For someone as committed as you to logistic simulators, going from modded factorio to casual farming sims must be the gaming equivalent of a leaving crack cocaine for caffeine.
No from Methamfetamin to Cigarettes. Would be the more apt drug comparison. From Mania inducing to Depression Inducing. I hate these cozy farming games, because they're all bad. I mean, when the same type of games on Newgrounds are better polished than most of these games on Steam, you know how shite they are... I remember playing a few cozy farming games online, and enjoying them, because they had the progression down to a tee. But come on, I don't mind the actual gameplay loop of tilling, sowing and watering, and harvesting... but come on, at least put in some effort to make it worthwhile, and increasing the amount of land you can till at once, or sow at once or water at once or imagine... HARVEST at once, does increase the actual gameplay loops enjoyment. Then you can add in some other minor things to the Gameplay outside of the main loop. Imagine you're a farmer, but you've done the work for the day, and you want to relax, so you take up a hobby, like fishing, or playing chess, or spending time with others. The worst part about these games in general is that they try to mash as much stuff in a game, and never have anything in it, be good enough, because no real effort was put into making it good.
Now to be fair, the idea of sci fi farming game where your gifts to npcs are attempts to bring them into your revolution against your alien overlord would appeal to at least *2* people
Alien Overlords? That is not allowed, we must destroy the Xenos, the Heretics and the Mutants. For the GOD EMPEROR! FOR MANKIND! FOR THE IMPERIUM OF MAN!
No gifts, only farming, a minecraft procedurally generated infinite farm field of every more crops to plant, your entire day spent from waking up to passing out at an arbitrary time tilling, planting, watering and harvesting.
@@livedandletdie wh40k setting, but it's a farming game? You need to plant crop at day, and suppress chaos at night, so the Inquisition doesn't enact Exterminatus on your planet. This is what i call an inspired idea.
It's the "when chores are done" part that made me chuckle. You sweet summer child, chores are never done. Any time a farmer takes a break their noggin is filled to brim with the things they "should have done".
i especially love how it does replicate how you would "go to sleep" from hard work, as us humans are meant to "do things" during the day which contributes to being able to sleep better. And the lack of "doing things" in this modern society is what causes us humans to have issues sleeping.
20:19 I think if you want this you've gotta try Sakuna: of Rice and Ruin. It's not a comfy game necessarily but the whole game is focused on ONE crop: rice, and the detail it puts into that is staggering. I honestly feel like I could talk to a rice farmer about rice growing techniques and follow the conversation after it. There's (non exhaustively) disease, water level, weather, temperature, soil type and quality, timing, crop spacing and seed density, as well as worrying about changing almost all of those things during each stage of growth and how they interplay. For example: pests. You can catch spiders to put in the rice to deal with other bugs that cause disease, but you can also use unlock ducks which are easier to use (just let them out into the paddy and forget about them vs having to keep catching spiders every day). However, they come with the downside that the ducks will eat spiders and the rice itself once its of a certain ripeness, so you cant use them all year... I could go on. The depth is insane. Just the detail in the water alone is more than most farming games have. You have to pay attention to not just the water level but the water temperature and how those things are affected by the weather. For instance, flowing water is colder than stagnant water, so opening both the gates to let water run through can keep water cooler if its warm - but also, if its raining, you need to keep the water levels correct by also opening both gates... but that might cool the water down if its already a cold rainy day. So you have two options - just chose one (too much water or cold water) and leave it, or spend the day carefully maintaining both by foregoing doing other activities and just monitoring your rice. Like, I've never had to make a choice in a farming game of deciding my crops are in a delicate state so I should monitor them closer than normal. I know this 100% isnt the kind of game a lot of people would like, but honestly, learning more and more about how rice is grown and different kinds of rice and what goes into it not only made the farming far more engaging on its own beyond what I get out of it (i.e. money or ingredients) but also just... was really educational and makes me appreciate people who have to do the undoubtedly just as complicated but harder work of growing rice in the real world
Wow, it seems like it's simulating plant growth, not just a general "farming". I would be very interest in that kind of depth with other crops, like a vineyard / winery, perhaps?
The crafting, farming, fishing, etc, in stardew all work because they are all effectively optional. You can (almost) finish the community center without ever earning a single coin, you can play the whole game without ever shopping, or without ever leaving your farm, you can get to Qi's secret room without ever doing *anything* that completion tracks. Crafting isn't just another progression gate, it's genuinely an option.
and since its optional, the normal player doesnt have to stick with it if they dont like it, they can follow fishing to its conclusion as a skill while also only doing the bare minimum foraging, player choice as to which to pursue and to igbore since youll still reach the end regardless of progression along either path.
@@Briskeeen I'd argue that's good. It's heavily implied, but lets the player figure it out for themselves. however, the wizard literally just saying "I have a reason to believe that one of the locals is actually my daughter" and Pierre saying "Don't tell my wife, but sometimes I wonder if I'm really the father." all but confirms it to anyone that gets to 8+ hearts with both. I *would* enjoy an abigail heart event where she figures it out. Maybe post-marriage? I've always thought the marrying in Stardew felt a bit underwhelming, the characters seem to devolve when you marry them.
Been really enjoying these "I played a bunch of games from x genre" videos. Your analyses are consistent and fairly thorough, with common themes and comparisons across games making it a cohesive video despite the linear format to it. Your consistent voice makes these long form videos less intensive and hence easier to digest, with the occasional straining of your voice keeping it engaging. You're a wonderful creator Dosh, and frankly the best kind of schizoid I can think of. Keep up the great work!
One thing you briefly touched on about the tavernkeeper game that could be a really interesting part of a game is being an information-broker. Tavernkeepers, in fantasy settings or otherwise, wind up being linchpins of their community due to just how many people come and go from their tavern, and NPC tavernkeepers are constantly used as quest-givers or info-brokers in tabletop roleplaying games or actual videogame RPGs. Giving some actual meaning to the rumors you overhear could be amazing. Maybe the farmers start complaining about poor harvests, and after a couple weeks a wandering druid asks you if you've heard any information, and if you've been paying attention, you can tell him what you know about the troubles the farmers have been having. It doesn't have to have any major consequences, but even just little things that add up over time like that would really help you feel like you're someone important to the community, even if you're not the one at the center of the action, since without you, that adventurer would've just passed the town over and never learned about the wolf problem you've been having or whatever. Or, alternatively, you could court a different sort of crowd and have your bar become the place where all the thieves and crooks hang out... A game like that wouldn't really need crafting elements beyond brewing to be interesting, I think.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that already existed somewhere. But it's also possible that it doesn't. I'm not quite sure of the idea of the player not quite being the main character in a sense, but more being the side character that tells the main character the problem. I'm not very good at this stuff, though, so take my thoughts with a bucket of salt.
And building rooms to rent, along with other amenities, atteact adventures, who have much bigger demands (like ordering large rounds of beer, food, and possibly multiples of each), but they also pay a lot more than the locals and occasionally pay with treasure (aka decorative items and special items / ingredients)
Imagine your furniture has different attractions to different factions, different points split between criminal, townsfolk or magical factions that control how many come to your tavern. That could influence the types of rumours you get, which you can use to discover new furniture and drinks. It could end up cluttering your bar, and that cycle of upgrading sounds a little mobile gamey but it could be fun.
Sun Haven isn't a perfect game but does things that just seem so obvious that I'm surprised I haven't seen it done before. Like the food increasing your stats permanently. Good idea on it's own but each food slowly decreases in value for stats, which encourages you to eat a wide variety of foods to maximize your stat gains. Awesome, and fitting for that 'Live a fulfilling life' vibe these games often have.
@@gigaslave Fair enough, though I was meaning more specifically in the 'cozy game' genre. These games tend to have dozens of food recipes but there's rarely an incentive to actually make any of the fancier recipes rather than just eat 40 apples or w/e to get stamina back.
Sun Haven is such an "almost" game. It seems like every feature is almost there. Food being used to increase stats to incentivize crops with diminishing returns? Awesome! Every major townsfolk just being a cookie-cutter boilerplate archetype, ech. Using and upgrading magic instead of tools in order to mange your farm more efficiently? Awesome! Then you unlock the 3 big spells, and that's it. It's basically just a gold tool now. Give me some endgame spells. Let me water my whole farm in one expensive cast, or build rituals in order to water my farm daily. Let me harvest all of my crops in one sweep of my powerful hand. SOMETHING. It's just so "almost". Time to load up RF4 again.
I got 20 hours in before realising there was gift giving - the game is/was bugged so that if you had a controller plugged in, but were using mouse and keyboard, you couldn't give gifts. :(
i love kynseed more i bought both games at the same time and kynseed hooked me because for me the game with it's celtic fairy lore and beauty just couldn't be beat and you grow old marry have kids they grow up and once you die you continue on as them. You start off with a cow a pig bees and grow veggies you can sell and learn to cook all that but you can also learn trades own shops etc. Sun haven was cool but the story didn't hook me i'll try again after kynseed though, kynseed is huge the map and the story.
I haven't seen anyone mention it but I always laugh at that one clip of Palpatine absolutely throwing that shit down that you use every time. Please never stop
Mate, the moment a story is done in a farming game, I get bored of it. I always feel like I have nothing to work towards once the main thing is done. Do I enjoy the gameplay and just farming? Yes. Do I want some kind of goal the game sets for me? Yes.
"I can access *my* imagination any time I want, and I usually play games because I want to experience someone else's for a change." Man, I feel like that succinctly describes a feeling that I've had a lot.
@@mattymerr701 unhopped beer is extremely uncommon. Beer not hopped for taste/aroma sure but it also brings utility to beer as hops are antimicrobial and stabilizing as an ingredient. Mass produced lagers are hopped (or at least treated with hop extract), sweet pastry beers are hopped, fruity sours are largely hopped too.
@@mattymerr701 there's a beverage here in sweden called "must" which was specifically invented as a non-alcoholic alternative to beer, and it's pretty hilarious to compare it to actual alcohol one tastes like cleaning chemical, the other is the nectar of the gods to the point that it significantly steals sales from coca cola every season it's available in stores.
In the same vein as VA-11 Hall-A and Traveller's Rest, I'd highly recommend Mystia's Izakaya. Although it is /highly/ weeb (being based off the Touhou franchise), it's a game based around cooking and serving dishes to various patrons with solid progression mechanics, a decent story, and light foraging elements. When everything comes to together it gets surprisingly deep, especially during the boss battles. Plus it's like $5 and looks gorgeous. No, you aren't managing the pH of your soil, but it's definitely worth a flutter.
