"Yeehaw!" & Other Cowboy Phrases: A Cattle Country Review

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox Series XS, PlayStation 5, PC (Steam)

I've reviewed a lot of farming games recently, and it's been quite a mixed journey as far as their quality and longevity goes. Some simply feel like cash grabs meant to capitalize on the "cozy games" boom, while others are instant classics that I still hope get support for years to come. The game we're going to look at today is one that has been on my radar for over a year now, and I've been wanting to play ever since I heard its premise. Cattle Country is a western-themed farming sim that takes players on a journey of farming, mining, festivaling, marrying, and all the other things one expects to find in a game like this. It's currently available on all current platforms, and we're going to be looking at the game on both Steam and the Nintendo Switch. Will this be another instant classic? Will it live up to all the expectations have for it? Will I refrain from using the word "Yeehaw!" every sentence paragraph? We'll answer all those questions and more in this review! Let's get right to it! Yeehaw! (Darn it!)

Cattle Country doesn't really have a central story in and of itself, but that's not exactly uncommon in games of this genre. Upon starting up the game you create a character from a limited number of options at the start, you name them, name your farm, and even name the town. All that in order, the game proper begins with your new character taking a stagecoach ride to the new town courtesy of one of its residents named Jeb. Jeb asks you some questions regarding what you hope to get out of your new farming endeavors, and I'm not exactly sure that the answers to these questions change anything in-game. Once you make it to town, Mayor Archibald greets you and takes you to your farm. I'm no stranger to farming games giving players large plots of land to have your way with, but I was still surprised with how big of an area Cattle Country throws your way. Now is also as good a time as any to mention that this game apparently takes place during the actual 1800s. I was under the impression that the town the game takes place in was more cosplay than anything else, though I'm pleased to find out that I was wrong on hat front. Wide open space or not though, you only have a tent and a few starting items available to you at this point. Besides the tent, Archibald gives you a mailbox, a dropbox to sell things at each night, a crafting bench, some basic tools, and some seeds. You're also given a cowboy hat, and I of course had to put that on right away. Archibald isn't done though, as he also gives you a handful of tasks to complete. He strangely doesn't launch into any gameplay tutorials, but we'll get to that later. And that's how this game starts.

While there might not be a strong central narrative in Cattle Country, each of the town's residents have stories of their own that sort of replace that omission. I was a bit of a loner in my first playthrough, and spent the first few in-game days getting my property in order before venturing out to town. When I eventually did I was once again shocked by how lively the area surrounding my farm was. The inhabitants of the town are scattered all across the map, and each have their own schedules to keep. Some work jobs in the day, others pass time fishing or hunting, and the children go to school. You'll often see town residents going from one location to another, but they'll usually make time to talk to you if they're not busy. You're able to raise your relationship with any town resident by talking to them and gifting them items that they like, and this has several positive effects. Not only does a high relationship score allow them to open up to you, but their stories will often flesh out the game's world in addition to their own backgrounds. This is a farming game too, so you probably won't be surprised to learn that there are several romanceable options of each gender amongst the town's inhabitants. They're quite the varied bunch, though I quickly took a liking to Sassy myself. You don't actually have to partake in any of the relationship building mechanics if you're not a fan of such things, but it does open up the game in ways that simply aren't available to you if you decide to only focus on things like farming, fishing, and raising animals. Speaking of which, I think it's time we discussed what really makes Cattle Country tick.

I'm not really sure what to say about Cattle Country's approach to the farming genre, as it doesn't bring anything particularly new to the table, but does have several small touches that make it unique in spite of that. I guess I should start by saying that you're given a decently high stamina bar at the start of the game, and this was something that I absolutely loved.  I've played for too many farming games recently that seem to want to limit you to only a handful of actions in each in-game day, and I'm happy to report that Cattle Country isn't one of those games. No matter the tasks I wanted to complete, I always had enough stamina to complete for both the dailies, and for the constant battle of trying to keep my farm clear of stray trees, rocks, or grass. Speaking of which, clearing out those three items is how you'll get your first crafting materials, though plenty more will be found elsewhere as the game goes on. Crafting is an important part of the game, and it's required to advance through the various stages of farming. You'll only have a few crafting recipes available to you at the start of the game, but more will unlock as you level up your skills. That's right, you have skills in this game, and they're tied to the main tasks you'll be performing. This gives character progression something of an RPG feel, but those mechanics are admittedly on the lighter side of things. Farming, resource gathering, and taking care of animals are done in the standard ways players have come to expect, though I personally found that the approach here was surprisingly beginner-friendly despite what the lack of tutorial would have you believe. It won't take long for you to find something to dig into as far as gameplay mechanics go, and you have all the time in the world to learn the ins and outs of everything. I've only scratched the surface of what the game has to offer, but I think you get the idea of what one can expect in this game.

