Note: I have only played Farm Together in its single player mode, therefore my review will reflect that experience.
Casual gamers rejoice! Farm Together is an interactive agricultural simulator where players can grow crops, raise animals and build the farm of their dreams. Get started with a small plot of land, then expand your farming empire as you level up and gain access to more acres of fertile land. Choose from dozens of crops, trees, animals, fish, flowers, buildings, decorations, fences and roads to build a farm as unique as the avatar you customize! Time advances even when you’re not online so you can come back when your harvest is ready. Players can choose to farm solo, open their farm to friends or give public access to meet new farmers from around the world. Farm Together is available for download on Steam for Mac & PC. It currently does not have an ESRB rating but would likely receive an E for everyone rating based on content.
Farm Together is made by Alejandro González Fiela and his development team at Milkstone Studios, an independent game studio with over thirty titles available for PC and console. Their mission statement is simple “Making fun games while we have fun doing them.” Farm Together is their brand new casual agricultural simulation game with a multiplayer option to visit new farms where you can help friends with their harvest and complete quests.
The game was just released on October 11, 2018. There is a banner on the home screen encouraging players to send feedback on the Steam Forums and Subreddit. This ongoing conversation with their players is a great opportunity to make changes to the game that will benefit the user experience. It currently has two big green thumps up with 1,985 Very Positive reviews on Steam showing that players are enjoying a trip to the countryside.
Getting Started: Creating your Farm
To start your game, you’ll need to create your first farm. I am a huge fan of naming things and owning property, even if its virtual. The game auto loads a name for you i.e. Rosewood Pastures, Strawberry Fields, or you can come up with your own. I went with The Homestead because it felt rustic and timeless. Next, you’ll want to decide on your visibility, friend permissions and guest permissions settings. I would suggest setting your first farm to private with no friend or guest permissions to get comfortable with the game and not have to worry about any unplanned visitors.
Getting Started: Creating your Avatar
Under the Customize option you can decide on a gender and look for your avatar. Your options are limited off the top until you start leveling up. I went with red eyes, overalls and a fiery red ponytail for my farmer. There is no explanation as to why you’re building a farm or backstory for your character, so you have complete freedom to make it up. I decided to make my farmer a diurnal vampire named Emilia with a thirst for starting over. She hopes building a life for herself in the countryside will bring her peace at last. It is so easy to project your own fantasies and narratives onto the characters in this game and I would encourage you to do so! Simulations are fun like that.
Avatar: The First Farmer
Your in-game avatar updates immediately when you change up their look in the Customize option on the Homepage. The texture of the avatar’s hair, body and clothing is detailed with soft lines and edges. The hair responds well to movement, especially for the female avatars. There are dozens of Emote options for the avatar to perform with new ones unlocked as you level up. You can choose four to use at a time that are assigned to keys 1-4 on your keyboard. Some emotes are more nuanced like a subtle wipe of the brow while others are more expressive like a big belly laugh with both hands gesticulating wildly. Emotes bring depth to the avatars and would be useful and fun to use when playing with friends or other players online.
In-game actions are dynamic and swift. Avatars don’t have a health bar, so you can plow acres of land by hand without breaking a sweat. Speaking of hands, theirs are massive. Close-ups show they are slightly disproportionate to their body but maybe their hands are the source of their power and give them their ability for non-stop farming. This design choice makes sense when they harvest crops because the large fruits and vegetables look proportionate to their hand size.
Farm Together giving the option of creating a female avatar shows Milkstone Studios understands they have a diverse player base. It took Farming Simulator, a hugely popular brand in the agricultural simulation genre, eight years to finally make a female avatar for their players. It’s encouraging to see this visibility for female gamers and helps to create a more inviting game space.
Overall, the character design is perfect for casual gaming because there is enough variety of looks to create a unique avatar without there being an overwhelming number of choices. The avatar is just one-way players can express their design aesthetic and more options are given for decorating and personalizing your farm.
Controls: Farming 101
After you have customized your avatar and created your first farm your rural journey into the unknown begins! A tutorial serves as a supportive guide giving players a nudge in the right direction as they explore their new property. The controls are straightforward.