I was looking to see if someone mentioned it already, glad it was. But since it offers no farming per-se, I can see why it wouldn't show up in a video like this. But I at least want to point to a few things Dosh mentions in the video: The scavenging mechanics suffer from a similar sort of flaw as Traveller's Rest or Roots of Pacha do (same locations, just different times of day) and the artificial time limit of debt collection which is a non-issue since you can collect four times what is ordered for the first debt collection - which is how far I currently am, and I'm still very much enjoying it. Of course, there's elements that are just there for the sake of being a fangame of the Touhou series; like the proprietress / player character being a songbird/sparrow, and the game thus having a rhythm element that at a chance gives beneficial buffs. The dialogue suffers a similar fate, playing into the lore of the series instead of offering any meaningful story choices that'd set the game apart (forget the romance or children mechanic, is what I'm saying. Bonding is the best you get). What sets it apart though is that outside of the usual "customer demands one exact food and drink", the main cast comes around and orders based on a single-line puzzle. "How does anything taste good without (item)?!" So you look at the notes you recorded from prior orders, as well as what they dislike; and then serve them the food that fits their demands best, with extra ingredients that appeal to them to increase their happiness. The more recipes you have, the more diverse your choices. If you give them food they end up loving, you get a flashy effect and a potential boon like attracting even more customers, or more resources (there's the randomness mechanic!) Obviously this does get repetitive as well, at least in the early stages, but it's miles ahead in engagement than the patrons in Traveller's Rest. To me, the current star of Diner Dash and tavernkeep type cozy games.
Hey uhhh the higher complexity you wish for is in Sakuna of Rice and Ruin, more limited crop choice but... From what I've seen it involves a lot of real rice farming complexities.
I remember someone said the best source of info for Sakuna's rice farming was to go to The Ministry of Agriculture of Japan's website to find the wiki on how to make actual rice.
@@Tiragron99 I just need to tell you that in Sakuna you can pick up a cat and puppy at the same time and carry them around. It is such a good game, please check it out.
communing with ancient heroes' spirits to discover the recipe for tomato bread is hilarious, you gotta give that to them, it'd be cool if Traveler's Rest had this kind of humour throughout
That idea does appeal to me as well. It is a clear goal to work towards and you could have some endgame farm once you escape for the factorio tyoes who want to expand.
I think there are stuff like what Dosh describes. Escaping prison games, or stuff like Rimworld, or possibly Kenshi or some colony sim like that. Probably missing a mark, but it's a suggestion
@@SirusDiarotahaving to defend my rice and weed farm in Kenshi from 4 different groups of bandits, and grazing migratory dinosaurs, and red murder spiders is definitely the most invested I have been in my group of no story characters and plants.
20:00 They already did innovate on these ideas, years ago. Rune Factory 4 has soil condition, various types of growth potions, quests and daily chores involving farming, etc... Otoh, Story of Seasons Trio of Towns has a town link system, where in order to get better reputation for the town you need to do services for them, one of these is growing and selling town specific crops. There are also award shows to show off your crops and an entire questline (Like the community center from SDV) that gives you tons of good rewards to help with the town rep quest. Also, both these games came out before all others on this list.
@@crb8124 to be fair, it might be because RF4 appeals to a slightly different audience. It's got far more involved combat for one, where SDV is way more chill on that front. For second, RF4 is also really obtuse with some of its mechanics (esp in the 3DS version). The entire final act has to be triggered randomly FFS. for third (and probably least important) RF4 doesn't allow you (easily) to be queer, which is something that's pretty important to a lot of fans of this genre. lastly, the game is also long. sure, SDV can also be long, but you're able to complete the main "quest" in a single year. I haven't had a farm go for more than maybe 2-3 years without deciding to start a new one, while RF4 just *feels* longer. I dont actually know if it is, but I know i've only "finished" the game once or twice, whereas I've "finished" SDV maybe a dozen or so times Don't get me wrong, I love both of these games (and I generally prefer RF over SDV. RF3 is probably one of my favourite farming games of all time), but i think that RF just feels like its less of a casual farming game. too many interlocking mechanics and overlapping systems which are (sometimes) poorly explained due to there being more of them than SDV. I dont know why I wrote all this, I think i lost the thread a little there Also, it's not just RF4 that had things like soil condition and field rotation. I know at least RF2 has those mechanics, but I can't remember if 1 does. RF3 has it too. All of which are even older than RF4, so its not like these are all recent Basically, moral of the story... play Rune Factory? (except 5. i wasnt a fan of 5)
If you want all those soil conditions and other very specific farming things, there is this on game Sakuna: of rice and ruin you can try out. You can only grow rice, but they really go into how much water you use, they type of stuff you use to fertilize, and even the spacing of the crops themselves
Okay to be totally honest a dystopian stardew planning an uprising in secret while also growing cabbage sounds weirdly fun to me as well. Hiding improvised explosives in the tool shed while clearing land for more beans apeals to me. Mark that down as 2 people who would play that
re: mechanical complexity in farming games my favorite part of modded minecraft (forestry, extrabees, magicbees, especially careerbees) is how fun and intuitive the mechanical complexity for a good breeding simulator, but when i describe the relaxing process of watching my liquid bacteria dissolving bees to make liquid dna and i sound like a supervillain at least careerbees adds a supervillain outfit and bee gun i have a pack for it if you want it.
don’t talk to me or my infinity catalyst bee from GTNH ever again jokes aside, i find the implementation of genetics, and through addon mods, machines to modify genes, quite fitting (but grindy at times, since waiting 15min for one single hive to die for a 5% mutation chance is simply a no go)
20:20 Interestingly enough, Harvest Moon: Animal Parade on the Wii actually did incorporate deeper mechanics like this. Soil depreciates from being used and harvest quality is averaged around the soil quality you have in terms of what you'll get. Fertilizing gets the quality back up and is required routinely to maintain it. It's also got simultaneously the most repetitive yet accessible Infinite Mines and ultimately you're only doing it for fancy cosmetic jewelry in the end. The plot's pretty decent, it's actually somewhat cutely done in how returning various animals gets you shortcuts and so on. I never hear many people talk about the game, and even with some of the odd Wii mechanics (like using the second controller to "pet" villagers) I always feel like it's an overlooked attempt at actual deepening of the series.
Glad to hear you also liked Sun Haven! To address a few of the minor complaints: your spouse will eventually move in with you once you’ve upgraded your house to the max level, though there’s no real benefit to upgrading your house other than having more space to decorate, so i can see why you didn’t bother. They’re also working on adding children in the next patch, which is something you mentioned.
Only annoying thing for me is the snacoons blocking my farm, and how you can’t skip days like stardew, you have to sit for 10 minutes minimum then sleep at 6pm.
over/under watering and sunlight were in an older harvest moon/story of seasons games. i remember for a handheld one i needed to carry around a printed out spreadsheet of all the crop requirements to play it while on the go. i think it was island of happiness? if they got too much sun or water, they'd die, and made the greenhouse really desirable. sunhaven felt like most or all of the team were first time game developers, fresh out of school. i felt like if i didn't play it incredibly carefully, i would accidentally break it into tiny pieces and corrupt my save file.
Now i want a Blame! inspired farming/survival game with exploration focusing on finding random useful and terribly traumatized NPCs, acquiring "biomass" for the farmlands through questionable means, and regular silicon creature invasions. Thanks.
Y'know, something I noticed in a lot of these games is that the main way you upgrade your farm is by increasing the space you have too plant things. Stardew you unlock the the greenhouse and the Ginger Island farm, Story of Seasons you unlock the seasonal shrines, Sun Haven you unlock the Elven and Monster farms. ect. Saying that, I think a good avenue for the more in-depth growing mechanics you mentioned could be via a farming game that explicitly limits the amount of room you have inorder to farm things. So instead of growing 3x the crops, you optimize your plants to give 3x the yield.
I love your other videos but this really sold me on how great your taste and analysis are. There's really no such thing as an objective criticism or perspective, but the biases you bring I think do a good job highlighting trends and cracks in the genre that are worth deeper inspection from people who like these games.
20:28 This bit reminded me of Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. It wasn't quite as complicated as what you wanted but it was sufficiently realistic enough that on release the best walkthrough was The Ministry of Agriculture of Japan's site for how to grow rice. It's a good game, by the way, I highly recommend it for Farm Game Video 2
20:19 YES. LITERALLY ME. I'm a huge botany/gardening nerd, so hearing someone else talk about this makes me feel really good about it! I've toyed with the idea of making a game like that. If I do end up planning on releasing it, you'll be among the first to know!
the terrafirmacraft mod to minecraft has some stuff like this - soil nutrients NPK to make crops grow faster, seasons to kill off your stuff in the fall, latitudes to make seasonal conditions different throughout the world, seeds discoverable by exploring the world. however, it also has this extremely complex and, imo, tedious metal working mechanic to upgrade tools. ilmango and etho have playlists for it also, no npcs to deal with and the storyline is only in your own imagination
20:22 okay, this little rant here instantly brought to my mind one of my favorite comfy farming games, Rune Factory 3. A fantasy rpg spin off of harvest moon. And one of the major mechanics of that game, was crop levels and the quality of your land. To efficiently farm and not waste time I would rotate plots of land to not over use and reduce the quality of my soil while also selecting the highest level plants to make into the next batch of seeds for the next plot. And its kinda exactly what you described. If you have the spare time they re released it on consoles recently and its got some decent RPG mechanics to boot as well.
You might enjoy "One Hundred Days." It's a vineyard game, but it's a mix of farming and puzzle mechanics based on discovering and managing the details of producing desirable qualities like sweetness, tannins, flavor notes, etc. There's some equipment upgrades, and the only crafting involves creating new strains of grape.
Two things about RoP you either missed or didn't mention: a) later in the game you discover an irrigation system. Putting it together was cool! b) there are multiple entrances to the cave system- you just need to unlock them from inside of the cave system 😃
I just want to say that I love these types of video game analysis/review-style videos that you do. You have such an interesting and unique perspective on games that I don't see in many other "video game reviews". Your ideas and pitches for games and mechanics have been genuinely inspirational and make me want to go out and make a game, to try something new in the space.
The part where you mention the lack of mechanical depth in the farming itself - lack of soil type, quality, different methods, selective breeding and variation between the same plants/animals- resonated with me a lot. I feel like a lot of these games the decision making is focused on what you do with your time rather than how you do a certain activity. For me it means once you've made a decision for what activity to do, you just end up doing some rote task without having to make trade-offs or deal with challenges.
I want farming games similar to the old Harvest Moon/Story of Season games. The "farming" games nowadays have you do literally everything from farming to crafting tools, equipment, buildings, etc. Making the other villages kinda useless. In the older Harvest Moon games, the villagers built the stuff for you.
As much as I love your factorio content I enjoy all your non-factorio content even more! Especially when you play some niche, weird game no-one except maybe three people on an ancient internet forum from the early 2000s have heard of. Keep it up Dosh!
32:42 Va-11 Hall-A is an amazing game indeed. Starting NG+ right now, and hearing those stories with knowledge opens a lot more of the story and characters.
In my opinion, to this day the definitive "Farming Game" is Rune Factory 4 Special. It has by far the most things to do, the most interesting things to do, and all the systems have the necessary depth for you to immerse in them, as well as tie to other systems which makes nothing you do ever feel meaningless.
Did Special fix the issue base RF4 had, where getting the...I think it was third arc to start was pure RNG? I loved the game, but kinda dropped it after a few in-game years without that arc starting. Also, was kind of surprised that none of the Rune Factory games were brought up in this video.
