Is it my impression or are most Farming Life Sim Games Shovelware?

[venus14!]

Is it my impression or are most Farming Life Sim Games Shovelware these Days?

The only ones that look interesting to me other than Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons and Rune Factory are World's Dawn, Kynseed, Roots of Pacha, Fields of Mistria... And Stardew Valey of course... The rest look more or less like Shovelware to me... :/

Even Square Enix's attempt at making a Life Sim Farming Game Harvestella ended up being Bad or so i heard... Not including Marriage was a BIG Mistake from them... XD :3 I still plan on checking it out though...

[Kikki]

Harvestella was really good. Interesting farming system and a pretty good quality JRPG, to boot. The problem was, nobody knew what to expect from it. People expecting a farming sim were disappointed that it was mostly a JRPG. People who went in looking for a JRPG were disappointed to find that there was so much farming in it. Both groups felt misled. Bad marketing. It had no defined market at all. I still don't know if Squeenix was aiming mainly for farming fans, or JRPG fans, but they shot off the side of both. Only the narrow group that fairly equally like BOTH genres were hit fairly square on.

Good game, though. Pretty high quality and all aspects were good. (I didn't like the tone of the side quests, but they were actually high quality quests...I just HATE 'lack of communication' being the driving force behind all of them. It's a huge peeve of mine wherever I encounter it.)

They DID include marriage, btw.

I don't know what games you're trying, but all the ones I have tried have been pretty darned good, actually. Sun Haven and Coral Island, for example. Winds of Anthos. Etc. I'm super choosy in what I buy, though, and research a lot before committing any money to a new sim.

[PaleSunflower]

My experience with Harvestella was different. It was a complete disappointment for me. If I wanted an RPG, then Harvestella's combat was way too easy and simplistic. If I wanted a farming game, then Harvestella failed to impress me for long. The final nail for me was the side-quests and villagers. In particular, this one brat shows up at my farm, asks whether I'm busy, I tell her yes, and then she calls me a liar (when I haven't watered the field yet). She next drags me into town because she refuses to talk to her friends about something that would take 5 minutes at most to fix (or some baloney like that), and she wants my character to nod along to whatever boneheaded plan she has instead. My character is a complete push-over with no real option to say "no", and the villagers aren't that interesting despite being the focus of a lot of things outside of the main story (and the kids from the starting town are outright irritating in my opinion). My final impression is that I found the combat boring, the farming not enough, and the social aspect at worst a significant detriment to my enjoyment.

(Honestly, I liked Deadcraft better. Both games have an issue of trying to do a bunch of things and then doing them either poorly or middling. Deadcraft, however, had villagers that I tolerated better and was a shorter game than Harvestella, so it didn't overstay its welcome as much as Harvestella did for me. Plus, the side-quests in Deadcraft weren't normally about someone refusing to talk honestly with someone else about a random, often easily fixed problem. Neither game was good per se, but I preferred Deadcraft.)

I will give it credit for at least looking different. Most farming games use a chibi or otherwise "cute" art style. A lot of the farming games kind of all blend together past a certain point in terms of setting, story, gameplay, and tone. A lot of games in particular were chasing after Stardew Valley (even Marvelous did with SoS:PoOT) via lifting aspects from it, so a ton of them had, for example, combat even when the game in question didn't benefit from combat. Open worlds became trendy, resulting a slew of farming games in empty, laggy worlds. This is not helped by other non-farming games adding farming side-quests of varying qualities to their games.

I suppose the best word to use for my feelings towards the farming genre is that it's stagnate. It's felt stagnate for a while now. Whenever a game has a modicum of success and sticks out, like 5+ other farming games immediately appear and implement any deviation from the norm that first game had, until whatever feature made that made the first game special becomes common and not-so-special. (I suppose this happens in other genres, too.) I understand that my own bias and lack of knowledge may be evident here, but those are my opinions.

[Milo]

I advise remembering Sturgeon's Law: "90% of everything is crud".

[Kikki]

I really don't think it's any more of a problem with farming sims than any other genre. I know of all kinds of games trying new approaches to the farming life category. They're not all doing it well, but there's plenty of new ideas going around. It's no more stagnant (or full of shovelware) than the entire field of RPGs (J, S, C or whatever type) or fishing games or match-3 or platformers or shooters...

Farming sims have just made it big only recently, so perhaps it's just a genre that's more in the spotlight, so the problems are more glaring at the moment. But I don't think there ARE any more issues with this genre than any other. I'm finding mostly really cool stuff, well made and a good mix of unique and comfortingly familiar.