Rather than giving people an overarching throughline that drives the game forwards, progression in Cattle Country is largely tied to character-assigned tasks or missions. These start out simple enough, but get more complex as time goes on. Tasks involve things like reaching a certain level in the mines, growing a certain number of a particular fruit or crop, catching a set number of specific fish, and so on. There are also seasonal events that occur at set times during each season, and these help break up the potential monotony of the core gameplay experience. I say that, but I never really had a boring day in Cattle Country. In fact, every day always felt extremely busy. Players may not be limited in their actions by way of a small stamina bar, but I still found it hard to squeeze everything I wanted to do into any single in-game day. Thankfully I learned to slow down a bit, and enjoy things for what were. Part of this game's charm comes from how seriously it takes the "cozy" game aesthetic, since there really isn't anything forcing you to rush outside of the advancing seasons. Working at one's own pace is often all you really need to do, and the game became much more fun once I realized this. I can't remember the last time I played a farming sim that drew me in this quickly, but I was instantly hooked once I got beyond the somewhat rough opening. Everything was chill, and there is so much to do and see here. Also, there may not be a lot of options available to the player to change, but you can lean things further into the cozy direction by turning off monsters in the mines, or enemies on the overworld map. I actually never encountered the latter during my time with the game, though I have heard that there are bandits out there if you're not careful.

Quite possibly the greatest positive aspect of Cattle Country's gameplay would have to be the sheer variety it offers in terms of gameplay mechanics. You can strictly stick to farming like I did and still have a blast, but there's really so much more. You can practice shooting and go for hunting if you so desire, become a master angler who spends their days fishing, or just spend your days changing how your farm looks one tile at a time. These individual mechanics are all very fleshed out and unique to one another, and there's so much more that I simply don't have time to get into in this review. There's tons of upgrades to unlock in character, skills, and farm, with some of them changing things even further. I was only ever able to get chickens on my farm by the time I had to write this review, but I long to have an entire herd of cows roaming in my wide open field of a farm. You can also take a pet, and even visit the mines that lie on the outskirts of town. I can literally go on and on for several paragraphs explaining how mining works in this game, as it truly felt like an entirely separate experience to the main game. The sense of accomplishment for reaching new depths, as well as the cool treasures you find there, made it something that I spent several hours on in spite of my focus on farming. I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that the developers could've made this section of the game into its own mining sim, and it would still be worth playing on its own. No matter what you're looking for in a cozy farming game, I'm sure you'll find it in Cattle Country. It may not have met and surpassed every one of the expectations I had for it before its release, but it does a damn good job of trying. Yeehaw!

There may be plenty to see and do in Cattle Country, and it's quite fun for the most part, but there are some negative aspects that I think I should cover before moving on. Probably the first thing you'll notice when playing the game is how wonky the tool menu and item selection bars feel and operate. I constantly was using the wrong tools and wondered why nothing was happening, and found myself accidentally gifting random items to people I was simply trying to talk to. Thankfully the last point rarely resulted in anything negative, but it also meant that I was often wasting resources in ways I didn't intend to. The game also only saves at the start of each day, so I couldn't even resort to an earlier save if I gave away an item I'd been saving for something/someone else. Not only that, but not being able to save when you want is particularly annoying when you have to cut your day short just so I don't lose progress. This is less of a concern on consoles that have a sleep mode, but I'll get to how things are on that front in just a bit. The game is also quite buggy all around, and I was constantly finding little things that didn't seem to be working as intended. A recent update fixed a lot of the issues I originally had listed here (I guess it was a good thing this review was a bit late!), but there are plenty that haven't. Thankfully I none of the bugs I encountered were game-breaking, but there were plenty that irritated me to no end nevertheless. The biggest issue of all though has to be how the game opens up to new players. You're literally thrown into the deep end of the pool, and aren't given much in the way of goals or tutorials. There are some early missions that I guess are meant to teach you the ropes, but it's a harsh series of trial and error for just about every in-game mechanic. I wasted an entire game year messing about before I truly understood how the game was meant to be played. You're not really limited by time, but wasting that much of it still left a bad taste in my mouth. This lack of direction also makes the early game feel empty, as you're just wandering around a small, but somehow open, world wondering what it is you're supposed to be doing. These issues ultimately didn't affect the overall fun I had all that much, but I can easily see how some players might get frustrated and quit before the game really gets good.

