I don't want to see monetization in PC farming games. A couple of DLC is okay but if most of the cosmetics can't be earned in-game instead, the game quickly devalues itself.

Another issue is the limited singleplayer offline support.

Stop trying to bring the mobile gaming model to PC.

Launched the game for the first time in a while, excited for changes/updates. Only to see a cash store for in-game furniture/decorations. A Themed Deco Futon Bed for $19.99? Seriously?

I have uninstalled it and will take note of Developers to avoid future projects from them.

TL;DR: It's a mobile/browser game built on a PC engine. The devs expressed their will to make it a Free-to-Play MMO after Early Access, which will probably be a Pay-to-Win from what I can tell based on other games by the same studio (GoodGame Big Farm, Big Farm: New Harvest and Big Farm: Mobile Harvest).

For the price they're asking, I would wait until the game receives big updates, goes Free-to-Play or, if you're curious, at least a 50% off.

Full review:

A promising blend of Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia and others of the same genre, but with a poor browser-based game mentality.

There's a lot of content to be developed and only a few areas, crops, livestock and other resources are available. Considering the current quests and the necessary grinding to complete them, you can finish everything in 2 hours or so. I played longer because they're giving a huge amount of gold on Big Farm: Mobile Harvest if you reach level 15 in this game.

The game has a day/night cycle that lasts 30 mins in real time, but you can't rest or skip it in any other way. There's no difference between the cycles other than the fishing spots available. No significant days, no calendar, no seasons.

You need to click to do everything. There are a few keyboard shortcuts, but only for panels like inventories, index of resources, quest log, amount of gold, market and so on.

Want to walk/run? Click. Gathering resources on the ground? Click. Grow a crop? One click to tile the ground, another to pick a seed (two if you need to pick a different seed other than the last used) and another to water the crop. Fishing? Chopping wood? Breaking rocks? Click on the spot and more clicks to win the minigame.

Everything runs in real-time (synced with their server) and you can't play it in offline mode. There's no way to skip anything to make the game more dynamic (but will probably be once they implement some pay-to-win feature like special tokens or gold for real money). Water takes time to spawn at the well, crops takes between 2 mins and 7 hours to grow, 1 hour to grind some livestock feed, and 30 mins to get 2 eggs from a chicken.

The market has a limited number of available orders (which can be increased upgrading the market) and skipping an order to get a new one takes time (increasing from 1 min to 5 mins each by my experience), so you'll have to wait.

The character/building/skills progression is level based and you have to get "stickers" to make them available. After each new level, the game offers 3 different choices and you can pick only one of them.

Your daily routine will be: gather resources scattered in 4 of the 5 available areas (the resources respawn after each new morning or randomly after 30 mins), fish after you get the 3 necessary skills to do so (one for river fishing, one for lake fishing and one for night fishing), click click click click to grow crops, wait until the well refills, sell your goods directly for coins or sell them at the market for coins and special resources to upgrade your buildings (you have to go there or use the alpaca to deliver it for you, that also runs on a timer for each order), grind until you have enough resources for a new upgrade, wait until the end of the day (or just put your game on the background), rinse and repeat.

There's a ranking board in which you can compare your progress (XP) with other players. Based on other games by the same company, they'll probably implement other competing mechanics, like cooperatives, personal, fishing and farming contests.

As a long time player of Big Farm: Mobile Harvest, I must say that GoodGame's business model is one of the most predatory I have ever seen. If this game follows the same path, it'll undoubtedly become a Pay-to-Win game.

Keep in mind that their DLC already costs 75% of the full game price, and, while it's not a mandatory purchase to play the game for now, it offers some insight of their practices. Their other games receives new Pay-to-Win features on every update and, if this game really becomes Free-to-Play as they said, I have no doubt that it'll introduce similar mechanics where you aren't really forced to buy something to play, but you won't be able to compete with other players if you don't spend special tokens, gold or some other premium purchasable feature to keep your progress in the game.

For the price they're asking, I would wait until the game receives big updates, goes Free-to-Play or, if you're curious, at least a 50% off.