There's a huge amount of cheap knock-offs and low-effort projects in any genre. It's just that farming sims and all 'cozy' stuff became profitable fairly recently, so its seeing the biggest growth in the low-effort 'cash-grab' sector right now. *shrug* Honestly I don't think there's any particular problem. It's just the way things go. Not just in gaming. In business, too...all business. Home crafters and so on. Somebody manages to make a living making stickers, and suddenly ten thousand people who love stickers or crafting or are just home a lot decide they'd like to make money that way, too, and YouTube suddenly booms with videos with titles like, 'I made $5000 a month just making stickers at home in my free time...here's how!'

That example was a bit random. Maybe because I have (but haven't yet tried) the game 'Sticky Business', which is about making stickers. It applies to all kinds of things. Anything made with Cricut saw ridiculous overexposure for a while there. Etc.

So it's really not a farming sim issue at all, in my opinion. It's not even just a gaming issue. People will always, always, ALWAYS try to find ways to cash in on trends. Some of them will do well...usually those who actually put work and love into their projects. Most will do terribly, because they just wanted to grab some of the success, but without much of the effort.

I maintain that Harvestella was a very unique and fascinating game. I HATED the side quests...so much that it ruined the game for me!...but if you put that aside (which is hard to do, but I'm gonna, for this) it was a very unusual game that I don't think anyone could recommend or criticize on another's behalf, because it's too unique a mix. Everyone would have to play it for themselves, to know what they'd think of it. It's not a game that you can say 'if you like JRPGs, you will love/hate this' or 'if you like farming sims, you will love/hate this'. It's a weird one, harder to judge from the outside than any other game I've played.

[venus14!]

Is Harvestella significantly different from Rune Factory?

[Kikki]

It's almost nothing like Rune Factory, imo.

Just people asking how different it is from Rune Factory suggests to me that they're not prepared for what it's really like, showcasing the reason it flopped. People bought it expecting it to be something it wasn't.

It's entirely its own thing, not like anything else. I think the only way you could get a feel for what it's really like without actually PLAYING it, is to watch Let's Plays of it.

[PaleSunflower]

Is Harvestella significantly different from Rune Factory?

I would say yes. They're both RPGs, but where Rune Factory tries to blend to farming and RPG aspects together (usually), Harvestella is very much a JRPG with farming elements on the side.

As a life simulator, Harvestella has no festivals, no seasonal events, no birthdays, the NPCs rarely change their dialogue (and all of the side-quest share the same major plot point about miscommunication being bad), only the love interests can be befriended, not all NPCs have names, no crop levels, and no fishing levels. Leveling up seems to only apply to the combat job classes and the player character's overall level. The player character can raise only 2 kinds of livestock that need to be purchased from a shop. Cooking does exist as way to regain health and stamina, but I mostly stuck to one recipe that I got early on while I was playing.

As for combat, there are no separate weapons; rather, what weapon your character uses is determined by job class, which can be changed mid-battle. The player character moves too slowly for dodging or to block damage, so, unless you play a ranged job class, you will tank most damage. Combos and parrying aren't really a thing, and special attacks are limited (and have a cooldown meter). Apparently, there are no invincible frames after being attacked.

[Kikki]

Again, this is why I say it flopped. People's expectations were all over the place, but nowhere near to what Harvestella actually is. It's a very unique game. It's NOT a life sim, and there's no reason to expect festivals in it, imo, unless you go in thinking that this is Square Enix's attempt at Rune Factory. (Which it isn't.) It does have marriage but (like most games that allow you to marry) it's really of no consequence except you'll have your chosen one around your house afterward.

Seriously, you've either got to play it yourself, or watch videos of it to see the gameplay/content first hand. The combat was fun, ime, and easily managed. (You really should get better recipes than the early ones or you'll have a tough time with later battles. The different effects are crucial.)

I liked all the incentives you get via the fairies. They were a fun to aim for and sometimes make me want to go back into my finished file and get the last handful I hadn't gotten, yet. (I rarely go back to any story-driven game after I finish the story, though, to play in post-game.) I won't ever replay the whole game though because I hated the tone of the side-quests THAT much, and it's hard to level up through combat, iirc...you really need to do the quests to get the XP to level up with. (Every bloody quest revolved around a very foolish lack of communication that could so easily have been solved without you needing to get involved. Well, that's MY opinion. I think I recall Mikodesu thinking the side quests were a highlight of the game, and some of the best she'd seen.)

Watch a video of it being played and see for yourself if the content looks fun. Listening to the opinions of others isn't going to tell you if YOU will like it or not. It's too weird a mix, and all answers you get will be heavily coloured by the personality of the answerer, which may mislead you into thinking something will be great (or terrible) when you will feel very differently about it.

