Game Review: Farm For Your Life

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5

The farming sim genre is quite crowded these days thanks in part to titles like Stardew Valley and Story of Seasons. It's rare that you see a game have a unique twist on the tried and true formula, but Farm For Your Life actually manages to do the unthinkable. What does it bring to the table you ask? Zombies! This quirky little sim released a while back on all major consoles, and we're going to be taking a look at the Nintendo Switch version today. There's a lot of work to get done, so let's skip the intro and get straight to the farming! Time to dive in!

While there is something resembling a story in Farm For Your Life, it mostly just acts as a way to set up the core gameplay. This isn't exactly uncommon in farming sim games, but it's best not to go into this thinking you're going to get something akin to a Harvest Moon game. After buying a new cow for your family farm, a storm comes through and wipes out the entire farming community. If this weren't bad enough, this storm apparently also triggered the zombie apocalypse. A horde of zombies has decimated anyone still around after the storm, and there are only a few survivors left in the area. The struggle to rebuild begins, and it's your job now to gather food and resources, rebuild your community, and hopefully also find your friends and family. There isn't anything more story-wise from there worth mentioning, but the main story mode does have a definite ending once you've completed all the main missions. Though I have to admit that it does have a story, I don't think I would've called it an actual story mode if I were the one creating the game. Anyway, that pretty much wraps up everything I have to say regarding this game's plot. It exists, but I wouldn't be surprised if you forgot all about it after the first hour of gameplay. I do have to give the developers credit for the general wackiness of the premise though.

Farm For Your Life is a farming game of course, but it's also a time management sim, and even has an entire restaurant mechanic that I wasn't expecting to find. The farming stuff is pretty self-explanatory, and the only real surprise would have to be that your corps grow far more quickly here than in other games in the genre. Don't expect several in-game days to pass before you can harvest, instead you'll be gathering fruits and vegetables multiple times a day. This is probably due to the fact that much of the game revolves around feeding the survivors of the zombie apocalypse via the aforementioned restaurant. Every day new survivors show up at your church-turned-restaurant looking for a meal. They have all sorts of goods they're willing to trade for said meal, and most of these materials/items can only be found via this system. You then you have to make their food, bring it to them, and then clean up the mess they've left. Things start slow, but eventually you'll be dealing with multiple customers at once, and may even run out of things like plates and cups needed to serve them. After this, you use the items you received from your customers to add to your farm, unlock new things in the skill tree, and maybe even trade extras down the line for other items that you're in greater need of. It's a rather cool gameplay loop that manages to offer variety that doesn't come at the cost of the actual farming.

One of the reasons I don't have a lot to say about the farming so far is that I found it to be a bit too hands-on for my liking. Once you have a few dozen plots of land, things start to become rather unmanageable outside of upgrading everything using a sprinkler system. Watering plants can be a chore, and collecting them isn't much better. Most of these problems arise thanks to Farm For Your Life's rather wonky controls. I'm not sure if this game started as a mobile or PC title, but the control scheme feels rather out of place for consoles. I rarely felt like I was clicking on the space I wanted to, though thankfully your character will simply float to the relevant space most of the time. The one saving grace to the entire farming system has to be that you can eventually hire helpers to manage it for you. These helpers are other survivors that you give food and shelter to, and they can also be used to help out at the restaurant. Since the game does operate on a day/night cycle, I'd have found it to be too much to take on if not for this in-game help. While it did feel weird to give up the actual farming to a computer-controlled character very early on, it does give the game more of a management sim feel.

I mentioned zombies several times already, so you're probably wondering where they come into play in all of this. Well, they factor in about as much as you want them too. First off, don't think that you actually can actually kill zombies here. They exist simply to pester you and wreck your resources, but thankfully they can't kill you either. There is a nearby forest to the farming community where you can go to look for supplies and survivors, but it's roaming with zombies. Most zombies can be dodged by simply moving quickly past them, but getting grabbed by them means you'll lose a random amount of gathered materials. This can sometimes ruin tens of minutes of harvesting, so it's best to be careful if you're out in the wild. Also, similar to Minecraft, zombies show up at night to raid your stores. These zombies can be fought off by throwing fruits and vegetables at them, and also by using pre-built defenses. You can actually turn off the nightly zombie raids within the options menu, and I did that about halfway through the game as I eventually found them to just be a distraction to the important stuff. While I do think adding zombies is a nice touch, I wish they were better integrated into the game. Not being able to actually kill them sucks too. Your character is literally armed with an axe, but only gets into slap fights with zombies who are trying to take your wood and stone. That just seems ridiculous to me.