Unfortunately it looks like this game was developed by people used to making "pay to level up" kind of games. This game is extremely slow, growing vegetables is extremely low in profit (you plant one potato and get one potato, for example... plant one strawberry plant and you get one single strawberry... why? :D ) and the most frustrating thing is that you need to level up.
Once you level up, you get to choose a "sticker" that will allow you to do ONE SINGLE THING until the next level up.
This is a real bugger because leveling up is very slow, collecting resources or getting enough money to do anything is extremely slow as well... but to make things worse, you are NOT ALLOWED to do almost anything unless you have THE BLOODY STICKER!
For example, now I have enough resources and coins to increase the space in the barn, so I could add one more chicken... but I have no sticker to do so! The same goes for upgrading anything else... I cannot upgrade the mill, nor the well... I cannot do anything at all until I receive the silly sticker and it is just ONE STICKER PER LEVEL which makes it even worse ><
I really think it would be much better to delete the stickers, let people develop buildings as they see fit and give resources or coins at each level up (or delete the silly leveling up system all together).


To be able to do the most silly thing you need to level up... it makes no sense.

I do think it would be much better if one was free to build the farm more freely... the story is alright but why should it cost thousands of coins to clear a piece of field of some pieces of wood? It is really really frustrating and this disappointed me a lot.
It is a real pity.

Big Farm Story is a cute farming game still under development so I'll be a little bit patient with the current game's flaws. The story starts off like most of the farming games, you receive a letter from your grandfather asking you to take over the farm because he has something else he needs to check on. Once you arrived at the farm, you find it in a bad state after the recent storm, but your neighbor's son Benny offered to help you. Your mission now is to find out where your grandfather is.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2361237597

The game is nice but gets quite boring as you progress because it gets too grindy for my taste. I'm still at level 19 and can't go up as you can only get one point of XP with anything you do, sometimes 2 XP, unless you use the board to return some items which take a long time to find and make to give you a little extra XP. It started to feel repetitive.

The areas are limited as it is still in the Early Access stage, I don't mind that for now but going back and forth to these places felt like a chore, the game needs fast traveling. The planting and harvesting are OK, but the piglet always gets in the way, I keep clicking on him instead of the corps, I hope the developers will do something about it. The animals in the farm need to level up as well by giving them food you make in the mill, this takes a couple of steps, however, the treat they take is only comping from the exchange board.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2362400428

I enjoyed most of the missions, but the money is hard to get as well as the leveling which I mentioned before. I'm still stuck in one of the missions which require me to get a 'catfish' and ability that I still don't have as you randomly get 3 abilities to choose from whenever you level up. The journal and inventory are really good, and the tracking system is awesome!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2361237654

As this game became multiplayer recently, you can add your friends in-game, however, you can't do any activity with them yet, only visiting their farm. I do hope we can trade items or help in their farm, it would be more fun to play with them.

Something I noticed recently that I can't make another character profile! there is only a single profile, you can't even delete the character you made. The game also doesn't support a controller, which would be easier to play.

Pros:
+Good story.
+Good soundtracks.
+Nice and cute graphics.
+Multiplayers (You can add your friends in-game but you can't do any activity with them yet)
+Very helpful journal.
+Steam achievements.


Cons:
-Too grindy. (Slow XP gaining)
-Single profile.
-Random abilities drops when leveling (Can't fish catfish yet)
-Piglet stands on corps preventing me to click on the corp itself.
-Difficult to earn money.
-Can't sell seeds when randomly found (Wildflowers seeds)
-No controller support.

I do recommend playing the game as I enjoyed it so much, the only thing I disliked is the leveling. I hope the developers will tweak that and make the game more playable.

𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑐𝘩𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑎'𝑠 𝐶𝘩𝑜𝑖𝑐𝑒

I am going to keep this one short, you are paying $20-$35 dollars for a mobile game with a tons of in app purchases. It feels like it was made for your tablet and seems like they're hoping to somehow make this into a mobile cash cow. Give it a shot if you want, I guess. But understand you can get a similar experience from a farming mobile app.

As of 11/4/2020, I would not recommend this game and that's saying something as I tend to vote favorably for games, especially those in Early Access.

Unlike most other reviewers, I did not buy this game for any mobile version incentive. I bought this because it looked like a game I'd enjoy playing based on other games I've enjoyed.

What I found out is that this is a mobile phone game in a PC game form. It is incredibly frustrating to have to wait for real time results with no way to speed the process up. That is the dynamic designed for mobile games for a reason -- to encourage in-app purchasing to level up faster. If I wanted to do that, I'd spend money on the mobile game. I play PC games to NOT have to deal with that.

Devs need to implement a mechanic to speed up the time frame or get rid of the real-time aspect. Otherwise, this game isn't a PC game -- It's just a sh*tty mobile game.