EDIT: Oh, and techncially, we're taking this thread off topic, at this point. This has become entirely Harvestella talk, when it is supposed to be about whether or not the farming sim genre is full of shovelware.

I can't really say anything to take it back ON topic right now, though, as I think I already said everything I had to say on that matter. (That it is no more full of shovelware than any other genre, that it's just a more visible problem right now due to the genre's current trendiness.)

[PaleSunflower]

Harvestella is a good example of what I mentioned earlier. It's a fundamentally non-farming game with farming adding to it, which ultimately dominated the marketing for some reason. It's not unreasonable for people to think that a game called "Harvestella" with the description from the publisher itself:

Farm, fight and forge friendships in a new fantasy world!

Introducing a brand-new fantasy x life simulation RPG from Square Enix! Through the changing seasons, explore an imaginative world, tend your crops, face enemies in dynamic combat, and unravel the mystery of the death season, Quietus.

Would focus on being a farming game/life simulator with the JRPG mechanics second. The current website for Harvestella also calls it a "lifestyle simulation RPG". The tags for the Steam page and the Switch page both list the game as a simulation game. I cannot see how Harvestella is not intended to be a life simulator.

Why Square Enix misrepresented this game as being a farming and life simulator first is ultimately unknown, but it looks a look like Square Enix was chasing the Stardew Valley big bucks like other farming and non-farming games that added farming side-quests and mini-games even if the game or series didn't benefit from them. As it stands, unless I'm forgetting something major, the farming aspects are largely restricted to just the farm and the shops that cater to farming supplies. The main purpose of the farming is to get supplies for exploring dungeons. The farming tasks from the fairies are a nice bonus, but they are also completely optional, like most of the farming. The life simulator aspects (by which I am referring to the towns, townsfolk, their related quests, and social systems) have already been discussed as substandard, and I don't think that I need to add to it.

The nearly $60 USD price tag of the game also set expectations high; a common comment I see about Harvestella is that it isn't worth buying at full price (similar to Deadcraft again). Many people were expecting a AAA farming/life simulator game with some combat because that is what it was presented as (being a ~$60 from a major publisher), and the game did not deliver for many players. It was, in my opinion, at best an okay but bland JRPG with a prominent and solid farming side-quest and awful life simulator aspects.

Also, I may be reading into things, but I really did play Harvestella. I still have my copy and everything. I apologize if I misunderstood.

Spoiler:

I didn't complete the game and I last played some time ago (so I looked some stuff up for accuracy), but I know how clunky the combat was from my own experience. Not being able to block or dodge meant that I mostly sat in place during battles, pressed the attack button over and over, and mostly moved when the game told me to (with the orange-red area-of-effect notifications on the ground). If my character's health got too low, then I spammed healing items. I got to the point of unlocking the farming tasks after killing a dragon that was once a woman who volunteered to help an orphanage. Checking the wiki for names, my character got far enough to met Juno the fire fairy and Aeril the wind fairy. Then I met the brat and, thoroughly unimpressed with the setting and sick of its inhabitants (and overall not having a good time with this game), I quit. The dish that carried me through my playthrough was called the mountain stir-fry, I think. It had mushrooms in it. I don't want to play again to complete Harvestella. I assume that I stopped far enough into the game to have a fair-enough opinion on it.

---

Farming games have always had a inglorious rap. Before Stardew Valley's unexpected success, it was considered an extremely easy and causal genre, if my memory serves right. Part of what made Stardew Valley so successful was its price-point. It was cheap enough that many people who'd normal scuff at the idea of playing a farming game were willing to give this one a shot. Because of Stardew Valley, other developers wanted to cash in on this perceived farming interest, the genre was born, and the reputation of farming games improved a bit. It's notable that many new farming games, when they list their inspirations, will seemingly always mention Stardew Valley, but not always Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons. I've seen people accuse those two franchises of being clones of Stardew Valley, even when the game being accused is older than Stardew Valley.

But, since we haven't seen a new farming success like Stardew Valley since, the farming genre craze was waned slightly. The focus appears to be on "cozy" games now (whatever that means), with farming now being sometimes lumped within. It's possibly Stardew Valley's low price of entry has, regardless, influenced both genres. According to Steam user reviews, the most highly rated cozy games and farming sim games are normally under $20 USD (ignoring discounts). That's cheap in my perspective and may be part of why the original poster felt that a lot of farming games were shovelware. Typically, games this cheap are not expected to be good where I'm from (but them being good isn't totally unheard of).

