Farmer’s Dynasty: Day 1

Nope, you didn’t read that wrong. Jimmy is not writing this post.

While my co-collaborator here at Middle Aged Fat Kids runs a real working farm, I’m just a pretender. So, I’m here to discuss Farmer’s Dynasty with you.

Recently, I did a huge purge of games on PS5. I had dozens of games installed, most of which I had abandoned years ago or had plans to “replay.” Truth of the matter is, I don’t have as much time to dedicate to gaming as I once did and jumping into something too complex at times isn’t relaxing. In fact, it’s almost frustrating trying to remember controls, figure out where I was going, or even what game to play.

So, I spent a few hours and played all the games I had installed for a few moments. I asked myself to realistically answer if I saw myself playing this game again. Most of my games were deleted. I was left with a clean slate of games I play often (Tony Hawk, FIFA, etc.) and games I like to play a few minutes or hours here or there (Red Dead, Skyrim, etc.)

This also left me lots of space to open my mind to new games without the frustration of realizing I had a lot of games that still needed completion. A new Playstation sale occurred yesterday and I decided to see what might interest me.

I was looking for a game that would be simple to play and something I could just pick up here and there. I wanted something to interact with, but nothing overly difficult. In fact, I wanted something easy and relaxing.

Sadly, the number of “relaxing” video games is small. I’ve been researching them a lot lately and just haven’t really landed on a game that would fit my requirements of simple to play, yet engaging enough to want to play. As I scrolled through various titles on the sale, I did a quick search to see what some of the lower budget and cheaper games had to offer and this led me to Farmer’s Dynasty.

Farming simulation games have always intrigued me. They started off as a joke, but have become huge business and massively complex games. Playstation Plus gave us Farming Simulator 19 as a free game a year or two ago, and I was thrilled to finally get my hands on it. Then well… I played it. The lack of tutorial, explanation of farming terminology and low budget controls made just getting through the beginning missions a nightmare for me. After a few hours, I abandoned the game.

Due to Farming Simulator’s success, lots of farming clones have launched, all offering realistic farming experiences with small budget development. I searched the various farming games, but they all seemed to follow the Farming Simulator template except for one: Farmer’s Dynasty.

Farmer’s Dynasty is a 2017 game developed by UMEO Studios out of Austria. The only games I can find under their banner is Lumberjack Dynasty and Trucker Dynasty, all of which I assume follow the same mold as this game.

After that overlong explanation of how I got to Farmer’s Dynasty, let’s actually talk about the game. The game is interesting. The graphics aren’t too bad in regard to buildings, nature, and the sky, but when it comes to characters it’s closer to a Playstation 1 than Playstation 4. The dialogue is atrocious and clearly sounds like a foreigner attempting to write for Americans. The voice acting ain’t much better and it sucks because you can interact with tons of NPCs, yet they all come across like badly programmed robots.

With that being said… and I hope I didn’t lose anyone, this game is a lot of fun. If you can look beyond the low budget character designs, dialogue, and voice acting, this game is exactly what I was looking for: a simple, easy to play, simulation-lite title.

You begin the game by inheriting your grandfather’s farm which is sadly is disrepair. You’re broke and the farm is empty outside of the buildings, so it’s up to you to make some friends, do some chores, and turn the farm into a respectable, working place to live.

Unfortunately, the game starts off with you interacting with your neighbor, which really sets the bar low for the game, but once he’s finished giving you a tour, it’s up to you to play around. I immediately began replacing rusted metal on my greenhouse and then made my way to my neighbors to repair his roof in exchange for an old beat-up tractor. Along the way I witness the worse martial fight I’ve ever seen between my neighbor Oliver and his wife. They slowly exchanged one liners like, “Uh, this again!” “Exactly!” “You’re always late” “On top of this I have a headache” It was comically terrible, but fun its own so bad it’s good way. I then proceeded to hit on Oliver’s wife with some very cheesy one liners.

So, how to do you repair stuff? You basically just look at it and hold down a button. A few a few seconds boards are replaced, rust is removed, bricks are fixed, and so forth. It’s both calmly addicting and enjoyable to wander around and just make things look much better than they did.

I only had about an hour to play Farmer’s Dynasty, but I found myself having way more fun than I expected, especially considering I paid $4.99 for the game. I feel like I already got my five dollars back on my investment and I’m hoping the game will keep me company for some time. I plan to follow my farm’s progress here on the blog over the next few weeks/months until well… I get bored with it.

Anyway, if you know what you are going into, I think Farmer’s Dynasty is a worthy $5 investment. Just know, it’s low budget, maybe slightly broken, but quite fun thus far.