Arrow keys/WASD – Move
Left Mouse button/Spacebar – Interaction
Right Mouse button – Run/Quit Interaction
Q – Open Shop
X – Recycle (This lets you undo an action or delete an item with a 50% refund)
Z – Move contents
V – Get in/out of tractor
T – Chat (Join the chat session to communicate with other players in multiplayer mode)
C – Camera zoom
Esc – Pop up menu
Mouse pad/wheel – Rotate Camera
Farm Together features a Free Rotating Camera view with rotation, tilt and zoom. When moving the camera will switch to an Over the Shoulder view, with the ability to rotate the camera to adjust the direction of your avatar.
The movement controls are easy to pick up because arrows keys serve this purpose in most games. In the beginning I kept accidentally pressing the space bar as if it were a jump key. This was an issue for me because of muscle memory from playing previous PC games. In Farm Together the left mouse button/space bar lets you interact with your environment, you use it to plow land, water crops, harvest crops, build things and sell items from your stands.
To run, the right mouse button can be a bit tricky to access when your right hand is using the arrows keys. If you’re using a desktop with a cord mouse I would suggest operating the mouse with your right hand and using the arrows keys with your left. If you’re like me and using a laptop, you can use your left thumb to press the button. Try out a few different hand configurations to find out what is most efficient for you.
The letter keys take some getting used to but thankfully all available actions are visible in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, so you’ll always know which keys to press and what options you have.
When moving around a yellow square outline will appear in front of your avatar. Anything in this selected area will be identified in the bottom left corner of the screen. This can be annoying because you can’t use your mouse to hover over items in the distance to see what they are. If you want to identify a tree species on the horizon, you must walk right up to. I’m a lazy casual gamer so I find this mechanic tedious, but it does encourage the player to fully explore their entire property on foot.
Later in the game you’ll have access to a tractor. This upgrade is a huge time saver and the game really picked up for me once I got one. With a tractor you can harvest up to 9 squares of land at a time. That’s 9 times the harvesting power you had before! This gives you incentive to start plowing bigger fields and planting more crops because you can harvest them much faster.
Farmer’s Market: What to Buy, When to Buy & How to Buy it
When you press “Q” to open your shop you finally have your mouse cursor back and can use it to browse and select items. The shop features nine categories: crops, trees, animals, pond, flowers, buildings, decorations, fences and roads. As you level up you will gain access to new items in the shop. In the beginning all you’ll be able to buy is lettuce, carrots, peanuts and apples, a meager salad of options. All the shaded-out items indicate what level you’ll need to reach to purchase them and this gives the player an incentive to start working on their farm. Certain items are only available during certain seasons so there is some strategy when deciding what you’re going to plant.
Seasons change every 17 minutes allowing players to farm through an entire year in a little over an hour. There’s a timer in the top right corner with a coloured meter showing how much time you have left in each season. Special weather effects can occur during a new season including: rain which will water your crops for you, drought which will cause water to run out three times faster and snow which will remove the watered speed benefit. Nothing can happen in the game to outright kill your crops. The seasons bring a welcome change in scenery and allow you to prioritize different crops during different times, it’s a subtle game mechanic that lets you strategize and organize your planting schedule.
All items can be bought using three types of currency: coins, diamonds and medals. You earn coins by harvesting resources from crops, trees, livestock, fish and flowers. When investing in items you can harvest it is important to look at the earning potential of the crop. For example, turnips cost 200 coins to buy, with a 225-coin pay day at harvest. You’re only making 25 coins. Watermelons cost 250 coins to buy, with an 816-coin pay day at harvest. You’re making 566 coins! Farm Together made me look at profit margins more closely than I ever have in my adult life. With trees, livestock and fish you’re looking at a long-term investment as they provide infinite resources. Trees are great because you don’t need to water them. Fish are self sustaining, but the animals do require regular feeding.
You earn diamonds by selling the resources you harvested through a stand. When you harvest anything, you get +1 of that type of resource. So, when I harvest a plot of carrots I earn coins from the harvest +1 vegetable. For each type of resource your avatar can hold anywhere from max of 20 to 120 depending on the resource. Stands are used to earn additional profit by selling the resources you gain through your harvest. You can deposit resources to be sold, 10 or 20 at a time depending on the stand i.e. vegetable stand, fruit stand, egg stand, etc.