[Kikki]

Anyone considering buying the game should first play the Harvestella demo. It'd be goofy if I didn't mention that it has one. (On Switch. Not sure about Steam.)

Oh and, in general...be careful about tags on Steam. They are user-defined. The dev gets to pick what ones the game releases with, but after that they have no say in the tags on their game and they can get added by ANYONE, even people who don't own the game.

I'm not going to take this thread any further off topic with posts entirely (or almost entirely) about Harvestella, and I already said everything I had to say on the on-topic parts. So no more from me, here.

[PaleSunflower]

Perhaps some of the top rated tagged "farming sim" or "cozy" games are just users & creators using the wrong tags, but I do think that most of these games being on the inexpensive side may still be relevant to them looking similar to shovelware. Either the users falsely assigning these tags associate cheap games with "cozy" or "farming sim", or the creators are more likely to assign cheap games with the "cozy" or "farming sim" tags. Neither of which is a good look for these tags when I think about why "cozy" and "farming sim" might equal cheap (either the buyers or developers not valuing the games much). The main progenitor of virtual farming as a full genre, Stardew Valley, also being inexpensive gives the impression that these might be all connected, but, then again, there may be a secret, 3rd thing that links everything together that I'm just not grasping.

[Bluie]

One of the reasons I don't/can't update the farming game masterpost any more is that the genre has become so bulky and bloated that I need to investigate every single game that comes up in the 'farming sim' and 'cozy' tabs - to the point of becoming maddening. When I first started the list, this wasn't the case. 'Farming Sim' wasn't even an established tag yet on Steam, I would find them under 'agriculture' instead. The pool was a lot smaller then, new farming games were few and far between, but as Concerned Ape became a millionaire from his (deserved) well beloved $15 farming sim, everyone wants a slice of the Stardew Valley pie now. We are drowning in farming sims now, and yes, most of them are subpar or mostly style over substance. When you hit the formula's sweet spot, they're great, but you have to wade through an enormous amount of « Cow Poopoo » to find the diamonds in the rough these days.

And then when we have big game studios following suit, they either fumble and miss the point entirely, or they keep to a series formula and have a decent game on their hands. Some of these are like a 'happy' in-between, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth playing either. I've played a lot of farming sims, some really great, others I don't know how I tolerated. Now I'm numb to it all. I see farming simulators and a part of my brain just shuts down. I'm loyal to Rune Factory, I'm here for whatever Concerned Ape is doing, and I'm eyeing Marvelous suspiciously after how much I didn't enjoy PoOT (the remakes have been good though). But other than that, I'm really only looking forwards to Fields of Mistria (been following it for years) and like, MAYBE the farming life in Fantasy Life i. I do not have the brain capacity to shuffle through all these 'cozy' games any more.

[Kikki]

Yup.

So the 'answer' to this thread could be taken two ways. YES, the genre is full of shovelware or whatever you want to call it. But NO...it's not because it is the farming life sim category.

It's because it is trendy. EVERYTHING trendy is subject to this, in gaming and outside of it. The grab-a-buck gang sees the money flowing somewhere and dollar signs light up in their eyes, and they pile onto the trend.

Or less nefarious...people who have a passing interest see something trendy and think it might be their opportunity but they don't have the skill and/or dedication to actually make a good game, so they were genuinely interested in the genre, but lacked the ability to produce anything of quality. I'll compare it again to home crafters. Someone may genuinely love making amigurumi, but they 1) aren't actually any good at it, and 2) have no business sense. So they might have a go at creating their own business and really WANT it to work out...but they fail miserably. So I think there's more than just greed behind all the junk.

I still find a lot of good games, though. I guess I don't even notice the garbage...it just floats by under my radar, while the gems shine so much, they're easy to pinpoint.

[Terranigma Freak]

I don't know much about Harvestella, but I will say that yes, I do get the feeling that a lot of farming life sim games are shovelware. NOT all of them, but there is a lot. Feels like a lot of them are low budget low effort games crapped out to cash in on the cozy games. They aren't built with the love and respect that made games like HM/SOS, Stardew, Rune Factory, etc. Of course, even big games like HM/SOS and RF have their stinkers. SOS is stagnating these days and needs a shake up. HM actually started going in the right direction with the recent game. It's not perfect, but it's better than all the previous HM games since the Marvelous split.

I also think the genre itself is also due for some innovation. Sometimes a new one is released and I literally couldn't tell what makes it stand out. We need somebody to cause a stir in the way we play these games. I don't know what that will be, but it needs to catch people's attention.