Greetings Gamers, Greg Vander Velde here to talk about Farm for Your Life, a strategy farming simulator from developer/publisher Hammer Labs and publishers Headup and Secret Item Games. This unique take on a strategy farming simulator is right up my alley with adding zombie survival into the mix. Though since this game was released on steam in 2013, it’s not as unique and fresh as it could have been many years ago.
So what exactly are you supposed to do in Farm for Your Life? Well, once you take over the farm you have normal farming responsibilities, as well as needing to barter and trade to get what you need to keep the farm running smoothly. Once you get that handled, it’s off to setting up a restaurant and serving people as they trickle into town. All the while fending off the zombies that are attacking at night and putting your town back together after the large storm. The new farmer will also have to go into the forest to collect materials or essential items to keep things running smoothly. You also have to work with the townsfolk who either choose to band together, working as a team, or to try and get by on their own. It seems like they very quickly want things from the people who are working together. Almost immediately wanting food from the restaurant. What punks.
So how does this game actually work??? Well, you use the avatar you created at the beginning of the game in the custom character builder to point and click at things in the world. When you walk up to things on the map it seems like everything in the world is built on a hex grid or something, but unfortunately, that’s not how your character moves so often it can be very challenging to just simply interact with things you are trying to use or move. I think they could solve this very easily by adding a selector icon. That highlights things in front of the character because it’s never really clear what you are about to do. If you do keep trying to play the game, though, you get used to how Farm for Your Life makes you interact with things and overtime you can work in the confines of the broken selection feature. But it is taxing and when you just can’t get things to work like fence building or filling your water can, it can be so frustrating. But since this game has been around since 2013, I’m not sure it’s actually going to happen. Looking at the game play on a PC where you click on objects a lot of these problems make lots of sense. It’s being caused by the game not being designed to work on a console. Many features in Farm for Your Life work just fine like the Fruit Ninja part in making food, it works as expected.
Strangely enough, fighting the zombies is not hard as long as you have something to throw at them like fruit, or set up some turrets to defend your farm and restaurant. What really puzzled me about this whole thing is that you aren’t able to use any of the tools you carry to defend yourself. You carry an AXE, SHOVEL, SCYTHE, and A GIANT HAMMER and none of them can be used for combat. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me. Just over here throwing fruit at zombies…
At the end of the day, Farm for Your Life may just simply be best played on a PC. It’s nice of the devs to port this on to consoles for those who want to try it out but don’t have a PC. Sadly though their efforts may have been in vain. With the glitches present in the game as well as the challenging in-game interactions it just seems like it was better left only on PC. If you decide to learn the glitches and keep playing the game, it is fun but not one you are going to spend hundreds of hours on building out your farm. Farm for Your Life on PS5 just doesn’t seem to quite connect on a console. It’s a great concept for a game, the shake up farming simulators needed, just not well executed on console especially.
Check Out the Farm for Your Life Trailer:
For more information, visit: https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP6842-CUSA26544_00-FARMFORYOURLIFE0/
I've been a life long nerd and video game junkie known to associate with the likes of Link, Nathan Drake, Batman, and Master Chief. I'm a filmmaker by profession, but spend lots of time behind a controller escaping the real world. @GregVelde on Instagram/Twitter/YouTube
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