➤ Farmside, the review of a new villager simulation on Apple Arcade 🕹

Farmside comes to Apple Arcade, which as the title suggests harkens back to the tradition of stylized farming simulations.

For years, a certain fascination with agriculture has persisted in the video game sector, which is expressed through various highly successful solutions. One of the most "vintage", in the sense of the importance it has in the field of entertainment and even popular culture, is certainly represented by FarmVille, whose success has also been intertwined with the rise of social networks, amplifying its resonance. We look precisely at a species of descendant of his evolved in this Farmside Review, which aims to propose a hybrid alternative between crop micromanagement and farm construction in a context completely free of microtransactions, and it is no small feat.

The launch inside Apple Arcade in fact, it determines a fundamental change in the game's economy, which in this way gets rid of all the typical traps of wild monetization to offer a more relaxing and genuine experience.

Curiously, many typical free-to-play features are still visible, perhaps a sign of a project that was born with other intentions and arrived later in the context of subscription: indeed there are waiting bars and bonuses to reduce them, but everything It is disconnected from the spending of real and regular money, therefore, in a more human and much less annoying way, with forced breaks, decidedly shorter and more digestible. Among the many mixed solutions that we are seeing in recent years on the topic of farming, this is perhaps one of the most simplistic, but precisely for this reason it can find space as a simple light hobby, replacing the old FarmVille for Apple Arcade Subscribers .

Escape to the field

Farmside, the review of a new villager simulation on Apple Arcade — The structure of Farmside is classic of the genre.

The story is barely mentioned, but it makes clear precisely the spirit on which Farmside is based, typical of this genre of games: the escape from the gray urban reality, in search of peace and serenity in the countryside, in contact with nature. The principle is banal but always valid, since it is somehow rooted in the human soul, although the bucolic vision is not necessarily realistic. On the other hand, we are facing a stylized representation to the maximum, so there is no need to be too subtle: between Animal Crossing-style escapism, the atmospheres of Harvest Moon and a tight progression in line with the aforementioned FarmVille, the game by The Label no No shines with its originality, but still manages to be enjoyable and well-constructed, playing it safe. In the role of a new heir to an old woman. farm family, we are forced to redirect the fields and structures and relaunch agricultural activity.

Through a simple but complete touch interface we can manage the available space in several ways: organize various types of crops, think about irrigation and harvesting, build structures to transform raw materials into various products and diversify production by dedicating spaces to various activities between breeding and cultivation. In addition to administration Straight from the fields, Farmside also requires you to manage spaces and build more structures as the terrain progressively expands, which unlock as you advance in experience level and allow you to further intensify and vary your production. The different activities also include elements typical of sandbox management, with the collection and transformation of raw materials that is somewhat reminiscent of the most basic crafting. This works well to increase the variables at play and make the simulation a little deeper, but its structure remains largely in line with the canons of mobile games.

Conclusions

Tested version iPad, iPhone 1.0.3 digital delivery App Store Holygamerz.com 6.5 audience ND your vote

In the last decade we have seen numerous interpretations of agricultural activity in video games, from the most purely simulative ones like Farming Simulator to the most ingenious hybridizations like Stardew Valley and Farmside, in all of this it certainly does not shine for its inventiveness and originality. However, it has the ability to condense the addiction of FarmVille with the calmer and calmer rhythm of Animal Crossing, enriching the micromanagement of crops and livestock with constructive and expansionist elements that lead us to act on different scales, in an irresistible constant. progression. It clearly knows something already seen, but the total absence of microtransactions and predatory monetization is a good plus for all those who are easily fooled by this type of management software, which makes it a title of some importance within Apple Arcade.