Okay, so I'm not actually done with the negatives as I have a lot to say about the version of the game that exists on the Nintendo Switch. I only had access to that particular console release, but I think it's safe to assume that a lot of players are going to gravitate to that one anyway. Nintendo's hybrid console is practically made for cozy games, and there's quite the lively scene for them there. The problem is that the game runs pretty badly, in ways I'm a bit unsure as to how I'm going to explain them. First of all, readers of this review might notice that I'm using a lot of assets directly from the publisher as opposed to my own screenshots. This is due to the fact that the Nintendo Switch doesn't allow for any screenshots or video recording of any kind at the time of this writing. I could've ran it through my capture card, but I couldn't be bothered to do all that for a single review. I did later play it for several hours on the PC later on, but I only forgot about the screenshot thing until it was too late. I did much of my playthough on the Switch, and not being able to take screenshots really affected the quality of this review. Recording and screenshots aside, the Switch version also has very long load times, and plenty of slowdown when things get intense. The loading was particularly annoying as it can take several seconds just to enter and leave simple buildings. There were also several far more serious bugs in this version versus the PC one, but thankfully most of those were fixed in a post-release update. I still think they're worth pointing out one that still seems to be there. About half the time I put the game to sleep, the sound would cut out when I re-opened it, and once it even crashed. It made it so that I didn't put it into sleep mode much after that, thus eliminating one of the key benefits console players have over PC. The Switch release isn't anything near broken or unplayable, but it's probably the worst way to play the game. I feel bad for anyone who only plays the game there, and assumes that it's just bad all around. It really isn't, and I hope that more work is put into getting the console versions more in line with how the Steam release functions.

While Cattle Country offers a slightly mixed experience as far as gameplay and console performance goes, it totally hits it out of the park when it comes to its graphics and visual style. Since the game is going for a Wild West look and feel, it could've easily gone the route of looking dusty, plain, and full of neutral tones or lots of browns. Instead of that boring possibility, we get a colorful and vibrant world that is overflowing with signs of life. Every single screen is packed with detail, and the pixel-based sprites are some of the best I've ever seen in any genre. The characters all look unique despite being small, and the character portraits are all spot on. I do wish the game would go a bit further in giving players more character customization options, but I still like what's here. It's not just the character sprites either, as the animals look cute, the buildings all look quaint and lived in, and the mines once again could be their own game. Clearly a lot of work went into nailing down the game's visuals, and it paid off big time. Besides the lack of customization options, I guess my only real gripe would be that things sometimes feel much cluttered when going across the map. The camera is pulled back really far in the town and farming parts of the game, and it can be hard to make out some of the finer details of what's going on around you. This could've been fixed with some sort of zoom option, but I will also admit that this is a bit of a nitpick on my part. The visuals are near perfect otherwise, and the graphics did not disappoint me one bit from pre-release to now.

Unfortunately that positive trend doesn't continue on in the Cattle Country's sound design, as it's a far more mixed bag. First of all, let me say that the Switch version seems mixed extremely low when compared to the PC version. I originally intended to play the game in Handheld Mode, but I literally couldn't hear a thing during gameplay. I then hooked it up to my TV, cranked the volume up to max, and still could only hear the faintest of sounds coming from my TV's speakers. It's not the TV either, as the Switch's menu sounds were almost deafening whenever one popped up. A later update made it so that the sound is mixed a bit higher, but it's still quite low and only a step above inaudible. The thing is though, actually being able to hear the game isn't all that great either. There is a funny narrator who nails the western accent down perfectly, and a few tunes that are memorable once they kick in, but those awesome bits are few and far between. Entire sections of the game are played in total silence, or with only ambient noise and sound effects to accompany you while you work. I swore that something had to be wrong with the game, but that just seems to be how it's meant to be. There is plenty of music as far as I can tell, but it doesn't always play. I thought it was a bug at one point, but realized it wasn't after I looked up livestreamed footage of the game. I get that in-your-face music would've gone against the cozy aesthetic the developers are clearly going for, but this leans a bit too far the other way. There's a balance here that I think was missed. Having said all this, I do think that this is potentially something that can be further improved upon in a future update, so I won't be any harsher than I've already been.

