Title: Tiny Farm
Genre: Farming Simulator with City Building elements
Publisher: Com2Us
Grab it on IOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tiny-farm-season2/id448859328?mt=8
Grab it on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.com2us.tinyfarm.normal2.freefull.google.global.android.common&hl=en
Geeky Factor:
Sweetie Factor:
Concept: 6/10 Tiny Farm is a game similar in nature to that of Harvest Moon or Farmville. The objective is to take care of live stock, plant and harvest crops, go fishing, and breed the animals in your farm, all while making a profit to buy new farming equipment, better seeds, better livestock, etc. It’s one of those games that’s fun in small doses, and addictive at first, but if you intend to play it heavily, you may become bored by the repetitive nature of these games. They try to lessen that effect somewhat by regularly having special events with limited edition livestock or other prizes that you don’t want to miss out on, which keeps you logging in to keep up with the latest in-game events and items. I also find it a bit more interesting than just a farming simulator as you can also run your own zoo, or go to the beach, or participate in other activities as well.
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Gameplay: 7/10 The gameplay is pretty simple and straight forward, the controls are easy, you can click on an animal to bring up a submenu where you can give it “love” which helps it level up, and once it reaches certain levels of love it can breed with certain other animals who also have max love. You can also sell your animals to make room for new animals (which you’ll have to do a lot in the early levels as your space is very limited). You get to play the lucky bag gacha once every 24 hours for free and inside you will find things like animals, eggs, decorations, buildings, etc. You also get to go on a safari once a day for free. The safari is a mini game in which you must turn over cards to collect animal foot prints. Once you reach a certain number of footprints you’re able to bring home a new animal. You can find different animals in different areas on the map. You can place buildings and decorations around your farm, zoo, or beach to increase the profits from these areas. Also back on the farm, you can hire a search party to capture different animals; the choices change each day with different animals being able to be found. Legendary animals also appear and can be captured after having given animals on your farm enough love. To capture the legendary creatures you’ll need to spend even more love; which becomes problematic as you never have enough love when the animals first appear – they do this because they want you to spend money. If you can find a way to level up, that will replenish your love and allow you to capture the animal before it disappears. Visiting friends gives you a few bonuses, but is pretty useless, there’s really no social interaction or multiplayer appeal to this game. The repetitive nature of the game also drops it down a few points in our score, it’s just not very fun after awhile. I like to check in on my farm 3 or 4 times a day for about 15-25 minutes at a time; anything more than that would be incredibly boring.
Story: 0/10 There is literally no story. The game is going to take a hit in our score books here, since we always rate games based on story and gameplay.
Characters: 8/10 I kinda “fudged” this category a bit (otherwise the score will be too low); and for this review, I am considering the animals themselves as the characters in this game, since there are no characters and no story. But there are some SERIOUSLY CUTE animals…. A llama in a banana costume, a nine tails in a barista costume, and many more. They’re over the top, creative, cute, zany, and limited edition too which makes me want to play to collect em all (like pokemon). The animals are really the heart and soul of the game. I think they could add a feature similar to pokemini, lineplay, or cocoplay though where you have a human avatar representing yourself and get to dress her/him and collect outfits from the gacha. I also think they could open up inter-species breeding. (maybe it unlocks at a higher level, I only began playing last week), to offer a wider range of pets. Right now it’s pretty specific, pets that look the same like a bearded pig and boar can’t breed with each other even or a Black cow and a Dairy Cow, when it seems like breeding them should be possible. So I deducted a point there.
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Customization: 7/10 You can customize where you place your buildings and which animals you have on exhibit in your zoo. However, there’s little to do to customize the animals themselves. You can purchase “special effects” like rose petals or other things to place around your animals, but the effects available for purchase are limited (can count on one hand). And as mentioned above they’re missing out on further customization by neglecting to have human avatars, outfit gachas, or even outfits or accessories for the animals. Most of all though, I think the game could be more customizeable by allowing us to set different features within our shops; think of the old retro Rollercoaster Tycoon game for Sega Genesis, you could choose how salty your food was, how much ice was in your fountain drinks, etc. Finding the right balance between profit and happy customers. I think a feature like that brought to Tiny Farm could really make it shine and differentiate itself from its competition. But the buildings are upgradeable which unlocks more profits and bonuses which is a nice touch. I just would like to see them take customization a step or two further.
Kawaiiness (Cuteness): 10/10 – This is the cutest little farming game I’ve ever seen, the pets are so adorable. The fact that there are so many different animals, and especially lots of in game events with limited time animals makes it even more adorable. I would play this any day compared to farmville or hay day.
Music: 8/10 Cute and catchy music that is repetitive but does not get annoying
Graphics: 10/10 The graphics are “pixel” style and have a cute retro feel. The buildings are brightly colored and there’s a lot of different styles of pets and buildings to choose from.
Performance: 10/10 I have not experienced a game crash or any lag while playing on my old Ipad 2 (before Air designations). I have only been playing for a week though so that may change as my farm grows and more buildings/animals are packed onto my screen (taking more resources to display).
Overall: 72/90 80% B- “Very Good Game for Girls”