You earn medals by completing quests. All of the quests I’ve been given so far have been gather quests, require a character to collect a number of items. They give you an incentive for purchasing specific items from the shop for harvesting. You can pin your quests to your game screen by accessing your Quest Log in the pop up menu. Each quest comes with a message from a non-playable character (NPC) from a nearby town. You can send supplies to animals in need, food banquets and charity dinners. All the quests have a charitable angle so they give you the chance to do some philanthropy on the side. There are no time limits on the quests so there’s no rush to complete them. I would recommend earning 2 medals so you can buy a gas pump, you will need this to refuel your tractor. I only started paying attention to them after a week of playing and found myself needing some extrinsic motivation to decide what I was going to do next.
Level Up: eXPerience Needed
My biggest motivator in playing Farm Together has been leveling up. Leveling up occurs by gaining experience points (XP) through completing different tasks on your farm. To level up you need to plant, harvest, repeat. Each item in the shop rewards a set amount of experience. The more expensive the item, the more experience you’ll gain during its harvest. You can also gain experience by purchasing buildings and then selling items through them, purchasing decorations, fences and roads to decorate your farm, expanding your farm and completing quests.
The max level for an avatar and items in the game is 100, with the ability to level up all of your crops, trees, flowers, animals and fish by harvesting them over and over again. As you level up, you gain access to new items in the shop and customization features for your avatar. Unavailable items have a blacked out silhouette and indicate the required level to purchase them. You can usually make out what certain items are based on the silhouette which can be a great motivator for leveling up. Keep playing until at least level 5, you get a pet! You can choose a dog or cat to follow you around your farm.
As important as leveling up is to me, I don’t feel any pressure to rush through this process. It’s just a game mechanic to incentivize me to keep playing with a great reward system. Bruce Baugh, defines casual gaming as “any kind of play you can do a lot of, but that you don’t have to do a lot of in order to get a satisfactorily good time.” I personally love this definition and think Farm Together captures the essence of casual gaming perfectly. There is no story arc to the game, other than my projected vampire fantasy, meaning my end goals are my own. As an agriculture simulation it’s completely conflict and consequence free. You can leave your farm for two weeks and come back without losing any progress. Crops, trees, animals and fish go on existing whether you are there to water and feed them or not.
Setting: Your New Home on the Range
Farm Together stood out to me because of its idyllic promotional screenshots. The graphics looked amazing and the level of detail for a 3-D downloadable PC game was impressive. During game play the resolution is slightly fuzzier but still moves very smoothly. The background design is soft and dreamlike, with massive fluffy clouds slowly moving through the sky and grayish blue mountains looming in the distance. The colour palette is beautiful and adjusts well with the transition from sunset to sunrise and the changing seasons. These are the only two actions that suggest the passage of time. If you are curious to know how long you are playing, you’ll need to exit the game and click on the Farms button on the home screen. Your farm’s progress bar will reveal the duration of play of your last session.
The designers did an excellent job making an idyllic experience for any first-time farmers. Crop and tree designs are whimsical and perfectly symmetrical, allowing you to lay dozens of rows that will look identical to each other as they grow. After planting, crops will show a watering can icon or a basket icon. The former indicates they need watering, the latter indicates they are ready to harvest! When crops and trees are ready to harvest they look amazing. Some designs are more accurate than others, but the slightly cartoonish size and art style are complimentary to the charming nature of the game. As a casual agricultural simulation game, it serves its purpose of creating a safe and pastoral paradise in which players can relax and unwind for a few hours.
Your first farm is on a big rectangular plot with more than enough room to get started. As you advance in the game and begin to establish your agricultural empire, things may start to feel a bit crowded. You can purchase more land by visiting a sign along each side of your plot to begin expanding your borders. Some sections feature intricate rock formations, twisting rivers and scenic hill tops to incorporate into your design plan.