Building up the community from scratch is your main goal in the story mode, but you can technically play as long as you want if you don't complete all your quests or slots in the skill tree. This isn't really recommended though, as after a while the game just feels stuck in a rut if you're not progressing the main questline. There is an Endless Mode if that's what you're looking for though. This mode is the same exact game as the story mode, but without the plot elements. You can take as long as you want, and never have to worry about things like character interactions getting in the way of farming and making food. It does feel somewhat like a waste since there isn't a whole lot that makes this mode unique when compared to the story mode. It is a way to get into the game if you're only looking for farming though, so I recommend giving it a go if you've completed the story mode.

Visually Farm For Your Life doesn't offer a whole lot to look at. It has a neat character creation tool, but the graphics all look like something that would've ran smoothly on the PSP back in the day. The zombies and NPCs seem randomly generated from that aforementioned character creator tool, and you start to see its limitations very fast due to this. I guess I can say that the game runs very well since it's not pushing any hardware limits, but that might be the only real positive spin I can give the visuals. Music is an odd topic to discuss as well, as I was hard pressed to find any music at all within the game. There is music during some scenes and menus, but much of the game is played in relative silence. You'll hear birds chirping and other nature noises, but there is no music at all to speak of during the main farming sections. I'm not sure if this was done in a misguided attempt to make the game feel more "chill" or "cozy", but it usually just meant that boredom set in far more quickly than it usually does. While I eventually came to terms with the visuals, and even came to appreciate them a bit, I was never able to do so with the game's sound design. I don't think I've played a game this silent in a long while, and it's a good example why leaving out music in any game can be a bad decision.

Completing the main story mode in Farm For Your Life will take most players about 4-6 hours depending on how quickly they push through some of the more grindy sections. It's not a long experience, but I personally found it to be rather enjoyable. Naturally, the endless mode offers far more gameplay if you're looking for content, but it's only really endless in that the gameplay loop goes on forever. I can't say that it offers any content that will actually keep you around past that 5+ hour mark if you've already seen everything the game has to offer. The problem when discussing this game's content has to be its current price. I'll be the first to admit that $19.99 isn't the highest price out there, but I think it's far too much for the amount of actual game you get here. Add to this the fact that you can literally get Stardew Valley for five dollars less, and suddenly I have reservations about paying even half of that for a game that you can complete in a single afternoon. Its saving grace is that it seems to often go on sale (It's actually on sale for just $4.99 at the time of this writing.), but sales are hard to predict, and there are lots of people who won't have the patience to wait for them. If this game were priced at $9.99 I'd be far less bothered, but $19.99 for what feels like a mobile game conversion seems far too steep.

Even though I don't feel totally comfortable recommending Farm For Your Life based on its price, I have to admit that it IS a fun farming sim that shakes up the formula. It adds in restaurant and management elements, and even throws in zombies. I found myself somewhat addicted to it while I was playing it for this review, and I don't regret a single hour I spent on it. It's not the best game out there, and there are far better farming games out there, but this is a great addition to a farming gamer's collection. Just make sure to grab it while it's on sale.

Check Out Farm For Your Life on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/farm-for-your-life-switch/

---

Story: B-
Gameplay: B
Graphics: C
Music/Sound: C-
Value: B-

Overall: C

Pros:
+ A fun farming game that has a very unique twist.
+ The restaurant element adds a lot of variety into what could've been a very simple game.
+ Even though I didn't find it to be the most robust farming game, I nevertheless spent hours locked into its gameplay loop.
+ The barter system is a nice change to simply purchasing new items with money.
+ The character creator is surprisingly robust.

Cons:
- Feels paced like a mobile game, and players will most likely be spending long stretches waiting for something to happen.
- The controls never felt like they were optimized for consoles, making it hard to do just about anything.
- Resource gathering with zombies around sounds fun until they cause you to lose several minutes of work.
- There's very little music in the game, and coupled with the simplistic graphics, you have some fairly uneven presentation.
- Even though it appears that it goes on sale frequently, I think that its current $19.99 price tag is a bit too high for the content you get.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

---

#FFYL