@@Rel_Ortal The issue has been fixed as commented above. The PC port is kinda sketchy though. Definitely playable, but it is plagued by a few weird bugs and issues that while not gamebreaking, will definitely get on your nerves. The reason RF games were not mentioned is probably because as Dosh himself has said he's not all that much into these games. And despite how good Rune Factory games are, they are definitely still kind of niche and overshadowed by Harvest Moon and Story of Season series. Which is a shame, because RF4 Special literally has everything Dosh seems to want from those games: An actual story, well written characters, a lot of dialogue and reasons to care for the characters, good farming mechanics, a lot of things to do, good combat, gameplay variety, lots of minigames and town events, and pretty clear objectives for you to focus on if you need any direction.
@@Rel_Ortal special is "kinda" scuffed in the PC and PS ports namely Sharance Maze has no map so.... yeah but it is still base RF4 so the confession is still rolled by RNG, RF5 is kinda better on that regard
People probably aren't reading this comment anymore, but on an off chance somebody finds it and wants to play RF 4 Special on PC, my personal recommendation on the definitive way to do it is to actually emulate the Switch version. Funnily enough, that will give you the most stable and best running version of the game possible. Switch emulation is very easy, efficient and extremely good, and since the Switch version of the game is free of the issues and bugs the PC version has, it ends up being the best way to enjoy the game. It will look and sound just about the same as well. Just don't forget to obtain the game legally first, of course :)
You should definitely give My Time At Sandrock a try. Good story, good farming, good crafting which can eventually be semi automatic, can hire a to do all the harvesting, planting, watering, pet patting, stable cleaning, machine dusting and energy refilling for you, Your Spouse can also do that. If there is a conversation in a Story, 7/10 it'll be voice acted, and it's pretty good, honestly, all around it's a great game, took me around 270 hours to finish the game. Also, unlike 99% of every farming game out there, you essentially get Complete artistic freedom to not only Decorate your house inside and out, you also get to decide where Doors and such are, because you get to build your home yourself! If you wanted, you could fill the entire maxed out lot with Just your home, and you can also build up, seen some pictures of people having like 9 flights on their home, turning it into a bloody Hotel. And forgot to mention, the Combat...It's NOT sh*t, and you get Dungeons with Bosses to obtain certain materials. Although, it's actually Not a "Farming Sim" per say, it's more of a Construction Sim, since you're a Builder, not a Farmer, and you earn your money mainly from Building things for the people of Sandrock instead of selling 8,000 potatoes. All in all, MTAS is a solid 8/10 And they're already working on a sequel, placeholder name of Project ME.
There's also the fact that if you don't do a quest, the NPCs will find someone else to solve their problem (or you flat out fail that questline), which is very different from other similar games.
@@Serzha True! And kinda sad they removed the Rivalry from Portia. cause in My Time At Portia, you had a Rival, and during main quests, there was no "alright, you do that, and you do this" it's "first come first serve b*tches, NOW GET TO WORK!" so if you were too slow, you lost out on the bigger, or the reward entirely, and that put my urgency to you planning out your task and day more.
@@franslair2199 It definitely had it's flaws, but i wouldn't say it was Bad. And majority of Portia's issues were fixed in Sandrock, and many more will most likely be fixed in the next one.
@@ForemostCrab7 the artstyle is soulless, the characters are cardboard cutouts, mining is the worst I've seen in any game, and you can tell it's a Chinese game because for quests you're forced to show up at a guild first thing in the morning, and if you are late even a little bit, someone else will take the quests.
I love these variety videos! The Factorio runs are all big and impressive, but there's just something comfortable and relaxed about these types of videos.
The extra farming conditions you speak of are (mostly) present in Don't Starve Together. You need bare bones knowledge of farming to just break even with crops and seeds but if you want giant crops you gotta have some in-depth knowledge of the system to pull it off. I loved it so much that I've spent an in-game year (maybe more) doing nothing but farming. We had no way of starving with the sheer avalanche of durians I was producing.
I feel like graveyard keeper would add an interesting perspective to this. While I don't remember there being farming, it is definitely the same genre.
The Tavern keeper game reminds me of Mystia's Izakaya. It doesn't have farming but it does have customers that want specific food or drinks and will get mad if they aren't on the menu which means you have to learn and remember what kinds of things people in the area like. The game has good music and story as well, would recommend.
Please, *please* make more of these 'I played these X games in my quest for the ultimate X'! This and the potion one are so good and I've rewatched them so many times. The format is great, your commentary and critique is excellent, and as an aspiring game dev, your comments (as well as the comment section!) are full of fun things to analyze. But since the contents are so high quality, they do also seem like they take a heck of a lot of work to make, so it's very understandable if not :>
It's not that much more work than my Factorio videos, but yea it's something I want to do more of. The main difference is how much effort needs to go into writing a script, and playing four or five games mostly to completion requires a fair bit of time.
"Played several games of Factorio that lasted 300 hours each without running out of steam..." Ok, time to go rewatch every video to find every instance where his boilers can't keep up with power demand!
The grimdarkk sci-fi concept of being a cog in the machine to powers above you only to have to gradually build a triumphant revolution against your overlords would also have the benefit of some "post game content" where your crops are now the sole means of keeping your community alive and now you have to spread the knowledge so that in time you can leave the game in good conscience, aka your character is now peacefully dead in their sleep.
When you talked about wanting a farming sim that explored the realm of overwatering, soil quality, etc. I was instantly reminded of a hybrid farming sim/sidescrolling action game called Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. Essentially a rice farming sim coupled with a story-centric sidescrolling action game, it was pretty good too on both aspects. Growing rice is your main way of getting stronger so it's very relevant to play, and I can recommend testing it out to see how it does the farming
I was a big fan of early Harvest Moon games, starting from SNES one all the way to Gamecube era, so... Seeing what the series is like these days, I can't help but feel bit sad. I dunno if there is a good way to describe it, but Pioneers of the Olive Town simply looks cheap and clunky. But yeah, I'll also second the suggestion for Sakuna. It really didn't scratch the similar itch as Harvest Moon games did, but I really enjoyed it. And it is a farming game.
I'm surprised Graveyard Keeper didn't come up. I don't know why, but it feels like it'd be up your alley. It has a lot of the pitfalls you brought up; stamina bars, unclear goals, occasional bouts of unfulfilling grinding waiting for a bar to go up and allow you to do the thing. I just like the vibes I guess. Always brightens my day to see you've posted something new, tysm for sharing :)
The same reason he didn't review Stardew Valley, I assume it is because Graveyard Keeper actually captured a lot of market share when it released. It was quite popular and its not really worth reviewing. (the free zombie update made the game amazing, all the DLC is mid)
Fun Fact about Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town. There was supposed to be an update where they would have animated portraits for villagers. Much like boosting the FPS performance for the game on the Switch, I guess that both got the axe.
Imagine a story focused farming sim game where you start with the fact you actually bought your farm and weren’t just given it. The land is pretty much a blank slate not only for what industry you want to get into but also what your house is gonna be/look like. And you can select a background for what you did before and that can affect some starting skills and affinities. And it may somewhat dictate what you may get into to begin with; someone who used to make clothes may start growing material crops like flax or farm silk worms or sheep Someone who worked in a restaurant may open their own and grow namely crops and raise livestock for a farm to fork place.
I played a pretty chill "farming" game for a while, I say farming in quotations because it doesn't actually have any crops. Instead, it revolves around your bees Apico had this bee breeding and selection system that I adored. You could cross-breed different bees to try and make a super-bee, one that worked 24/7 instead of just at night, or make them completely docile by removing agressive traits. Make them be able to work in the rain, or in the snow. Or make bees that *only* worked in those conditions work when it's clear outside I spent so many hours breeding and optimizing my bees, getting the highest stats possible with a group, then trying to pass on their stats to every species. Which was kind of frustrating when some of their genes ended up as recessive instead of dominant. The game is incredibly simple, and doesn't truly have a ton of content, but if you enjoy the genetics aspect of maximizing your farm's output I'd really recommend it.
Apico is lovely! It's so rewarding to realize that if some bees are good at one thing and these other bees are good at another thing, then you can mash them together to make super bees. :)
this series is the best series ever - you actually come with some meaningful knowledge / reflections, really appreciate the actual reviews. would love to see more of "i played these"!
It really doesn’t matter what the content is, but your well thought-out opinions and audiobook-worthy voice mean you could be talking about anything and it would be a worthy watch, regardless of my personal interest in the subject.
Love an hour of dosh! The dulcet tones keep putting me to sleep, so I end up having to watch it many times to get it all. And then I keep watching it to help me sleep. :)
That game idea actually sounds interesting, as it also touches on the aspect of the NPC ppl in these games having no meaning. Personally if all the NPCs had a meaningful reason behind building up your relationship with them outside of dating, lore & random dialogue, I'd probably actually engage with them, which would help the game overall as i find after the first couple of these games especially if star dew was one of them, they don't feel meaningful enough to play just for farming, mining & upgrading. So if you needed to build relationships with all NPC just to escape the evil overlord aliens, sounds meaningful & fun especially if upgrades, tools & mechanics are behind it.
I get where you're coming from w the sun Haven art style thing but I still think that it has quite alot of charm in its background art i have not played it myself tho so my oppinion is as a valid as a man screaming in the middle of a city street
I now want an alien slave farming simulator. Nay, I *NEED* it in my life. If I managed to suffer through over 100 hours of Graveyard Keeper - which is exactly what you want: a bizarre themed "comfy-game" - then I would gladly put in 200 hours to appease my alien overlords by farming Glorbs and Zhraks in the colony on planet Mhghn
Just wanted to say that I think you should keep doing videos like these. I love listening to/watching people talk about things they’re passionate about.
23:33 Thanks for putting into words what I've been feeling about games that do this sort of thing. Its like, I know inconveniences are important for a game to feel fun, but knowing I could just turn that off causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. Of course this isnt a problem for me until I do start fiddling with those options.
I was very surprised that Dosh liked Sun Haven so much. I tried it out a while ago and, like Dosh, all the little weird things annoyed me too. But unlike Dosh, I found the characters very uninteresting. If you ever do a follow-up to this, I would highly recommend the Rune Factory series, as I find them to be the perfect balance of farming and RPG mechanics. I would recommend 4 over 5, as the switch to 3D meant that 5 wasn’t as detailed as 4, but it’s still pretty good. Also, Moonlighter, while not being explicitly a potion game or a farming game, has a similar vibe; I’d be interested in seeing Dosh’s take on that, as well as other “shop-sims”.
I miss rune factory 4... I was looking forward to 5 conceptually but then I Saw It. The pixel art in 4 was SO nice! it was one of their biggest advantages over hm/sos and they SQUANDERED it. u_u
@@dovedozen It’s honestly a pretty good transfer into 3D. I was similarly cautious when they showed off the gameplay trailer and it was 3D, but I ended up playing it and liking it; they made sure it still *felt* like a RF game. Plus, they made dungeon progression actually last for more than a month! If you haven’t, I’d recommend playing it on PC though; there were a few performance issues that hindered it on the Switch. Nothing major, just longer load times, lower frame rates, etc. I finished the game on the switch then ended up buying it for the PC as well.
@@cadensherman1983 you know, I'm pretty heavily biased towards 2D, but it is nice to hear that they were at least thoughtful with the shift to 3D! Good to know that the PC version is good, too; if I ever play it, it'll probably be on steam deck or somethin, if it runs well enough. Never did get a switch.
