Another bottom-of-the-screen game popped up on my Steam feed, and I had to snap it up. Peaceful Farm comes from indie developer Peaceful Game, and sadly, I don’t think I will be in a hurry to try out their future titles.
Idle Farming
Peaceful Farm has a simple premise and gameloop. The game starts with a Hello Kitty-looking “farmer” who looks after your crops and other stations automatically. You can aid in this by using the tools in the sidebar to till the soil, plant and water seeds, and harvest crops.
At some point, you will then unlock a hunter. This character automatically goes off-screen into the “forest” in search of new plants, animals, and other useful items to bring back to your farm. He can be set to plant or animal mode to determine what kind of item to bring back, but there is still some RNG involved.
The RNG is mitigated somewhat with found seeds adding to an accumulative pot. Once you have found enough seeds to unlock the next seed in the shop, it just starts filling the next pool. The monster drops, and decorative items still seem random, though.
It Gets Dark
On the surface, Peaceful Farm has all the makings of a great idle game, but things went sour pretty soon after launch.
Firstly, I learnt most of what I know about the game from the Steam page, as the UI and tips board are quite small. There was an update to add a button for English text, but the settings could benefit from enhancements, such as an option to zoom in on information.
Similarly, it’s unclear what many of the tools on the sidebar do. The icons are shadowed or blocked out, making them small and challenging to identify. There are no tutorials explaining how things work, yet some mechanics may require support. For example, the seed menu has a scroll function, and to add a planting square, you need to click the “x1” option first.
But There’s Animals…
Or so the page says, but after 25 hours, I have mostly encountered monsters. My hunter has brought back a bush, a rainbow parrot, and some bat king demon that keeps threatening to eat everything. I think there was supposed to be another creature to help automate feeding or something, like there is for the farm, but I have not unlocked them yet. It looks like the animals eat fruit that drops from trees, but it was just a coincidence that I had planted some there.
At Least You Can Fish
There’s a fishing mechanic with an aquarium, which is a highlight of Peaceful Farm. You can boost the fishing by typing specific words, but it’s not worth the eyestrain you’ll get trying to read them. Besides, fish only earn you money, which is pretty pointless when there are only seeds available in the shops.
There’s No Goal
There’s some mention of getting power back to the island in one of the notice board messages, though I’m not sure about the details. Your farmer character has a goal to “go on holiday” to bring back decorations once you reach a gold threshold. This felt like a punishment, as your farmer has been away for ages, ending automation and halting progress.
I actually left the game running for three workdays, hoping to encourage progression for this review, but there are so many issues that I’m not sure it’s worth pushing any further. My eyes hurt from squinting at the screen. There was no way for me to tell if the things going wrong were intentional or glitches, and I had no idea what I was doing or why. I even have complains about not being able to move decorations, close the game or switch monitors. I am over it.
This is not peaceful; this is a travesty.
Unfortunately, it looks like the developers have abandoned Peaceful Farm and released it without any plans to update it. I wouldn’t waste your time or money on this one. If it were free it might be a little different, but it feels like I care more about this review than the developers do for the game.
Platform: PC
Developer/Publisher: Peaceful Game
Played On: Steam
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