues with Deiland: Pocket Planet Edition. Coming from Chibig, the studio behind last year’s charming (if a little rough) Summer in Mara, it’s a “reimagining” of a remake of their very first game—what started as a humble mobile game got remade for PlayStation …