Sad that Reap & Sow never finished development. You play as a cursed member of a village turned into undead ragdolls trying to eke out a living farming, but at night you enter freakish dreams and try to bring back seeds or other vital items.
You might like the My Time At series. It's more building than farming, though there is also farming, but mainly there are bigger goals you can work towards that contribute to the story.
For some reason I actually expected Graveyard Keeper in this video. I mean, besides from butchering corpses and all that unholy stuff you do have some nice moments in your garden cultivating carrots.
This made me think of three games: Graveyard Keeper, Don't Starve Together and My Time at Portia. First, Graveyard Keeper, which I really enjoyed. There's one good DLC that adds a tavern you run, and a whole lot of lore. It should've been part of the base game... But anyway, it's a shame you didn't include it in this video! It's obviously not strictly a farming game, though there is a farming element to it. I wonder if you would've liked it! Funnily, Don't Starve Together, while not a farming game at all (generally), actually incorporates some of those mechanics you wished for, in its farming. There are three kinds of nutrients that the crops need, and each of the crops requires one or two of the nutrient while providing the other/s - so there are beneficial combos of crops that provide for one another. Also to take into account: preferred season, family bonus (they like to be next to a few of the same crop), but be careful not to overcrowd. There's no overwatering though, you just need to provide water. Oh, and talk to the plants, or play them some music. And that scene in Story of Seasons made me think of My Time at Portia, the one with the town meeting. Portia has a lot of those, and it looks literally the same. There really is a formula for those games, lol Oh, and one more game, "something outpost", is it out yet? I think so. It looks like Stardew on another planet. Wonder how that one compares.
if you ever make a sequel to this video with more farming sims, two games i suggest you play are 1. Cornucopia- it has some interesting fertilizing mechanics that have quite confused me and it would be cool to see you figure them out, and it is also not so well known and i think it deserved more recognition and 2. Dinkum- it is very much like animal crossing except you can sleep till the next day and you dont have to wait for irl time to pass and it does have quite a bit of farming mechanics ( though it is early access and still being updated, so you might want to wait on this one) but cool fact it was developed by just one person just like stardew valley! i recently got back into this game after buying it a while ago and it has really captivated my interest.
For me, stamina was always an issue in Stardew Valley, especially when delving into the mines or dungeons. Heck, I frequently ran out of stamina when clear cutting the forests to gather the enormous amount of lumber I always needed, or fishing all life from every body of water simply because I needed to get specific fish for quests.
Dosh isnt quite correct for stamina in stardew, its an issue until you get the first house upgrade giving you a kitchen, you can then start mass producing food for stamina instead of just eating random forage or the field snack, a personal favourite is getting sashimi recipe from linus at 3 hearts and turning all the crab pot fish into it
if you go into the game knowing what to expect, stamina is a problem for the first two weeks. Then, you get salmonberry season and use those as your infinite stamina source for a long while. Spring onions are also nice as they respawn daily autumn has blackberries which work very similarly, and if you have high foraging level you'll ged dumb amounts of berries if you gather them every day they're available Though, this *does* depend on you playing kind of optimally, which you probably won't do on your first playthrough
What? Its only a limiting factor for the first months or so, once you get the kitchen you can just make a lot of food with all the stuff you collected or even just buy tons of basic food from the tavern if you have a lot of gold. You don't even have to be minmaxing anything. I can only imagine it being a problem to someone who never ever bothered to upgrade the house and use the TV every day maybe?
If you save a bunch of wild seeds up and craft survival bars they make a decent ration, as do the salmonberries and wild blackberries that grow in spring and autumn. Just devote one inventory slot for your stamina/health ration and eat as needed.
If depth in farming mechanics is fuel for interest, I would definitely recommend Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. It cuts out variety of plants in favor of focusing on just rice. There's plenty of different factors like soil quality, water levels and planting density to consider for maximum yield. The main farming mechanic then feeds into a side-scrolling action game reminiscent of Muramasa: The Demon Blade. As far as farming sims go, this might be a bit too focused, but I personally wouldn't have it any other way.
It seems like none of these games solve the fundamental issues of 'why should i play this instead of stardew valley' i.e. they mostly have the same gather resources, farm, talk to npc's, go cave diving, that stardew has whereas they could've dropped some mechanics for more depth in one area (e.g. you could drop the cave diving in exchange for expanding farming mechanics and instead have you deal with selling the crops to different peeps, selling spuds to the local chippy, or flour to the bakery, maybe you run a farm shop, etc.) But they also aren't making a proper iteration i.e. removing gripes ppl had, expanding on the good parts and offering basically the same experience but better. They seem to rely on their unique selling points to create intrigue and then offer an overall worse experience. Here's hoping there is a game like i described but i just know about it yet.
well for me... 0. stardew stomps ass so more is always good even if the "more" isnt EXACTLY like stardew 1. their artstyles are different 2. the npcs/towns/stories are different 3. they all focus on something different than stardew's focus on farming. stardew's mining/fishing/ect. are very shallow compared to farming. every aspect of stardew feeds into farming. stardew's mining/fishing/combat cannot say the same thing i could go on and on but im playing traveler's rest right now
That was a really insightful point about how you can choose from a range of small, achievable goals, giving frequent enough feelings of victory and achievement while also learning to enjoy the process of getting there
"Honestly, dosh is the only one in my "belled" RUclips list that makes me feel like I got a new car when I see that a new video came out." There is no need for the commas. Enjoy the next 24 hours.
Last night I was handling my farm in Stardew. It took me like 2 in-game hours to do everything and I was thinking "Wish I could automate this farm like how Dosh automates stuff in Factorio." It's insane I saw this video after waking up.
It would have been very interesting to see your take on Graveyard Keeper, it definitely falls into that same category but more focused on a different, and pretty unique aspect. It has been out for a few years, and it's got some issues, but I think it does something different well enough that it deserves a mention.
Well this is as good a place as any for this idea. I'd love a game in this vein during a post-nuclear apocalypse, where the emphasis is on purifying the land to create a pocket of prosperity in a destroyed world.
It's less of a nuclear apocalypse and more of a magical one, but Wildmender is pretty close to that premise. Basically it's Breath of the Wild mixed with druid terraforming.
As a fan of farming/cozy games who's growing weary of the subpar oversaturation of the genre, I greatly appreciate your willingness to really dig into these games and point out a lot of things that tend to get glossed over in most reviews. Your criticism, to me, feels more than fair, and it's so important to point these things out because they can negatively impact the flow of gameplay, and flow is so important in games like these. I have ADHD, so a single clunky mechanic can make or break a game for me, but games like these (I'm not talking about the ones in this video specifically) get far too much forgiveness from the fanbase just because, as you said, "they can decorate their backyard." I'm sad for the life sim genre after seeing far too many games tossed out in a sad state under a coat of "cute and cozy" paint, so your critiques feel incredibly refreshing and give me hope that I may begin to see better quality games in my favorite genre soon enough.
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
the bean arc has affected our protagonist dosh so deeply he's spending his remaining life on earth farming
lmfaoo
Lol
BEAN POWER!!
@@Smokyquartz98😂😂t r qe+❤😂😂😂😂😂😂
I wonder if his 10 kiloton guess was relatively accurate for his Seablock run.
For someone as committed as you to logistic simulators, going from modded factorio to casual farming sims must be the gaming equivalent of a leaving crack cocaine for caffeine.
cracktorio to caffarming
No from Methamfetamin to Cigarettes. Would be the more apt drug comparison. From Mania inducing to Depression Inducing.
I hate these cozy farming games, because they're all bad. I mean, when the same type of games on Newgrounds are better polished than most of these games on Steam, you know how shite they are... I remember playing a few cozy farming games online, and enjoying them, because they had the progression down to a tee. But come on, I don't mind the actual gameplay loop of tilling, sowing and watering, and harvesting... but come on, at least put in some effort to make it worthwhile, and increasing the amount of land you can till at once, or sow at once or water at once or imagine... HARVEST at once, does increase the actual gameplay loops enjoyment. Then you can add in some other minor things to the Gameplay outside of the main loop.
Imagine you're a farmer, but you've done the work for the day, and you want to relax, so you take up a hobby, like fishing, or playing chess, or spending time with others.
The worst part about these games in general is that they try to mash as much stuff in a game, and never have anything in it, be good enough, because no real effort was put into making it good.
True.. There's a reason Stardew is mostly played by girls on their iPhones. It's like a light beer to a whiskey.
@@gileee Girls yes, Iphones no?
As someone who literally gave up crack cocaine and now takes dangerously high amounts of caffeine, this is 100% true
The farm must grow
Beans for the bean god
@@kronoskai2738sea for his ground
Pinecones for the pinecone armor
Fish for the fish man
Berries for the berry lord
Now to be fair, the idea of sci fi farming game where your gifts to npcs are attempts to bring them into your revolution against your alien overlord would appeal to at least *2* people
Alien Overlords? That is not allowed, we must destroy the Xenos, the Heretics and the Mutants. For the GOD EMPEROR! FOR MANKIND! FOR THE IMPERIUM OF MAN!
@@livedandletdieYour false God died on Terra.
No gifts, only farming, a minecraft procedurally generated infinite farm field of every more crops to plant, your entire day spent from waking up to passing out at an arbitrary time tilling, planting, watering and harvesting.
@@livedandletdie wh40k setting, but it's a farming game? You need to plant crop at day, and suppress chaos at night, so the Inquisition doesn't enact Exterminatus on your planet. This is what i call an inspired idea.
3
I love the “power down like a cyborg” thing because it’s the same thing in every single one of these games
I stand corrected
It also is 100% correct
T. Farm boy
It's the "when chores are done" part that made me chuckle. You sweet summer child, chores are never done. Any time a farmer takes a break their noggin is filled to brim with the things they "should have done".
@@MultiMelodia one must imagine Sisyphus happy
i especially love how it does replicate how you would "go to sleep" from hard work, as us humans are meant to "do things" during the day which contributes to being able to sleep better. And the lack of "doing things" in this modern society is what causes us humans to have issues sleeping.
20:19 I think if you want this you've gotta try Sakuna: of Rice and Ruin. It's not a comfy game necessarily but the whole game is focused on ONE crop: rice, and the detail it puts into that is staggering. I honestly feel like I could talk to a rice farmer about rice growing techniques and follow the conversation after it. There's (non exhaustively) disease, water level, weather, temperature, soil type and quality, timing, crop spacing and seed density, as well as worrying about changing almost all of those things during each stage of growth and how they interplay.
For example: pests. You can catch spiders to put in the rice to deal with other bugs that cause disease, but you can also use unlock ducks which are easier to use (just let them out into the paddy and forget about them vs having to keep catching spiders every day). However, they come with the downside that the ducks will eat spiders and the rice itself once its of a certain ripeness, so you cant use them all year... I could go on. The depth is insane.
Just the detail in the water alone is more than most farming games have. You have to pay attention to not just the water level but the water temperature and how those things are affected by the weather. For instance, flowing water is colder than stagnant water, so opening both the gates to let water run through can keep water cooler if its warm - but also, if its raining, you need to keep the water levels correct by also opening both gates... but that might cool the water down if its already a cold rainy day. So you have two options - just chose one (too much water or cold water) and leave it, or spend the day carefully maintaining both by foregoing doing other activities and just monitoring your rice. Like, I've never had to make a choice in a farming game of deciding my crops are in a delicate state so I should monitor them closer than normal.