Overall the game is pretty decent, but has quite a few flaws. The first major flaw is the cost of items to decorate your house and the farming implements for the farming. The cost of most items is way too high and not practical. The amount of running around to different parts of the map can take a really long time. Fast travel implemented would make the game a little more enjoyable.

Being able to make certain items such as roof tiles or screws to upgrade buildings would be great. Having to really on a flawed market system in Townlet can be very annoying. Getting little XP points, coins, and items doesn't equal the amount of time and energy spent running around the map to gather the items.

The game has real potential but needs a major overhaul on the cost of items and the market system. Maybe in another 6 months of updates I would recommend this game, but in the current state I would be hard pressed to do so.

edit: there's an offline mode now if you start a new game, so ignore that part below (won't help my save but it's something).

big farm story is a really enjoyable farming game if you're not looking for anything too complex. I'm sure many wouldn't find it much fun because every day is the same, no seasons or timed events, nor combat, but that was exactly the draw for me. can't miss out on a spring event or planting a specific thing until next spring, or an npc's birthday or other nonsense, just do your thing at your own pace. the only time-sensitive quests are optional and random daily(ish) npc requests that expire after 3 days.

the main story is supposed to be around 30 hours according to the devs, but even with some side-content I finished in 20 hours. would've liked another chapter at least, dealing with the giant tree location, but it was still fine. besides tedious daily gifting to unlock personal npc quests, all I had left were a bunch of plot and barn upgrades, but with 32 farm plots (plus 8 in the mountains) and enough room for all 6 animal types I wasn't that keen on those anyway. every npc was lvl2 at least, I grabbed all the recipes and plants and trees and stuff, good enough.

movement and general animation speed is decent, I really liked that you can repeat the planting process instead of selecting the same seed from your bag over and over, and of course golden tools make short work of the daily grind eventually. there are a few vendor-specific tokens for recipes and special ingredients, but most of them are optional and/or decorational and you can exchange money, items and tokens between each other to some extent. fishing is also easy, just click the mouse button at the right time twice and worms are only used for fish traps.

while I understand the need to limit the preservation shelf to 5 at a time, otherwise you might be less inclined to unlock all of them (I still didn't), limiting basic crafting/cooking and windmill stuff to 5x is ridiculous. so is the fact that the kitchen doesn't have a working sink, but making 30 soups or 15 iron thingamajigs 5 at a time is bad. at least crafting, cooking and animal feed are instant, unlike preserves and the fertilizer in the windmill, but god forbid you could make 10 or *gasp* 20 bags at a time. good thing trees only need a bigger amount to unlock them, then only a few every few harvests.

plenty of settings, pretty much everything you need, can even turn off annoying conversation noises, but I would've liked a toggle for the text display beep (one per sentence, not per character, thankfully), instant text display, plus a setting for ui size to get rid of a bunch of scroll bars and have more info on the screen. tracking items even if they're not part of an active quest would be useful too.

paid dlc is only for cosmetics and pets, not relevant for me, but it's not great that the game doesn't work offline, lots of server-side calculations and only a single save. I only had a brief connection issue one evening, was actually surprised how smoothly it worked, but it still shouldn't be like this, and at the very least they should provide multiple save/character slots without having to wipe your current one. I don't replay games, so again, no biggie for me, but it should be a given.

another issue I had was quest tracking not counting items already in the inventory. e.g. I had 10 clovers, somebody told me to give them 5, so I had to get 5 more even though I already had enough. in one instance it was explained that fresh flowers are better, fair enough, and in half the quests it worked fine (talk to npc again, dialog shows you have enough, done), but the other half was tedious.

still, the game scratches that specific farming/planning/organizing itch without being overly complex and not at all frustrating (except for the annoyances mentioned above), so it obviously gets a thumbs up.

Big Farm story is a massive grind. The characters and story are boring. You are not able to build your own farm. All buildings and fields are fixed. Everything needs to be upgraded constantly. Farming is a small part of the game. You are constantly scavenging for materials and ingredients. Because ingredients to craft higher tier goods are randomly found in the wild. There are never enough ingredients to be found and production, income and progress stop. There are only repetitive fetch quests from childishly boring characters. And no combat. Your progress grinds to a halt because certain materials can only be obtained by random market contracts. It feels very much like a mobile port. And has clunky controls.