Soundtrack: Whistle While you Work
The soundtrack to Farm Together is one of the best game soundtracks I’ve ever heard. Seriously, I’ve been listening to it the whole time writing this review by having the game screen open in the background. It’s soothing, melodic and perfect for casual gaming. It relaxes the player and sets the tone for the entire game; this is a peaceful escape where your priorities are your own. The sound effects are subtle but effective, informing the setting with realism. The sound of your footsteps running through grass, the excitable and random barks of your dog, crickets chirping after nightfall. It’s attention to detail elevates the sophistication of the simulation. There are big musical stings when you level up or unlock a new achievement, but aside from those moments all the other sound effects are understated.
There is no dialogue in the game and it doesn’t require any. You will receive letters (you can’t respond to) from NPCs in the neighbouring town, but that’s it. Personally, I found myself motivated to play the game after long days of being around people all day. I love that the game just lets me focus on the tasks that are important to me and not stress out about finding a husband, I’m looking at you Harvest Moon: Another Wonderful Life.
Player Base: F for Farming, E for Everyone
Farm Together doesn’t currently have an ESRB rating but I believe it should receive an E for everyone rating based on the wholesome nature of the game. Box4Fun, a YouTube channel that features a father and son playing video games together put out a Farm Together video that I think shows its potential for fun and interactive family gaming. The game would be appropriate for children ages 8 and up. Looking at Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, by this age children are at the concrete operational stage of learning and can understand abstract ideas. This means they can accept and enjoy the sped up nature of planting, growing and harvesting crops and have a great time with resource management in a safe and supportive gaming environment. Most games include the game mechanics of currency and XP, so the concepts will most likely be familiar to kids in this age group. The controls are easy to pick up with a visible guide available to them at all times. Since time advances even when you aren’t online, kids won’t feel the need to remain in the game space to monitor their progress. They can come back at a later time when everything is ready to harvest. The freedom to design an avatar and entire farm will gives them a sense of control in a virtual space that is entirely their own and can serve whatever purpose they decide.
In terms of online safety Steam’s Family View “limits an account’s access to a subset of its content and features.” including the ability to “allow access to a subset of the account’s library, your account’s library will include a new group called Family Games. Family Games are the games you’ve chosen to remain accessible while in Family View.” This would ensure that kids only have access to the games on a parents’ steam account that they feel are appropriate for them.
Farm Together: My Update Wish List
1. Inclusive Avatar Designs
Looking ahead, the game could offer a more inclusive selection of body types for their avatars. Currently, you can only adjust the avatar’s height and skin tone. Also, the accessories for female avatars are a tad unrealistic, although I can’t confirm that a farmer has never worn hoop earrings on the job.
2.Interacting with Animals
Later in the game you can purchase animals including chickens, sheep and cows. There is no way to interact with these animals other than pushing them with your avatar, dropping feed in their vicinity and harvesting whatever goods they provide i.e. eggs, wool and milk. At level 5 you can get a pet! You can choose a dog or cat to follow you around your farm. You can’t interact with it in any way either and this takes away from the companionship aspect of your new furry friend. Allowing avatars to interact with the animals in the game would be an improvement, especially for the farmers in single player mode who experience no social interaction during game play. I just want to pet my dog!
3. Interacting with Decorations
Avatars have no way to interact with the decorations they purchase and this feels limiting. Why have a barn if you can’t go inside it? The addition of this game mechanic would add an element of realism benefiting the simulation aspect of Farm Together
Rating: Fields of Gold
I loved playing Farm Together and will continue to play it. It’s such a relaxing game that feels unlike anything I’ve played before. I thought there had to be conflict in order to make a game interesting and keep me invested. Nothing can go wrong in this game and nothing should. I play until I feel accomplished; this can happen after twenty minutes or two hours. As for Emilia, she is finally beginning to find peace on The Homestead through her hard work and perseverance. Farm Together is a casual agricultural simulation that serves as a tranquil escape for players. There’s no right or wrong way to play Farm Together, there’s just your way.
/amandalaurenjaneblog 
Hi there, thanks for pointing me to this game. I have a list of games I’d love to make the jump to the Switch, as I’m all about handheld gaming. And this one is going on the list!
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Hey Yvonne! I’m so glad you are adding it to your list, it’s a great game to unwind with after a busy day. I hope to read your review one day!
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For now, I’m content with making it a feature in my articles from Steam to Switch! Thought I’d mention your blog in there too. 😃
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