I know this 100% isnt the kind of game a lot of people would like, but honestly, learning more and more about how rice is grown and different kinds of rice and what goes into it not only made the farming far more engaging on its own beyond what I get out of it (i.e. money or ingredients) but also just... was really educational and makes me appreciate people who have to do the undoubtedly just as complicated but harder work of growing rice in the real world
You just made me grab my credit card and spend the money I don't have 😭 you would be a good seller (if not already)
@@bear3s oh man, now i REALLY hope you like it!
@@bear3sit was on PlayStation plus a couple months ago
Wow, it seems like it's simulating plant growth, not just a general "farming". I would be very interest in that kind of depth with other crops, like a vineyard / winery, perhaps?
sakuna is great yeah, hope he looks at it
The crafting, farming, fishing, etc, in stardew all work because they are all effectively optional.
You can (almost) finish the community center without ever earning a single coin, you can play the whole game without ever shopping, or without ever leaving your farm, you can get to Qi's secret room without ever doing *anything* that completion tracks.
Crafting isn't just another progression gate, it's genuinely an option.
and since its optional, the normal player doesnt have to stick with it if they dont like it, they can follow fishing to its conclusion as a skill while also only doing the bare minimum foraging, player choice as to which to pursue and to igbore since youll still reach the end regardless of progression along either path.
@amergingiles Abigail being the Wizard's daughter is never confirmed
@@Briskeeen I'd argue that's good. It's heavily implied, but lets the player figure it out for themselves.
however, the wizard literally just saying "I have a reason to believe that one of the locals is actually my daughter" and Pierre saying "Don't tell my wife, but sometimes I wonder if I'm really the father." all but confirms it to anyone that gets to 8+ hearts with both.
I *would* enjoy an abigail heart event where she figures it out. Maybe post-marriage? I've always thought the marrying in Stardew felt a bit underwhelming, the characters seem to devolve when you marry them.
@@ShennaTheShinyEevee Adding on to this, Abigail mentions that her hair is naturally purple. And who's the only other townie with purple hair?
@@DNGNDriverCaroline says Abigail dyes her hair and wonders why she isn't wearing her natural colour.
Been really enjoying these "I played a bunch of games from x genre" videos. Your analyses are consistent and fairly thorough, with common themes and comparisons across games making it a cohesive video despite the linear format to it. Your consistent voice makes these long form videos less intensive and hence easier to digest, with the occasional straining of your voice keeping it engaging. You're a wonderful creator Dosh, and frankly the best kind of schizoid I can think of. Keep up the great work!
One thing you briefly touched on about the tavernkeeper game that could be a really interesting part of a game is being an information-broker. Tavernkeepers, in fantasy settings or otherwise, wind up being linchpins of their community due to just how many people come and go from their tavern, and NPC tavernkeepers are constantly used as quest-givers or info-brokers in tabletop roleplaying games or actual videogame RPGs.
Giving some actual meaning to the rumors you overhear could be amazing. Maybe the farmers start complaining about poor harvests, and after a couple weeks a wandering druid asks you if you've heard any information, and if you've been paying attention, you can tell him what you know about the troubles the farmers have been having. It doesn't have to have any major consequences, but even just little things that add up over time like that would really help you feel like you're someone important to the community, even if you're not the one at the center of the action, since without you, that adventurer would've just passed the town over and never learned about the wolf problem you've been having or whatever.
Or, alternatively, you could court a different sort of crowd and have your bar become the place where all the thieves and crooks hang out...
A game like that wouldn't really need crafting elements beyond brewing to be interesting, I think.
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if that already existed somewhere. But it's also possible that it doesn't. I'm not quite sure of the idea of the player not quite being the main character in a sense, but more being the side character that tells the main character the problem. I'm not very good at this stuff, though, so take my thoughts with a bucket of salt.
It's just a demo at this point, but Tavern Talk is focused on that.
@@kevinmagee8185I think their Kickstarter campaign went alright, didn't it? I wanted to contribute but I remembered too late
And building rooms to rent, along with other amenities, atteact adventures, who have much bigger demands (like ordering large rounds of beer, food, and possibly multiples of each), but they also pay a lot more than the locals and occasionally pay with treasure (aka decorative items and special items / ingredients)
Imagine your furniture has different attractions to different factions, different points split between criminal, townsfolk or magical factions that control how many come to your tavern. That could influence the types of rumours you get, which you can use to discover new furniture and drinks. It could end up cluttering your bar, and that cycle of upgrading sounds a little mobile gamey but it could be fun.
Sun Haven isn't a perfect game but does things that just seem so obvious that I'm surprised I haven't seen it done before. Like the food increasing your stats permanently. Good idea on it's own but each food slowly decreases in value for stats, which encourages you to eat a wide variety of foods to maximize your stat gains. Awesome, and fitting for that 'Live a fulfilling life' vibe these games often have.
Bloodstained also gave permanent stats for food eaten, although only for the first of each kind.
@@gigaslave Fair enough, though I was meaning more specifically in the 'cozy game' genre. These games tend to have dozens of food recipes but there's rarely an incentive to actually make any of the fancier recipes rather than just eat 40 apples or w/e to get stamina back.
Sun Haven is such an "almost" game. It seems like every feature is almost there. Food being used to increase stats to incentivize crops with diminishing returns? Awesome! Every major townsfolk just being a cookie-cutter boilerplate archetype, ech. Using and upgrading magic instead of tools in order to mange your farm more efficiently? Awesome! Then you unlock the 3 big spells, and that's it. It's basically just a gold tool now. Give me some endgame spells. Let me water my whole farm in one expensive cast, or build rituals in order to water my farm daily. Let me harvest all of my crops in one sweep of my powerful hand. SOMETHING.
It's just so "almost".
Time to load up RF4 again.
I got 20 hours in before realising there was gift giving - the game is/was bugged so that if you had a controller plugged in, but were using mouse and keyboard, you couldn't give gifts. :(
i love kynseed more i bought both games at the same time and kynseed hooked me because for me the game with it's celtic fairy lore and beauty just couldn't be beat and you grow old marry have kids they grow up and once you die you continue on as them. You start off with a cow a pig bees and grow veggies you can sell and learn to cook all that but you can also learn trades own shops etc. Sun haven was cool but the story didn't hook me i'll try again after kynseed though, kynseed is huge the map and the story.
I haven't seen anyone mention it but I always laugh at that one clip of Palpatine absolutely throwing that shit down that you use every time. Please never stop
I mean, even an evil space emperor gotta get his cardio.
You laugh but i only hear that han solo song 😢
Reminds me of the superbunnyhop udon clip
@@Muertoloco13 It's. So. Good!
Mate, the moment a story is done in a farming game, I get bored of it. I always feel like I have nothing to work towards once the main thing is done. Do I enjoy the gameplay and just farming? Yes. Do I want some kind of goal the game sets for me? Yes.
"I can access *my* imagination any time I want, and I usually play games because I want to experience someone else's for a change."
Man, I feel like that succinctly describes a feeling that I've had a lot.
NOBLEMAN SWERVE. PEASANT COMING THROUGH. GOOD SEASON FOR CROPS
Old but gold meme.
I KNOW HOW SENSITIVE YOUR NOBLEMAN HANDS ARE LMAO
@@ew275x WHEN IM DON IM GONNA GROOM TH FUK OUT OF THOS CROPS
cant even eat w/o crops
It's almost harvestin' season!
Travellers rest is just like real life. It doesn't matter what you put in an IPA, the public at large will gladly drink your orange mint abomination
Yeah. As a brewer i gotta say thats absolutely not a wild thing to put in an IPA.
The worst thing put into IPAs, and beer in general, is hops. Unhopped beer tastes wildly better and not like soap.
@@mattymerr701 unhopped beer is extremely uncommon. Beer not hopped for taste/aroma sure but it also brings utility to beer as hops are antimicrobial and stabilizing as an ingredient. Mass produced lagers are hopped (or at least treated with hop extract), sweet pastry beers are hopped, fruity sours are largely hopped too.
Hey hey hey, I unironically love my pine cone beers, aka IPA lol
@@mattymerr701 there's a beverage here in sweden called "must" which was specifically invented as a non-alcoholic alternative to beer, and it's pretty hilarious to compare it to actual alcohol
one tastes like cleaning chemical, the other is the nectar of the gods to the point that it significantly steals sales from coca cola every season it's available in stores.
In the same vein as VA-11 Hall-A and Traveller's Rest, I'd highly recommend Mystia's Izakaya.
Although it is /highly/ weeb (being based off the Touhou franchise), it's a game based around cooking and serving dishes to various patrons with solid progression mechanics, a decent story, and light foraging elements.
When everything comes to together it gets surprisingly deep, especially during the boss battles.
Plus it's like $5 and looks gorgeous.
No, you aren't managing the pH of your soil, but it's definitely worth a flutter.
yeah this game is peak
Agreed, I had too think about it too during this video.
I was going to post this but you beat me to it. It’s a much better take on the tavern game than the tavern game in this video ended up being.
I was looking to see if someone mentioned it already, glad it was. But since it offers no farming per-se, I can see why it wouldn't show up in a video like this. But I at least want to point to a few things Dosh mentions in the video:
The scavenging mechanics suffer from a similar sort of flaw as Traveller's Rest or Roots of Pacha do (same locations, just different times of day) and the artificial time limit of debt collection which is a non-issue since you can collect four times what is ordered for the first debt collection - which is how far I currently am, and I'm still very much enjoying it.
Of course, there's elements that are just there for the sake of being a fangame of the Touhou series; like the proprietress / player character being a songbird/sparrow, and the game thus having a rhythm element that at a chance gives beneficial buffs. The dialogue suffers a similar fate, playing into the lore of the series instead of offering any meaningful story choices that'd set the game apart (forget the romance or children mechanic, is what I'm saying. Bonding is the best you get).
What sets it apart though is that outside of the usual "customer demands one exact food and drink", the main cast comes around and orders based on a single-line puzzle. "How does anything taste good without (item)?!" So you look at the notes you recorded from prior orders, as well as what they dislike; and then serve them the food that fits their demands best, with extra ingredients that appeal to them to increase their happiness. The more recipes you have, the more diverse your choices. If you give them food they end up loving, you get a flashy effect and a potential boon like attracting even more customers, or more resources (there's the randomness mechanic!) Obviously this does get repetitive as well, at least in the early stages, but it's miles ahead in engagement than the patrons in Traveller's Rest.
To me, the current star of Diner Dash and tavernkeep type cozy games.
Hey uhhh the higher complexity you wish for is in Sakuna of Rice and Ruin, more limited crop choice but... From what I've seen it involves a lot of real rice farming complexities.
That game is WILDLY amazing and criminally underrated
I remember someone said the best source of info for Sakuna's rice farming was to go to The Ministry of Agriculture of Japan's website to find the wiki on how to make actual rice.
And this is EXACTLY WHY I wish there was a save function in comments XD
@@Tiragron99 I just need to tell you that in Sakuna you can pick up a cat and puppy at the same time and carry them around. It is such a good game, please check it out.
