Farming games always manage to secure fans' hearts for its agriculture experience that's quite hard to find in real life. However, the best farming games must be the ones that make you suddenly startled remember even when you're not playing them.
For example, you wonder whether you have milk your cow or not while eating breakfast, how are they doing without your morning pet, or have you forgotten to sow the field. Addictive as it may sound, but those games will give you a heap of fun experience playing abstemiously.
And as Christmas is coming very soon, today, we'll give you the list of 10 best farming games that you can spend your time on this holiday. I highly recommend filling your stomach and prepare some water before starting your work on the farm, since you won't be able to get away from your screen for several hours.
Without further ado, let's get right into the first one:
1. Stardew Valley
Release date: 2016
Supported platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android
We will start this one with a picturesque and content-rich farming simulator Stardew Valley - a game keep coming on storefront's sale list. But it's definitely not a bad one - but a masterpiece that everyone should fall in love with at the first look.
To be honest, even though it's the top 10 list, you can wrap up your journey here and get right into the beauty of this world, and enjoy your busiest days at your grandpa's farm, since you might not complete by the end of this year. See the trailer below for a brief look:
One of the most highly-acclaimed farming games in the series, Stardew Valley provides you more than just the hype of doing manual labor. To be more specific, the game starts as you arrive at your lost grandfather's farm, and continues what he has been working with. However, you will be surprised at how large his farm is, and will get overwhelmed by the number of jobs that you have to do.
They include sowing the field, taking care of your animals, and selling your products. But that's not the end, since you have to live your own life as well. You can be the most daring adventurer to explore caves while mining, the bad-boy of the town by flirting with the villagers, as well as collecting items used for certain quests that you won't be able to figure out soon.
Together with a lot of cosmetic-related content like haircuts, outfits and other items, Stardew Valley is the most realistic farming sims that you can find.
2. Farm Together
Release date: 2018
Supported platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Even though Stardew Valley does support multiplayer, it's no way close to the experience that Farm Together provides. Farm Together is a beautiful 3D game from the developer Milkstone, which puts you in a vivid world full of farms, and you'll feel like just walking over yours is going to be an hour-long journey, let alone taking care of it. Have a look at the game down here:
Stepping away from the fantasy-like pixelated graphics of Stardew Valley, you can head to the realistic and beautiful visuals of Farm Together. It focuses entirely on the daily dose of jobs on the field, including planting and watering your crops, feeding animals, harvesting the products, helping your friends on their own farm to get some rewards, and things like that.
The special thing that keeps players sticking to this game is its incredibly detailed character's animation, making the farming looks more interesting than it should in real life. Furthermore, Farm Together offers a lot of vehicles to help you build your own metropolis, and the golden atmosphere of Autumn is very relaxing.
Overall, Farming Together will eliminate you and your friends' need to eat, drink and sleep.
3. Farming Simulator 19
Release date: 2018
Supported platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android
The Farming Simulator series has always been acknowledged as the ones with extremely detailed experience, and Farming Simulator 19 is not an exception. Other games might cut down the realistic jobs that you must do with your farm, but this one will have you do almost everything by yourself, including fixing your tractors.
Farming Simulator 19 is not the newest title, but it marks a huge upgrade in the rendering engine, making the game looks incredibly real. See the trailer below for details:
Bringing you to the Western crops, Farming Simulator 19's visuals look even more beautiful than how the landscape should look in real life. There, you'll enjoy exactly what the IRL farmers experience, including sowing your fields with extensive vehicles, breaking them as you control them incorrectly, and spend nearly an hour to fix the smallest details.
Apart from that, other jobs feel quite relaxing, but still give you enough inspiration to further expand your farm. The animals are portrayed very closely to their real-life version, especially what you should feed them for the best productivity. "Red Dead Redemption who?" - that's how pride the developer Giants Software is with their best-selling franchise.
4. My Time at Portia
Release date: 2019
Supported platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
A 3D farming game with RPG dungeon crawling experiences - that must be My Time at Portia. If you feel the top-down perspective of Stardew Valley is not your personal taste, My Time At Portia is a great alternative, as it does not only features a similar concept but also portraying it in much more attractive visual. You can check the trailer below for yourself:
Still you bringing old grandpa's farm to its primmest state, My Time At Portia features almost everything you can find in Stardew Valley. They include feeding and milking your cow, doing jobs on the fields, and help villagers to get some goods for your personal house. However, all of them will happen in atmospheric 3D graphics, which might suit the taste of a wider public.
And as I've mentioned, My Time At Portia mixes a lot of RPG elements in its good. Apart from your time on your farm, you can also explore the deep dungeon to fight monsters, gaining levels and protect your village from their invasion. The combat in this game looks awesome, with giant bosses, a wide range of weapons including swords and guns, and beautiful animations.