At the end of the day Cattle Country is a very feature-heavy farming sim that offers a neat western-themed take on the formula popularized by Stardew Valley. There's lots to do and see, and there's plenty of gameplay elements I wasn't even able to experience myself during my time with the game. (I hear there are bandits!) There's countless hours of fun to be had here, and it works best when players adopt the "cozy" mindset and let things flow as they will. Obviously games like this have no true "ending", but it can take one dozens of hours just to reach some of the game's bigger goals. I still haven't worked my way up to actually managing the titular cattle in Cattle Country, even though I've invested well over two dozen hours across two different versions of the game. Speaking of which, now is as good a time as any to talk about price. I'm of the mind that Stardew Valley's insanely low $14.99 price tag puts too much pressure on other farming games to be priced equally low. Cattle Country isn't quite up to Stardew's level of depth and quality, though it does have a slightly higher price on Steam at $18.99. I totally feel the game is worth that amount, but things get a bit more questionable when you look at the console pricing. I'm not sure if it's that dreaded "console tax" or not, but the price jumps to $24.99 outside of its PC release. I actually think that higher price point is very reasonable too, but it's hard to justify the jump when it's cheaper on one platform versus the other. I wouldn't go so far to say that potential players should skip it based on this point alone, but I have to give the slight nod to the PC version. Not only does it play considerably better than the console release, but it's noticeably cheaper too.

Even though I have some issues with the Switch version of the game, I still have to give Cattle Country a solid recommendation overall. I had a blast playing it, and it's a must-buy for fans of farming games, those who live for that ever-so-elusive "cozy" genre, or anyone who is tired of playing Stardew Valley over and over again. Its faults aren't to the point where it's anything near broken, and the developers have made attempts to fix the game's issues in post-release updates. They still haven't remedied all of the things that keep the game from reaching its true potential, but I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on that front. I'd still recommend picking it up on PC if you have that option available, but I'm willing to bet that console players will still have a great time too. Grab it where you can, and get farming! On that note, I have some work to get back to. See you in the next one! Yeehaw!

Check Out Cattle Country on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/cattle-country-switch/

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Story: B
Gameplay: B+
Graphics: A
Music/Sound: B
Value: B

Overall: B

Pros:
+ A cozy farming game with a very unique setting.
+ The game goes hard with the western aesthetic. This is far more than just a cowboy skin over the standard farming game formula. 
+ There's a light-hearted, humorous feel to the game's writing and dialogue that makes one feel right at home. The cozy vibes are front and center.
+ One of the best uses of pixel-based graphics I've seen in recent memory. Everything in-game is finely detailed and colorful, and the overall aesthetics are cute and endearing too.
+ It'll take most players several hours until they've done everything there is to do in the game at least once, and many, many more hours until they see everything the game has to offer in general.
+ Character customization might be a bit lacking, but you can mold your farm, and the town itself, to most anything you desire.
+ The mining gameplay mechanic almost feels like it could be its own game, and I meant that in the best way possible.
+ Though far from the perfect farming game, this one is pretty damn close. It's a must-buy for anyone wanting to finally move on from Stardew Valley.
+ You can pet your dogs and cats, and even ride horses!

+/- While the game is still in a somewhat buggy state even as I write this review, the developers do seem dedicated to fixing the bugs through updates.

Cons:
- The Nintendo Switch version is very rough at the time of this writing. Quirks in how that one runs meant that I was only able to use a handful of screenshots that weren't just taken from the game's official press releases.
- Though the game has some great music and narration, there are long stretches where you'll be playing in either silence, or only to ambient noise.
- The opening sections of the game can be quite frustrating due to the game's lack of tutorials or direction. While I had lots of fun with the game, I can easily see others ragequitting long before things truly get good.
- The amount of random bugs one will encounter playing the game, the differences in pricing between Steam and console versions, and just the overall non-Stardew Valley-ness of the game might make this a bit hard to recommend to some players.

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.

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