Farm Town

Game: Farm Town
Developer: Slashkey
Platform: Flash
Release Year: 2009
Stephen's Rating: 5/10

Farm Town is a multiplayer Flash game where players build and maintain a farm. I played this game in late 2009 so will review it from the perspective of how it was then (I'm sure it has changed a lot since then).

Basic Plot

The scenario is that you have a farm, and you can grow crops and sell them for money. There is no objective other than building the farm the way you want. Selling crops and making money, as well as gaining experience levels allows you to build bigger farms and gain access to different crops and items.

Gameplay

Within the game you have a top down isometric view of your avatar. You can travel between several areas including your own farm, your friends' farms, and a tradehouse where you can sell your goods or find other people to work your farm.

On your farm you started with an area of plain ground. You have to hoe the ground to make it ready to plant crops and then plant seeds for the crops you want. You then have to wait real world time in order for the crops to finish growing. Once they are ready you have two options for harvesting; you can do it yourself or you can get a random person or a friend to harvest them for you. The benefit to getting someone else to do it is they get bonus money for themselves in the process.

A player avatar walking through some crops.

Planting and harvesting crops required clicking on tiles one at a time which meant it was a pretty click-intenstive experience. Later on you could buy items (tractors etc) which meant you could place more tiles of seeds or harvest more crops at once.

There were a huge variety of vanity items which didn't have any functional value but which you could use to make your farm look just how you wanted it (including fences, rivers, statues, flags, houses, etc).

Positives

It was surprisingly satisfying to "work the farm" even with the limited graphics. It was ideal for me when I was in Sydney and only had access to a low spec laptop in my spare time. This and Zynga Poker were the bread and butter of my spare time.

You could export a full view of your farm to your Facebook wall.

Negatives

Too much clicking. There is no real point to the game, and not enough player interaction. The game heavily rewarded you for having a lot of in-game friends (forcing you to promote the game to your Facebook friends if you wanted the rewards) which was frustrating as I missed out on some content due to me not wanting to spam people with game requests.

Memorable Moments

Pineapple was the best crop. I used to LOVE when someone invited me to harvest their crops and I saw they had pineapples...