@@Tiragron99you can just watch the trailer or whatever and check your watch history tomorrow
communing with ancient heroes' spirits to discover the recipe for tomato bread is hilarious, you gotta give that to them, it'd be cool if Traveler's Rest had this kind of humour throughout
49:54 That game would appeal to at least two people, you and me. Have an apple 🍎
make that three
make that four
That idea does appeal to me as well. It is a clear goal to work towards and you could have some endgame farm once you escape for the factorio tyoes who want to expand.
I think there are stuff like what Dosh describes. Escaping prison games, or stuff like Rimworld, or possibly Kenshi or some colony sim like that. Probably missing a mark, but it's a suggestion
@@SirusDiarotahaving to defend my rice and weed farm in Kenshi from 4 different groups of bandits, and grazing migratory dinosaurs, and red murder spiders is definitely the most invested I have been in my group of no story characters and plants.
20:00 They already did innovate on these ideas, years ago.
Rune Factory 4 has soil condition, various types of growth potions, quests and daily chores involving farming, etc...
Otoh, Story of Seasons Trio of Towns has a town link system, where in order to get better reputation for the town you need to do services for them, one of these is growing and selling town specific crops. There are also award shows to show off your crops and an entire questline (Like the community center from SDV) that gives you tons of good rewards to help with the town rep quest.
Also, both these games came out before all others on this list.
Rune Factory 4 is peak farming/crafting RPG.
APICO also does this with bees!
@@hookairs And it came out 4 years before SDV, and no one talks about it because it was a 3DS game.
Feels bad man.
@@crb8124 to be fair, it might be because RF4 appeals to a slightly different audience. It's got far more involved combat for one, where SDV is way more chill on that front. For second, RF4 is also really obtuse with some of its mechanics (esp in the 3DS version). The entire final act has to be triggered randomly FFS. for third (and probably least important) RF4 doesn't allow you (easily) to be queer, which is something that's pretty important to a lot of fans of this genre. lastly, the game is also long. sure, SDV can also be long, but you're able to complete the main "quest" in a single year. I haven't had a farm go for more than maybe 2-3 years without deciding to start a new one, while RF4 just *feels* longer. I dont actually know if it is, but I know i've only "finished" the game once or twice, whereas I've "finished" SDV maybe a dozen or so times
Don't get me wrong, I love both of these games (and I generally prefer RF over SDV. RF3 is probably one of my favourite farming games of all time), but i think that RF just feels like its less of a casual farming game. too many interlocking mechanics and overlapping systems which are (sometimes) poorly explained due to there being more of them than SDV.
I dont know why I wrote all this, I think i lost the thread a little there
Also, it's not just RF4 that had things like soil condition and field rotation. I know at least RF2 has those mechanics, but I can't remember if 1 does. RF3 has it too. All of which are even older than RF4, so its not like these are all recent
Basically, moral of the story... play Rune Factory? (except 5. i wasnt a fan of 5)
@@lixyororkeRF5 is janky as hell for sure (on top of the usual obtuseness,) but I somehow managed to put 130+ hours into it anyway.
"Wouldn't let me marry the single mother" so real, that's literally my only gripe with stardew. I'm so glad mods exist🙏
how dare they seperate me from that robinussy
Robin is not a single mother tho 😂
So uhh, which single mother in Stardew are you talking about?
@Rikomag From what I know, there is only one single mother... Pam
@@hotpocketsat2am I mean I also want to murder Demetrius but chill, she's not single yet
"Dosh sweeps through and critiques an entire genre" might be my new favorite format.
If you want all those soil conditions and other very specific farming things, there is this on game Sakuna: of rice and ruin you can try out. You can only grow rice, but they really go into how much water you use, they type of stuff you use to fertilize, and even the spacing of the crops themselves
Okay to be totally honest a dystopian stardew planning an uprising in secret while also growing cabbage sounds weirdly fun to me as well. Hiding improvised explosives in the tool shed while clearing land for more beans apeals to me. Mark that down as 2 people who would play that
re: mechanical complexity in farming games
my favorite part of modded minecraft (forestry, extrabees, magicbees, especially careerbees) is how fun and intuitive the mechanical complexity for a good breeding simulator, but when i describe the relaxing process of watching my liquid bacteria dissolving bees to make liquid dna and i sound like a supervillain
at least careerbees adds a supervillain outfit and bee gun
i have a pack for it if you want it.
Dam I never thought about modded Minecraft in such way , but it make sense
Having liquid bacteria making liquid DNA sounds like something straight out of a complex biology focused Factorio mod
don’t talk to me or my infinity catalyst bee from GTNH ever again
jokes aside, i find the implementation of genetics, and through addon mods, machines to modify genes, quite fitting (but grindy at times, since waiting 15min for one single hive to die for a 5% mutation chance is simply a no go)
@@creeptv7514the gregfication of the normal folk has begunn
I’ve been playing BeeHappy without claiming bees as quest rewards, and the resulting grind has been surprisingly rewarding
20:20 Interestingly enough, Harvest Moon: Animal Parade on the Wii actually did incorporate deeper mechanics like this. Soil depreciates from being used and harvest quality is averaged around the soil quality you have in terms of what you'll get. Fertilizing gets the quality back up and is required routinely to maintain it. It's also got simultaneously the most repetitive yet accessible Infinite Mines and ultimately you're only doing it for fancy cosmetic jewelry in the end. The plot's pretty decent, it's actually somewhat cutely done in how returning various animals gets you shortcuts and so on. I never hear many people talk about the game, and even with some of the odd Wii mechanics (like using the second controller to "pet" villagers) I always feel like it's an overlooked attempt at actual deepening of the series.
Glad to hear you also liked Sun Haven!
To address a few of the minor complaints: your spouse will eventually move in with you once you’ve upgraded your house to the max level, though there’s no real benefit to upgrading your house other than having more space to decorate, so i can see why you didn’t bother.
They’re also working on adding children in the next patch, which is something you mentioned.
Only annoying thing for me is the snacoons blocking my farm, and how you can’t skip days like stardew, you have to sit for 10 minutes minimum then sleep at 6pm.
over/under watering and sunlight were in an older harvest moon/story of seasons games. i remember for a handheld one i needed to carry around a printed out spreadsheet of all the crop requirements to play it while on the go. i think it was island of happiness? if they got too much sun or water, they'd die, and made the greenhouse really desirable.
sunhaven felt like most or all of the team were first time game developers, fresh out of school. i felt like if i didn't play it incredibly carefully, i would accidentally break it into tiny pieces and corrupt my save file.
Now i want a Blame! inspired farming/survival game with exploration focusing on finding random useful and terribly traumatized NPCs, acquiring "biomass" for the farmlands through questionable means, and regular silicon creature invasions. Thanks.
another one for the “game concepts from youtube comment section”
yoink
Y'know, something I noticed in a lot of these games is that the main way you upgrade your farm is by increasing the space you have too plant things. Stardew you unlock the the greenhouse and the Ginger Island farm, Story of Seasons you unlock the seasonal shrines, Sun Haven you unlock the Elven and Monster farms. ect.
Saying that, I think a good avenue for the more in-depth growing mechanics you mentioned could be via a farming game that explicitly limits the amount of room you have inorder to farm things. So instead of growing 3x the crops, you optimize your plants to give 3x the yield.
"I can use my imagination any time I want, and I usually play games because I want to experience someone else's for a change."
What a way to put it.
I love your other videos but this really sold me on how great your taste and analysis are. There's really no such thing as an objective criticism or perspective, but the biases you bring I think do a good job highlighting trends and cracks in the genre that are worth deeper inspection from people who like these games.
20:28 This bit reminded me of Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. It wasn't quite as complicated as what you wanted but it was sufficiently realistic enough that on release the best walkthrough was The Ministry of Agriculture of Japan's site for how to grow rice.
It's a good game, by the way, I highly recommend it for Farm Game Video 2
20:19 YES. LITERALLY ME. I'm a huge botany/gardening nerd, so hearing someone else talk about this makes me feel really good about it! I've toyed with the idea of making a game like that. If I do end up planning on releasing it, you'll be among the first to know!
Please do!
the terrafirmacraft mod to minecraft has some stuff like this - soil nutrients NPK to make crops grow faster, seasons to kill off your stuff in the fall, latitudes to make seasonal conditions different throughout the world, seeds discoverable by exploring the world. however, it also has this extremely complex and, imo, tedious metal working mechanic to upgrade tools. ilmango and etho have playlists for it
also, no npcs to deal with and the storyline is only in your own imagination
You might be interested in checking out Sakuna of rice and ruin then
20:22 okay, this little rant here instantly brought to my mind one of my favorite comfy farming games, Rune Factory 3. A fantasy rpg spin off of harvest moon. And one of the major mechanics of that game, was crop levels and the quality of your land. To efficiently farm and not waste time I would rotate plots of land to not over use and reduce the quality of my soil while also selecting the highest level plants to make into the next batch of seeds for the next plot. And its kinda exactly what you described. If you have the spare time they re released it on consoles recently and its got some decent RPG mechanics to boot as well.
man, 3 and 4 are both my faves in that series, such good games.
Your BLAME! farming game sounds fantastic. I love blame and its setting hasn't been used nearly enough
Absolutely. It was a fun surprise to see it brought up here. It's rare to run into anything referencing it.
I felt called out. There's not enough Nihei inspired games out there.
You might enjoy "One Hundred Days." It's a vineyard game, but it's a mix of farming and puzzle mechanics based on discovering and managing the details of producing desirable qualities like sweetness, tannins, flavor notes, etc. There's some equipment upgrades, and the only crafting involves creating new strains of grape.
Graveyard Keeper is a decent cozy farming title as well... oddly enough.
Criminally underrated. I spent almost 200hrs in it, and it was worth it every spent minute. There's just so much stuff to do there.
so far the only cozy game ive played that rivals stardew valley
My only complaint was that there wasn't *more* automation. Good game
Voting for Dosh to also review this!
Yeah I was honestly expecting that game to make the video. It’s one of the more interesting takes on the genre out there.
Two things about RoP you either missed or didn't mention:
a) later in the game you discover an irrigation system. Putting it together was cool!
b) there are multiple entrances to the cave system- you just need to unlock them from inside of the cave system 😃
I just want to say that I love these types of video game analysis/review-style videos that you do. You have such an interesting and unique perspective on games that I don't see in many other "video game reviews". Your ideas and pitches for games and mechanics have been genuinely inspirational and make me want to go out and make a game, to try something new in the space.
The part where you mention the lack of mechanical depth in the farming itself - lack of soil type, quality, different methods, selective breeding and variation between the same plants/animals- resonated with me a lot. I feel like a lot of these games the decision making is focused on what you do with your time rather than how you do a certain activity. For me it means once you've made a decision for what activity to do, you just end up doing some rote task without having to make trade-offs or deal with challenges.
Dude your scriptwork is LEVELING UP man, keep at it. Love the writing voice you've found.
I want farming games similar to the old Harvest Moon/Story of Season games. The "farming" games nowadays have you do literally everything from farming to crafting tools, equipment, buildings, etc. Making the other villages kinda useless. In the older Harvest Moon games, the villagers built the stuff for you.
