Masterpost of Farming Simulation Games that aren't HM/SoS/RF

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
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^ Mini update, someone in the comments asked if there will be dating/marriage and they confirmed that yes there will be marriageable npcs but they are unsure of families yet (I’m assuming they’re talking about babies)
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Kikki
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I asked the creator directly through the FAQ feature yesterday, right after I posted in this thread when I wasn't able to find any info on it within the campaign, and they replied the same way. But their answer to me isn't visible, as when you ask via the FAQ, the question isn't posted publicly but rather sent like a PM. The reply is the same...it gets sent to your Kickstarter inbox, so it's good that someone else asked through the comments, where others can see it, too. (You can't do that unless you've already donated to the campaign, and I haven't made up my mind about it, yet. But hey, if any of you have questions and haven't made your mind up to be a backer, it's nice to know that you CAN ask questions even without pledging.)

Though if they update the campaign to include that info, that's better than needing to search comment replies for it :)
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Terranigma Freak
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Hmm, I somehow missed this game's release. It looks really charming.

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Added Everdream Valley and Harvestella. Any Kickstarter games brought to my attention will be added if/when they are fully funded.
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The Gods Fabled: Soil Frontier has been fully funded and has less than 48 hours left on the campaign :)
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Bluie
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Editing the list today while waiting for the Pokemon Presents. Will edit this post later if there's anything significant to feature.
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mfw I quote the list instead of edit. Reading is hard and I'm still getting used to the new forum layout.

Edit: HOKAY.

I went through the entire list and edited accordingly. While I only added the Kickstarter that was mentioned above, there's been quite a few games that have solid release dates, have upcoming ports, moved from TBA to 2022/2023, and there was a surprise release as well. Here's the main deets:

- Dinkum, while still in early access, surprise released mid July and people are LOVING it. 4000+ reviews on Steam with the overwhelmingly positive rating.

- Hokko Life is coming out of early access on September 27 AND is releasing on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One.

- Bunny Park and Lemon Cake are getting ports for every modern console on September 30th

- Potion Permit is also launching on literally everything on September 22nd

I only deleted one game that I'm pretty sure is 100% dead (no activity in over a year and no developer to be found). I have yet to do a Steam review for new games, but I'll save that for another day.
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Spirit of the Island just came out on Steam.
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Bluie
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Terranigma Freak wrote: Aug 17, 2022 7:49 pm Spirit of the Island just came out on Steam.
Thanks, will edit soon.

The first Shepherd's Crossing game is getting a remaster on Switch this November:

https://www.gematsu.com/2022/08/farm-li ... for-switch

It'll have English as a language option added in an update, so that's pretty cool. Hope it does well enough that they do the DS sequel as well. I'll certainly be purchasing this.
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There's very little of people actually talking about PLAYING these games :( Is anyone playing any of them? I look at the ones that are available, but Steam reviews are all the same, ime, and I'd rather hear from people here...pros with life sims and farming sims in particular. Are any of these (available) games particularly good/fun? I just had a look at Spirit of the Island, but it looks dull/unremarkable and the reviews are pretty run-of-the-mill in what they say. Some people gush, some people criticize unfairly, and some are more measured and factual, but that feels like every review section of every game on Steam, so...I just don't find Steam reviews all that helpful. I don't know those people or how much exposure they've had to sims, etc.

EDIT: Oh, my sister is playing Dinkum and has been obsessed with it for about a week. I haven't tried it, though. Will be checking to see how playable it is on Steamdeck. If it's good on there, I'll try it. IT's rated as 'playable', which afaik, means it's been tested and runs pretty well but not quite perfectly (compared to how it runs on regular PC.)

EDIT 2: Okay, so...if you go to buy Dinkum on Steamdeck, it expands on the playability. The one warning is that some text is small and may be hard to read on a miniature screen. Everything else has a green checkmark. I have good eyes, so I'm not concerned, but it also tells you that if you want to magnify, you just have to press the STEAM button + L1.
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I would play more of them is they were more accessible. I don't like PC gaming, full stop. I have to wait until the eventual ports which may not ever happen, so my opinions are null and void until then. This massive influx of farming sims in the recent years is a mixed blessing. There's more to choose from then ever before, but not everything is going to be everyone's cup of tea either. This is was originally made to both stop the constant threads of people asking for more farming sims and to organize a list of the genre as a resource. I do my best to judge whether a game should be included or not, but I have no way of fully recommending most of these titles.

Eventually I'm going to go through and trim the list down, especially for games that either have no effort farming or have ratings that are unfavorable. There are some dedicated YouTube channels to farming sims specially that may help you, Kiki. As for me personally, if I'm playing anything here, you'll be sure to see me squawk about it in the Backlog Thread.
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Ah, no worries, Bluie :) My comment wasn't aimed at you or your thread specifically, but more at the fact that in spite of us having a LOT of options, now, I never see anyone talking about playing them, and I don't know what that means. Does that mean no one is trying them? Or are they trying them, but they're not very good, so they don't bother talking about them? Surely if people were trying the available games and finding them awesome, they'd say something?

Dinkum definitely has some glitches, but I dunno if they're particular to SteamDeck, or to the game as a whole, being early access. When I tried to start a file, I couldn't get off the dock at the beginning. Literally, the game woudln't let me walk off the dock. I've no idea why. Restarted and it worked just fine, and it turns out that the island is different every time you restart, like Animal Crossing. I was able to walk off the dock when I restarted, so clearly just some strange blip. *shrug*

It's not as cute as AC, but the graphics are strangely nice. Colours are more muted than I like so far, like the saturation is low. Well, I've created Cecily and landed on my island (Natalia) now, so I'm gonna go place the required starting tent(s). The way the characters laugh is adorable. Or at least the way Fletch does it! Would have been cool if you were allowed to beautify that industrial South City, though. If only I had even one or two of the required skills for game development...I would LOVE to make a game that features urban gardening/farming and reclaiming the world from industry and guerilla gardening.

