Ranch Farm & Store Simulator: Is Ranch Life The Best Life?

Retire to the country and build your own empire in Ranch Farm & Store Simulator, the sim game from Bewolba Studios. Level up to unlock new items and grow your ranch for maximum profits. with fishing, bug-catching, and even wild animals to encounter.

Play Your Way

Ranch Farm & Store Simulator follows a simple gameplay loop. You buy, plant, craft, nurture, and then sell produce for profit. It utilises a first-person view and simple controls; however, some tools take some getting used to. Thankfully, there are lots of options to customise your gameplay to make it work for you.

I played using a keyboard and mouse, but it also supports controllers. Things like the fishing and hunting tools used simple click-and-hold mechanics, but I was constantly reaching for the wrong keys, especially when switching between my tool wheel and inventory menu. I liked having the option to control and customise many objects, but this comes with a steep learning curve and many fiddly keybinds.

The majority of items are stored in boxes, each occupying an inventory slot and holding up to twelve of the same item. You can buy upgraded boxes with increased capacity, and bag upgrades that let you hold more box stacks at once. This box-based system encourages efficient stacking and inventory management, especially when prepping items for sale. However, managing boxes can sometimes feel inconvenient; you may have to return for more boxes before you unlock larger ones. Additionally, while animals require special delivery boxes that must be recycled after use (and emptied from your inventory), basic inventory slots paradoxically allow you to carry multiple cows at the same time, which seems inconsistent.

The loose storage inventory racking allows higher stacking limits per item type. Employees can access both these racks and box storage, making it easier to add, remove, or transfer items between slots. You can edit individual slot assignments directly within the inventory interface, with no extra tools required.

Your Faithful Crew

Employees are the key to your success. Thankfully, you unlock a cashier within the first few days, leaving you to tend the store and ranch. The first employee has only cashiering skills, but the others can be trained in other tasks. You can also batch upgrade these skills, making your employees more efficient, and set them to prioritise up to three tasks.

I felt like the AI could perform without too much input. The NPCs managed to do the tasks I wanted relatively well, and I could pretty much leave them to their assignments. Managing who went where and which tasks to prioritise is a part of the challenge, but it was easy to chop and change assignments to suit my needs.

Tools and Produce

You gain experience as you sell items, unlocking tools and produce as you level up. Starting with chickens and basic crops, your arsenal gradually expands to include a wide range of ranch-related goods. There are fishing rods, bag expansions, and all kinds of item crafting machines, giving players a lot to aim for.

Your ultimate goal is to automate production with later crops and animal waste being used to produce feed and fertiliser. Things cost a fair amount, but you can sell your inventory wholesale if you need quick cash. There’s also a merchant who sells you paintings to buff your prices, but they are expensive.

Most tools are pretty standard, but there were some cool additions. There’s a tool to catch wild animals who come into your ranch and a butchering knife to quickly clear out your animal pets. I also liked the kiosk feature, which adds new items to find, such as bugs. You could also turn animal intrusions off or set your guard dog to chase them away.

Challenges

I find sim games to be engaging and great for hours of play, but they often lack goals for me to work towards. Skill trees and unlocks go a great way towards keeping me engaged, but Ranch Farm & Store Simulator’s challenges had me pretty hooked. Honing in on a specific target and mass-producing to hit goals, or turning wild animal encounters up to grind captures, kept me focused for hours.

Most of them are simple: “sell so many of a selection of items” or “collect specific resources.” Some were really tough, but I had unlocked enough to upgrade my barn and add kiosks pretty naturally.

Building and Decorating

Your decorative items unlock slowly, but they were rather expensive. Once I unlocked some, they were easy to place and edit. I would have liked a grid or snap tool for more precise placement, though.

Some items, such as the animal pens, require you to build them. This initiates a basic building mini-game similar to House Flipper. It wasn’t the best, but I enjoyed it. I also liked that I could chop down trees to make some buildings cheaper.

My biggest gripe with building is the placement of product shelves. I understand they set up different delivery points for different types of tools, but it was super slow and uncomfortable having to run outside for a shelf every time I bought one. It especially stung when I could purchase and place multiple other tools, but not the shelves.

Graphics

I wouldn’t say the Ranch Farm & Store Simulator graphics are anything spectacular, but there were enough new assets to make it feel fresh. It’s better than the average sim-slop, and I liked the addition of the art in the posters you can buy that resemble the things on your ranch. Although it is not disclosed on their store page, the thumbnail has been replaced with an AI-generated image, so there is a chance it extends to their game as well. It also makes me think the developers just don’t care about their games, honestly, which is a shame.

Conclusion

Ranch Farm & Store Simulator is a decent simulation experience. It has some new mechanics, but I found them to be as tiresome as they were interesting. Things like trying to catch wild animals were fun to begin with, but I turned them off once I hit the challenges. Equally, there were some tasks my employees just never seemed to do, and I didn’t appreciate how often I had to cull my animals, even with it turned down.

Despite offering a wide range of activities and level-ups, I felt like I couldn’t really do much in Ranch Farm & Store Simulator. I was stuck in a loop: I needed money but couldn’t sell enough to my customers to level up.

To combat this, I would wholesale all my items to make a quick buck, but then I wouldn’t get as much exp. without levelling up, I had nothing new to do and limited cash or decorating to do, so it became a waiting game as I bumped up my prices. Within 10 hours, I had automated everything and was just leaving the game running as I waited to level up and unlock things.

Ranch Farm & Store Simulator was fun while it lasted, but I’m not sure it has the legs to keep up in such a competitive genre.

Platform: PC
Developer: Bewolba Studios
Publisher: Bewolba Studios
Played On: Steam
Provided By: Keymailer

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Mashashy

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