As much as I love your factorio content I enjoy all your non-factorio content even more! Especially when you play some niche, weird game no-one except maybe three people on an ancient internet forum from the early 2000s have heard of. Keep it up Dosh!
You should've tried graveyard keeper, you dig holes and plant bodies, you can also harvest organs from corpses, very good game.
Rune Factory is a really good farming series to. Honestly really well polished and if you liked these games a lil bit you will love rune factory.
Its such a bummer that Frontiers exists tho
@@KOTEBANAROT wait what, are you talking about RF: Frontier?? that game was peak man
32:42 Va-11 Hall-A is an amazing game indeed. Starting NG+ right now, and hearing those stories with knowledge opens a lot more of the story and characters.
In my opinion, to this day the definitive "Farming Game" is Rune Factory 4 Special. It has by far the most things to do, the most interesting things to do, and all the systems have the necessary depth for you to immerse in them, as well as tie to other systems which makes nothing you do ever feel meaningless.
Did Special fix the issue base RF4 had, where getting the...I think it was third arc to start was pure RNG? I loved the game, but kinda dropped it after a few in-game years without that arc starting.
Also, was kind of surprised that none of the Rune Factory games were brought up in this video.
@@Rel_Ortal yes, it’s fixed! after you beat act 2, the next town event will be the one that starts act 3.
@@Rel_Ortal The issue has been fixed as commented above. The PC port is kinda sketchy though. Definitely playable, but it is plagued by a few weird bugs and issues that while not gamebreaking, will definitely get on your nerves.
The reason RF games were not mentioned is probably because as Dosh himself has said he's not all that much into these games. And despite how good Rune Factory games are, they are definitely still kind of niche and overshadowed by Harvest Moon and Story of Season series.
Which is a shame, because RF4 Special literally has everything Dosh seems to want from those games: An actual story, well written characters, a lot of dialogue and reasons to care for the characters, good farming mechanics, a lot of things to do, good combat, gameplay variety, lots of minigames and town events, and pretty clear objectives for you to focus on if you need any direction.
@@Rel_Ortal special is "kinda" scuffed in the PC and PS ports namely Sharance Maze has no map so.... yeah but it is still base RF4 so the confession is still rolled by RNG, RF5 is kinda better on that regard
People probably aren't reading this comment anymore, but on an off chance somebody finds it and wants to play RF 4 Special on PC, my personal recommendation on the definitive way to do it is to actually emulate the Switch version. Funnily enough, that will give you the most stable and best running version of the game possible. Switch emulation is very easy, efficient and extremely good, and since the Switch version of the game is free of the issues and bugs the PC version has, it ends up being the best way to enjoy the game. It will look and sound just about the same as well. Just don't forget to obtain the game legally first, of course :)
You should definitely give My Time At Sandrock a try.
Good story, good farming, good crafting which can eventually be semi automatic, can hire a to do all the harvesting, planting, watering, pet patting, stable cleaning, machine dusting and energy refilling for you, Your Spouse can also do that.
If there is a conversation in a Story, 7/10 it'll be voice acted, and it's pretty good, honestly, all around it's a great game, took me around 270 hours to finish the game.
Also, unlike 99% of every farming game out there, you essentially get Complete artistic freedom to not only Decorate your house inside and out, you also get to decide where Doors and such are, because you get to build your home yourself! If you wanted, you could fill the entire maxed out lot with Just your home, and you can also build up, seen some pictures of people having like 9 flights on their home, turning it into a bloody Hotel.
And forgot to mention, the Combat...It's NOT sh*t, and you get Dungeons with Bosses to obtain certain materials.
Although, it's actually Not a "Farming Sim" per say, it's more of a Construction Sim, since you're a Builder, not a Farmer, and you earn your money mainly from Building things for the people of Sandrock instead of selling 8,000 potatoes.
All in all, MTAS is a solid 8/10
And they're already working on a sequel, placeholder name of Project ME.
There's also the fact that if you don't do a quest, the NPCs will find someone else to solve their problem (or you flat out fail that questline), which is very different from other similar games.
@@Serzha True!
And kinda sad they removed the Rivalry from Portia.
cause in My Time At Portia, you had a Rival, and during main quests, there was no "alright, you do that, and you do this" it's "first come first serve b*tches, NOW GET TO WORK!" so if you were too slow, you lost out on the bigger, or the reward entirely, and that put my urgency to you planning out your task and day more.
I played my time at Portia and it was hilariously bad.
@@franslair2199 It definitely had it's flaws, but i wouldn't say it was Bad.
And majority of Portia's issues were fixed in Sandrock, and many more will most likely be fixed in the next one.
@@ForemostCrab7 the artstyle is soulless, the characters are cardboard cutouts, mining is the worst I've seen in any game, and you can tell it's a Chinese game because for quests you're forced to show up at a guild first thing in the morning, and if you are late even a little bit, someone else will take the quests.
I love these variety videos! The Factorio runs are all big and impressive, but there's just something comfortable and relaxed about these types of videos.
The extra farming conditions you speak of are (mostly) present in Don't Starve Together. You need bare bones knowledge of farming to just break even with crops and seeds but if you want giant crops you gotta have some in-depth knowledge of the system to pull it off.
I loved it so much that I've spent an in-game year (maybe more) doing nothing but farming. We had no way of starving with the sheer avalanche of durians I was producing.
“Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by Factorio,” Yes. Yes you have. We all have.
In Travellers Rest, being able to collect bits of trivia, rumours, and offer them up to the right visitors could actually be a fun sub-system.
just wait until he discovers all the "minigames" in GT:NH like IC2 crops and bee breeding
watering can my beloved.
I feel like graveyard keeper would add an interesting perspective to this. While I don't remember there being farming, it is definitely the same genre.
47:02
Yeah that's Meridia's Temple from Skyrim.
"A new hand touches the beacon"
So much for the constancy of mortals.
The Tavern keeper game reminds me of Mystia's Izakaya. It doesn't have farming but it does have customers that want specific food or drinks and will get mad if they aren't on the menu which means you have to learn and remember what kinds of things people in the area like. The game has good music and story as well, would recommend.
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is the best farming game
i feel called out for putting this on in the background while i work around my base in cdda
@@heronfountain6215 Dying to a portal storm whilst stranded on an island is hard, I know.
Please, *please* make more of these 'I played these X games in my quest for the ultimate X'! This and the potion one are so good and I've rewatched them so many times. The format is great, your commentary and critique is excellent, and as an aspiring game dev, your comments (as well as the comment section!) are full of fun things to analyze. But since the contents are so high quality, they do also seem like they take a heck of a lot of work to make, so it's very understandable if not :>
It's not that much more work than my Factorio videos, but yea it's something I want to do more of. The main difference is how much effort needs to go into writing a script, and playing four or five games mostly to completion requires a fair bit of time.
"Played several games of Factorio that lasted 300 hours each without running out of steam..."
Ok, time to go rewatch every video to find every instance where his boilers can't keep up with power demand!
He missed the entire employee mechanic of Travellers Rest, which enables you to make progress while making money continuously.
The grimdarkk sci-fi concept of being a cog in the machine to powers above you only to have to gradually build a triumphant revolution against your overlords would also have the benefit of some "post game content" where your crops are now the sole means of keeping your community alive and now you have to spread the knowledge so that in time you can leave the game in good conscience, aka your character is now peacefully dead in their sleep.
Frostpunk Real Politick but farming
When you talked about wanting a farming sim that explored the realm of overwatering, soil quality, etc. I was instantly reminded of a hybrid farming sim/sidescrolling action game called Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. Essentially a rice farming sim coupled with a story-centric sidescrolling action game, it was pretty good too on both aspects. Growing rice is your main way of getting stronger so it's very relevant to play, and I can recommend testing it out to see how it does the farming
I was a big fan of early Harvest Moon games, starting from SNES one all the way to Gamecube era, so... Seeing what the series is like these days, I can't help but feel bit sad. I dunno if there is a good way to describe it, but Pioneers of the Olive Town simply looks cheap and clunky.
But yeah, I'll also second the suggestion for Sakuna. It really didn't scratch the similar itch as Harvest Moon games did, but I really enjoyed it. And it is a farming game.
I'm surprised Graveyard Keeper didn't come up. I don't know why, but it feels like it'd be up your alley. It has a lot of the pitfalls you brought up; stamina bars, unclear goals, occasional bouts of unfulfilling grinding waiting for a bar to go up and allow you to do the thing. I just like the vibes I guess.
Always brightens my day to see you've posted something new, tysm for sharing :)
The same reason he didn't review Stardew Valley, I assume it is because Graveyard Keeper actually captured a lot of market share when it released. It was quite popular and its not really worth reviewing. (the free zombie update made the game amazing, all the DLC is mid)
Touhou Mystia's Izakaya is very much like something you'd like and is much the same as Traveller's Rest
Fun Fact about Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town. There was supposed to be an update where they would have animated portraits for villagers. Much like boosting the FPS performance for the game on the Switch, I guess that both got the axe.
the dancing emperor is a KEY part of these off topic vids
Imagine a story focused farming sim game where you start with the fact you actually bought your farm and weren’t just given it.
The land is pretty much a blank slate not only for what industry you want to get into but also what your house is gonna be/look like.
And you can select a background for what you did before and that can affect some starting skills and affinities.
And it may somewhat dictate what you may get into to begin with; someone who used to make clothes may start growing material crops like flax or farm silk worms or sheep
Someone who worked in a restaurant may open their own and grow namely crops and raise livestock for a farm to fork place.
well it's a story focused farming sim check out kynseed
I played a pretty chill "farming" game for a while, I say farming in quotations because it doesn't actually have any crops. Instead, it revolves around your bees
Apico had this bee breeding and selection system that I adored. You could cross-breed different bees to try and make a super-bee, one that worked 24/7 instead of just at night, or make them completely docile by removing agressive traits. Make them be able to work in the rain, or in the snow. Or make bees that *only* worked in those conditions work when it's clear outside
I spent so many hours breeding and optimizing my bees, getting the highest stats possible with a group, then trying to pass on their stats to every species. Which was kind of frustrating when some of their genes ended up as recessive instead of dominant.
The game is incredibly simple, and doesn't truly have a ton of content, but if you enjoy the genetics aspect of maximizing your farm's output I'd really recommend it.
Apico is lovely! It's so rewarding to realize that if some bees are good at one thing and these other bees are good at another thing, then you can mash them together to make super bees. :)
this series is the best series ever - you actually come with some meaningful knowledge / reflections, really appreciate the actual reviews. would love to see more of "i played these"!
Graveyard Keeper came to my mind a lot during tavern game section. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
oooooh first Alkahistorian pfp! I really have to replay that game
To be honest, for me best farming is in Vintage Story. You need to find good soil, properly fertilize it, rotate your crops, preserve them and so on.
It really doesn’t matter what the content is, but your well thought-out opinions and audiobook-worthy voice mean you could be talking about anything and it would be a worthy watch, regardless of my personal interest in the subject.
Love an hour of dosh! The dulcet tones keep putting me to sleep, so I end up having to watch it many times to get it all. And then I keep watching it to help me sleep. :)
That game idea actually sounds interesting, as it also touches on the aspect of the NPC ppl in these games having no meaning.
