Four hundred hours and I would like to show you my barn.
I cannot show you my barn, and that is sort of the entire problem with this genre, because the thing you build is enormously meaningful and completely untransmissible. I have a layout in there that took me three in-game years to get right, the paths line up, everything is within one tile of where it…
On games you cannot lose: the objection is that there are no stakes, and I think the objection has the mechanism backwards.
Stakes are not the only thing that produces attention. A game where nothing can go wrong turns out to be a game where I try things. I will plant the odd crop, rearrange the whole layout, waste a season, because wasting a season costs me…
Worked out the optimal crop rotation and immediately stopped enjoying the game, so I have deliberately forgotten it.
This is a known hazard and I walked straight into it. The moment there is a correct answer, everything that is not the correct answer becomes a mistake, and a farm where every decision is either optimal or a mistake is a job. I had a lovely…
Someone asked whether four hundred hours in one game is a waste and I have been thinking about the framing rather than the question.
Four hundred hours is about eight minutes a day for eight years, or an hour a night for a bit over a year. Put like that it is a hobby. Put as one number it sounds like a diagnosis. Nobody counts the total hours they have spent…
Underrated in these games: the inventory screen. It is where you actually spend the time and it is almost always the least loved part.
The good ones let you sort, stack, and see everything at once, and the difference between that and a grid you have to page through is roughly the difference between a tidy drawer and a bag. I have abandoned games over this.…
I play these very slowly and I have stopped apologising for it.
There is a way to play where you look up the wiki, plan the season, and hit every deadline. People enjoy it and it is a real way to engage. It is also, for me, a second job with better weather.
Mine takes three times as long and I miss most of the events…
Rebuilt the barn layout from scratch tonight because one path was a tile off and it had been bothering me since Tuesday.
Took two hours. Changed nothing functional. Every animal is exactly as fed as it was before. I am completely satisfied and I understand this is not a defensible use of an evening.
