REVIEW | Agriculture (Tidbit-style)

We love all sorts of games. Sometimes it is hard to cover a game in our traditional review style that’s why we have tidbit-style reviews. These shorter reviews cover games that deserve attention too but simply don’t fit our good, mixed, and bad template. In addition, they get a monthly summary article to give them even more reader attention!

Agriculture | 58%
Publisher: Eastasiasoft
Developer: Nerd Games

Buy seeds, plant them, see them grow, water it and profit from selling. That’s the simple idea behind Agriculture. There is no story, nothing really challenging, no replay value and not even a tutorial. Just 50 basic levels that require planting up to 10 different crops.

Frustrations start right from the beginning as nothing is explained. You need to find out yourself how to buy seeds, how the button mapping is and what you need to do with the crops. Luckily it is straightforward but still… that small trial and error is awkward! There are quite a few other farming titles that have more depth and action, so I was a bit disappointed by the overall package of Agriculture. I understand that developer Nerd Games went with a more lenient arcade approach but having no rewards, no real progress or anything story related feels like a missed opportunity. The visuals are neat to look at but an important part of farming are the seasons and I wish that they played a bit with it. All the 50 stages have the same colours and perspective.

Failing to reach the goals of selling 50 carrots or 5 of each crop are almost impossible, each level has a long enough time limit. Meaning you can screw up a few times. Screwing up can happen if your watering can is empty or crows fly away with your seeds. But again, completing your level orders are never really challenging or demanding. I can recommend Agriculture though it just has a few hard to ignore shortcomings. We’re talking about a game that is priced €4 so if you like simple mechanics or the puzzle genre you can definitely make the jump.