So far the game seems very likeable. This is the very first time I've played on Steamdeck so I dunno what I'm doing yet but I've figured out how to take screenshots. Next is learning how to share them.

I hate playing on PC, too...haaaaaaaaaate it. But the steamdeck is really nice.
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Kikki wrote: Aug 18, 2022 6:41 am There's very little of people actually talking about PLAYING these games :( Is anyone playing any of them? I look at the ones that are available, but Steam reviews are all the same, ime, and I'd rather hear from people here...pros with life sims and farming sims in particular. Are any of these (available) games particularly good/fun? I just had a look at Spirit of the Island, but it looks dull/unremarkable and the reviews are pretty run-of-the-mill in what they say. Some people gush, some people criticize unfairly, and some are more measured and factual, but that feels like every review section of every game on Steam, so...I just don't find Steam reviews all that helpful. I don't know those people or how much exposure they've had to sims, etc.

EDIT: Oh, my sister is playing Dinkum and has been obsessed with it for about a week. I haven't tried it, though. Will be checking to see how playable it is on Steamdeck. If it's good on there, I'll try it. IT's rated as 'playable', which afaik, means it's been tested and runs pretty well but not quite perfectly (compared to how it runs on regular PC.)

EDIT 2: Okay, so...if you go to buy Dinkum on Steamdeck, it expands on the playability. The one warning is that some text is small and may be hard to read on a miniature screen. Everything else has a green checkmark. I have good eyes, so I'm not concerned, but it also tells you that if you want to magnify, you just have to press the STEAM button + L1.
These games are a big time investment and hard to split your time when you're already playing one. I'm still playing SOS Doraemon, My Time In Portia, and Stardew Valley. LOL.

Best trust me, this thread is VERY useful. I come to this thread a lot to look at what's interesting.

I gave my impressions a few years ago for a game here too.
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Please note that I never said or even suggested that the thread wasn't very useful. I said I don't see much talk of anyone playing the games listed in it other than the couple we've all tried...mostly the ones you just mentioned. I certainly don't expect Bluie to be the one to tell everyone whether the games are good or not...that's a responsibility for whole group using the thread. I'd think maybe we just don't have any PC players since a lot of these launch on PC only, especially to start, but I know that's not true. Now that I have a Steam Deck, I am finally able to take part in some of them (not all can be played on Deck, of course.)

~

Dinkum is fairly cute. The graphics are pretty nice...not purely blocky like minecraft...a much cuter and smoother look, more like Dragon Quest Builders, where the people and trees are drawn with more realistic-looking shapes. I'm disappointed by the limited palate...I find it visually boring, colour-wise. The gameplay is probably attractive to anyone who likes Bokumono or Animal Crossing (or Dragon Quest Builders or Minecraft). It's mostly gathering items (like wood, stone, ores, grasses, seeds, bugs and fish) and crafting, right now, and gradually building a town for the people who want to come to your island.

It doesn't have much content, yet, in other ways, though. You can invest a lot of hours if you can get into the gathering and crafting and building alone, but if you need more social stuff or a story, you're out of luck at this point, imo...it's only been in ea for a month and it's being updated frequently but obviously it still has a long way to go before it feels really rich in content. Plus the dev is very interested in getting feedback and implementing suggestions so if a lot of people want this or that, there's a decent chance it'll happen.

I'm eventually going to try Planet Crafter, too, (a terraforming game with a non-scary survival element...not horrible like Subnautica, though, more about managing resources, NOT avoiding vicious monsters, which is what made me dump it) which is fully verified on Deck and is coming up on twenty thousand 'overwhelmingly positive' reviews. Though not right away since I prefer not to play more than one game at once. But as far as I can tell, Dinkum doesn't have enough content to keep me busy for long. Not sure yet how engrossing the building will be since I have only acquired one tool so far beyond the gifted starting tool.
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There are many games on this list I would love to try, but if they are just on PC or something other than Switch it probably isn't going to happen. Our PC setup isn't comfortable or practical for gaming, though my husband does occasionally get on Steam for stuff like Total War or SimCity copycats.

I have played some of the games on the list on Switch that I may have mentioned in the past in the backlog threads if that helps anybody. Here are some that I remember offhand:
Spoiler:
Yonder - It was okay, but didn't have replay value to me after finishing the story.

Grow - I liked it better than Yonder, even played past the end of the story to make the rest of the worlds on the tree and finish the village areas.

Bit Orchard - It was all right, but pretty barebones when I played. It has an expansion now that adds chickens and some other stuff that I may try sometime.

Staxel - Loved it! Though it is really a building sandbox that happens to have some farming and social features.

Sakuna - The rice farming was fun, but I hated the platforming.

Stranded Sails - Promising premise, but rather boring and very glitchy in execution. If you search the forums you can probably find my more specific complaints about it.

Stardew Valley - Good game and one of the better known indies.

My Time at Portia - Good game, in spite of being notoriously glitchy.

Little Dragons Cafe - Cute art and okay restaurant aspect, the rest of it is frustrating/infuriating to bog through.

Earthlock - Fun, albeit grindy rpg.

Dragon Quest Builders 2 - My absolute favorite game I have on Switch. More building than farming obviously, but I think it has a decent storyline too. I especially like that the people you recruit actually do stuff with what you make for them, and farmers work the fields you make. Haven't played the first one enough for a solid opinion yet, as the first boss got me to rage quit.
I hope to eventually try Littlewood, Apico (it's on Switch now too), and Autonauts.
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