Personally if all the NPCs had a meaningful reason behind building up your relationship with them outside of dating, lore & random dialogue, I'd probably actually engage with them, which would help the game overall as i find after the first couple of these games especially if star dew was one of them, they don't feel meaningful enough to play just for farming, mining & upgrading. So if you needed to build relationships with all NPC just to escape the evil overlord aliens, sounds meaningful & fun especially if upgrades, tools & mechanics are behind it.
I get where you're coming from w the sun Haven art style thing but I still think that it has quite alot of charm in its background art i have not played it myself tho so my oppinion is as a valid as a man screaming in the middle of a city street
Nvm. I just saw the werewolves I take it all back
I now want an alien slave farming simulator. Nay, I *NEED* it in my life.
If I managed to suffer through over 100 hours of Graveyard Keeper - which is exactly what you want: a bizarre themed "comfy-game" - then I would gladly put in 200 hours to appease my alien overlords by farming Glorbs and Zhraks in the colony on planet Mhghn
Just wanted to say that I think you should keep doing videos like these. I love listening to/watching people talk about things they’re passionate about.
The fact your kids get sent to the nether dimension genuinely had me take a lap lmaoooo
I am reallly surprised Graveyard Keeper did not appear on this one! The automation in that game was a highlight
>tavern keeper
>cant marry
okay, next game
great video! random thought, Graveyard Keeper, it's an interesting spin, has some automation, but overall you'd probably not like it that much
23:33
Thanks for putting into words what I've been feeling about games that do this sort of thing. Its like, I know inconveniences are important for a game to feel fun, but knowing I could just turn that off causes a lot of cognitive dissonance. Of course this isnt a problem for me until I do start fiddling with those options.
I was very surprised that Dosh liked Sun Haven so much. I tried it out a while ago and, like Dosh, all the little weird things annoyed me too. But unlike Dosh, I found the characters very uninteresting.
If you ever do a follow-up to this, I would highly recommend the Rune Factory series, as I find them to be the perfect balance of farming and RPG mechanics. I would recommend 4 over 5, as the switch to 3D meant that 5 wasn’t as detailed as 4, but it’s still pretty good.
Also, Moonlighter, while not being explicitly a potion game or a farming game, has a similar vibe; I’d be interested in seeing Dosh’s take on that, as well as other “shop-sims”.
I miss rune factory 4... I was looking forward to 5 conceptually but then I Saw It. The pixel art in 4 was SO nice! it was one of their biggest advantages over hm/sos and they SQUANDERED it. u_u
@@dovedozen It’s honestly a pretty good transfer into 3D. I was similarly cautious when they showed off the gameplay trailer and it was 3D, but I ended up playing it and liking it; they made sure it still *felt* like a RF game. Plus, they made dungeon progression actually last for more than a month! If you haven’t, I’d recommend playing it on PC though; there were a few performance issues that hindered it on the Switch. Nothing major, just longer load times, lower frame rates, etc. I finished the game on the switch then ended up buying it for the PC as well.
@@cadensherman1983 you know, I'm pretty heavily biased towards 2D, but it is nice to hear that they were at least thoughtful with the shift to 3D! Good to know that the PC version is good, too; if I ever play it, it'll probably be on steam deck or somethin, if it runs well enough. Never did get a switch.
Sad that Reap & Sow never finished development. You play as a cursed member of a village turned into undead ragdolls trying to eke out a living farming, but at night you enter freakish dreams and try to bring back seeds or other vital items.
You might like the My Time At series. It's more building than farming, though there is also farming, but mainly there are bigger goals you can work towards that contribute to the story.
For some reason I actually expected Graveyard Keeper in this video. I mean, besides from butchering corpses and all that unholy stuff you do have some nice moments in your garden cultivating carrots.
This made me think of three games: Graveyard Keeper, Don't Starve Together and My Time at Portia.
First, Graveyard Keeper, which I really enjoyed. There's one good DLC that adds a tavern you run, and a whole lot of lore. It should've been part of the base game... But anyway, it's a shame you didn't include it in this video! It's obviously not strictly a farming game, though there is a farming element to it. I wonder if you would've liked it!
Funnily, Don't Starve Together, while not a farming game at all (generally), actually incorporates some of those mechanics you wished for, in its farming. There are three kinds of nutrients that the crops need, and each of the crops requires one or two of the nutrient while providing the other/s - so there are beneficial combos of crops that provide for one another. Also to take into account: preferred season, family bonus (they like to be next to a few of the same crop), but be careful not to overcrowd. There's no overwatering though, you just need to provide water. Oh, and talk to the plants, or play them some music.
And that scene in Story of Seasons made me think of My Time at Portia, the one with the town meeting. Portia has a lot of those, and it looks literally the same. There really is a formula for those games, lol
Oh, and one more game, "something outpost", is it out yet? I think so. It looks like Stardew on another planet. Wonder how that one compares.
if you ever make a sequel to this video with more farming sims, two games i suggest you play are
1. Cornucopia- it has some interesting fertilizing mechanics that have quite confused me and it would be cool to see you figure them out, and it is also not so well known and i think it deserved more recognition
and
2. Dinkum- it is very much like animal crossing except you can sleep till the next day and you dont have to wait for irl time to pass and it does have quite a bit of farming mechanics ( though it is early access and still being updated, so you might want to wait on this one) but cool fact it was developed by just one person just like stardew valley! i recently got back into this game after buying it a while ago and it has really captivated my interest.
Graveyard Keeper is the GOAT for this genre.
For me, stamina was always an issue in Stardew Valley, especially when delving into the mines or dungeons.
Heck, I frequently ran out of stamina when clear cutting the forests to gather the enormous amount of lumber I always needed, or fishing all life from every body of water simply because I needed to get specific fish for quests.
Dosh isnt quite correct for stamina in stardew, its an issue until you get the first house upgrade giving you a kitchen, you can then start mass producing food for stamina instead of just eating random forage or the field snack, a personal favourite is getting sashimi recipe from linus at 3 hearts and turning all the crab pot fish into it
if you go into the game knowing what to expect, stamina is a problem for the first two weeks. Then, you get salmonberry season and use those as your infinite stamina source for a long while. Spring onions are also nice as they respawn daily
autumn has blackberries which work very similarly, and if you have high foraging level you'll ged dumb amounts of berries if you gather them every day they're available
Though, this *does* depend on you playing kind of optimally, which you probably won't do on your first playthrough
What? Its only a limiting factor for the first months or so, once you get the kitchen you can just make a lot of food with all the stuff you collected or even just buy tons of basic food from the tavern if you have a lot of gold. You don't even have to be minmaxing anything. I can only imagine it being a problem to someone who never ever bothered to upgrade the house and use the TV every day maybe?
I always just farm too much until I can waste money buying salads and coffee from the bar and live off those forever.
If you save a bunch of wild seeds up and craft survival bars they make a decent ration, as do the salmonberries and wild blackberries that grow in spring and autumn. Just devote one inventory slot for your stamina/health ration and eat as needed.
If depth in farming mechanics is fuel for interest, I would definitely recommend Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin. It cuts out variety of plants in favor of focusing on just rice. There's plenty of different factors like soil quality, water levels and planting density to consider for maximum yield. The main farming mechanic then feeds into a side-scrolling action game reminiscent of Muramasa: The Demon Blade. As far as farming sims go, this might be a bit too focused, but I personally wouldn't have it any other way.
It seems like none of these games solve the fundamental issues of 'why should i play this instead of stardew valley' i.e. they mostly have the same gather resources, farm, talk to npc's, go cave diving, that stardew has whereas they could've dropped some mechanics for more depth in one area (e.g. you could drop the cave diving in exchange for expanding farming mechanics and instead have you deal with selling the crops to different peeps, selling spuds to the local chippy, or flour to the bakery, maybe you run a farm shop, etc.) But they also aren't making a proper iteration i.e. removing gripes ppl had, expanding on the good parts and offering basically the same experience but better. They seem to rely on their unique selling points to create intrigue and then offer an overall worse experience. Here's hoping there is a game like i described but i just know about it yet.
well for me...
0. stardew stomps ass so more is always good even if the "more" isnt EXACTLY like stardew
1. their artstyles are different
2. the npcs/towns/stories are different
3. they all focus on something different than stardew's focus on farming. stardew's mining/fishing/ect. are very shallow compared to farming. every aspect of stardew feeds into farming. stardew's mining/fishing/combat cannot say the same thing
i could go on and on but im playing traveler's rest right now
That was a really insightful point about how you can choose from a range of small, achievable goals, giving frequent enough feelings of victory and achievement while also learning to enjoy the process of getting there
Honestly, dosh is the only one in my “belled” RUclips list, that makes me feel, like I got a new car, when I see that new video came out
"Honestly, dosh is the only one in my "belled" RUclips list that makes me feel like I got a new car when I see that a new video came out."
There is no need for the commas. Enjoy the next 24 hours.
Wow why did you hate Dosh that much that you view his videos as a new space-filling, oversized junk?
I love this content. I wouldn't mind a series on this or more of your ULTIMATE x. You could try ULIMATE detective game next
Last night I was handling my farm in Stardew. It took me like 2 in-game hours to do everything and I was thinking "Wish I could automate this farm like how Dosh automates stuff in Factorio." It's insane I saw this video after waking up.
automation or any sort of effort mitigation is something my factorio-ridden brain craves for in genuinely any game, at this point
I'd honestly be surprised if nobody has at least partially automated a large chunk of stardew valley with macros.
Check out a mod called "Automate" for Stardew Valley. It allows to automate a lot of production. Made the game at least 3x better personally for me.
@@asj3419 There is an automation mod for PCs. But I play on Switch lol so no automation for me.
@@gayrozayppeli8431That's the signal for you to make it happen yourself! I look forward to your 12-part multi-year project and writeup.
It would have been very interesting to see your take on Graveyard Keeper, it definitely falls into that same category but more focused on a different, and pretty unique aspect. It has been out for a few years, and it's got some issues, but I think it does something different well enough that it deserves a mention.
Well this is as good a place as any for this idea.
I'd love a game in this vein during a post-nuclear apocalypse, where the emphasis is on purifying the land to create a pocket of prosperity in a destroyed world.
It's less of a nuclear apocalypse and more of a magical one, but Wildmender is pretty close to that premise. Basically it's Breath of the Wild mixed with druid terraforming.
As a fan of farming/cozy games who's growing weary of the subpar oversaturation of the genre, I greatly appreciate your willingness to really dig into these games and point out a lot of things that tend to get glossed over in most reviews. Your criticism, to me, feels more than fair, and it's so important to point these things out because they can negatively impact the flow of gameplay, and flow is so important in games like these. I have ADHD, so a single clunky mechanic can make or break a game for me, but games like these (I'm not talking about the ones in this video specifically) get far too much forgiveness from the fanbase just because, as you said, "they can decorate their backyard." I'm sad for the life sim genre after seeing far too many games tossed out in a sad state under a coat of "cute and cozy" paint, so your critiques feel incredibly refreshing and give me hope that I may begin to see better quality games in my favorite genre soon enough.