5. Farmville 2: Country Escape
Release date: 2014
Supported platforms: iOS, Android
We didn't forget you yet, mobile gamers! Farmville 2: Country Escape was a phenomenon at its launch with over 5 Crores downloaders on Google Play Store alone, it has ruined the college studying time of many students, but it's totally worth it. The trailer below will give you a hint on why the game was that successful:
It's a product from the creator of the original Farmville, so this one keeps almost every titular feature of the previous games. The agricultural tasks are still there: farming, feeding your cattle, visiting other's farm to steal some money, but all of them are now available on your mobile screen with phenomenal graphics quality in 2014.
And of course, there are still a lot of microtransactions that used to make your pocket evaporate to purchase bonus keys and golds. Now that you're older and much smarter, you won't fall in the same mistakes, right?
6. Slime Rancher
Release date: 2016
Supported platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
If raising normal crops, feeding normal cattle in normal means is not the thing you're finding, then Slime Rancher will be perfect for you. Using advanced technology that can suck up all of the small colorful blobs that you've raised in glass cages, you'll have a small look on how people do agriculture in the future. Feel free to enjoy it through this trailer:
Taking place in a futuristic world of a mysterious planet, the game puts you into the role of Hobson Twillgers - a rancher who has just received this slime-field from the previous owner. Your task is to take over the Plort Market with your high-quality slime - the favorite food of the inhabitants here, and you'll have to upgrade your ranch to make your dream come true.
Even though this concept is a bit out of expectations, the things you can do in this game is not too unfamiliar. You will raise your food to feed your slimes, and remember that they will change their colors based on what you make them eat (eating poos is also an option). Overall, Slime Rancher brings a happy vibe that can consume several hours of exploring and farming very easily.
7. Graveyard Keeper
Release date: 2018
Supported platforms: PC, PS4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, iOS, Android
We've been following this game from its early stage for PC to its full launch for mobile devices, and I can guarantee that Graveyard Keeper is going to be the quirkiest 'farming' game you've seen. See its trailer below to see what you can farm in the graveyard:
Details on this game can be found at Gurugamer's review here, but basically, it's a Stardew Valley-like management game that takes the eerie settings of a graveyard. Here, you can make friends with bouncing skulls, collecting materials to fix their resting place, and craft items to make this progress easily.
Apart from that, there are still some farming jobs that you must do to keep you from starving, and you can extract meat from 'mysterious sources' to sell to the villagers. Grose, but intriguing!
8. Staxel
Release date: 2018
Supported platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Don't judge this game due to its similar blocky visuals that Mojang's notorious title Minecraft has done the best, since Staxel has a lot of different goods to offer. First, see this trailer to check for yourself:
Staxel focuses less on the extensive building experiences, and more on the farming and adventuring aspects. Like many other farming games, you'll start with a small farm, and will gradually expand it by continuously getting resources and growing business. That also requires learning about villagers' story, and take part in quests to catch bugs in the dungeon.
Staxel stays away from combat to give you the most relaxing experience in a farm-filled blocky world - a nice place to live. If only the real-life is this peaceful!
9. Autonauts
Release date: 2019
Supported platforms: PC
Somebody might have been sick of getting their hands dirty with a daily dose of farming, so they've made Autonauts. It's a game that allows you to program machines to do those jobs automatically, enhancing the overall productivity. You can see the trailer below for details:
Autonauts takes the settings of a new uncolonized planet, and you're the only one to build your own automation empire here. It's not wrong to call this one a farming simulator, but it's not enough either. Before being able to harness products from this full-of-potentials planet, you'll have to deploy your own robot army first.
To be more specific, you'll have to chop down trees on your own, gathering materials to build your first robot. The story keeps on until you build a functioning system that robots can help you with almost everything, including farming, fishing, and raising crops.
The game is quite complex but very interesting, and the lo-fi visuals and atmospheric soundtracks make Autonauts even more satisfying to play.
10. Township
Release date: 2012
Supported platforms: iOS, Android
For the sake of our precious mobile gaming enthusiasts, we'll wrap up this list with Township - a game that gained a lot of attention at its Facebook's app state. Its later become a standalone mobile game for iOS in 2012 and for Android in 2013, and even though years have passed by, it's still worth playing like its beginning times.
If you didn't have the chance to try it earlier, here's the trailer to pull you to this bandwagon with us:
Township is quite similar to Farmville in the aspects of gameplay and visuals, but less stressful than the time and money-consuming Farmville franchise. It's perfect for a shorter play that only takes you less than an hour to do every daily job, and let this vivid world do its own job.
But it doesn't mean that this one is lack of content. Instead, everything Farmville is good at, this one has it too. Feeding cute sheep and cows, sowing, watering, and harvesting your crops, and interact with other villagers by visiting their farm - Township has them all. Even better, you can drop it at any time you want, and your farm would still be fine!
Hopefully, you enjoy our list, and don't forget to give us a like! Stay tuned!