▲ Recommended
9 hrs
2024 edit: didn't edit the review below but an update in may added fishing, pets, new seeds, villager requests, a fertilizer system and a bunch of other stuff to an already excellent game.
square farm is a tetromino-based placement puzzler, much like the fantastic planaris 2+ or inline, but this one has a really nice farm-flavored coat of paint and other farming sim elements.
each day/level is a grid, gotta place veg seeds to either fill a row, a column or a 3x3 area. combos (e.g. completing both a row and a column with one placement) yield better produce. pieces appear in 3s at first, plant them all and another batch becomes available. keep planting until you run out of energy, which is not a timer but based on the number of planted seeds. if the board fills, the farmer helps you out once per day, otherwise the day ends early.
10 days per season, 4 seasons per year. remember when that was a thing? 4 seasons, I mean. it's endless/repeating, play as long as you want, but there's new stuff to unlock even in year 3, plenty of content for a relatively small game. seeds don't cost money, so basically you can set your own difficulty and choose a preferred risk/reward ratio. and it doesn't matter if a row has different types of veg, as long as it's a full line, it's fine.
you can select 4 things to work with on any given day, more stuff becomes available as time passes and as you buy farm upgrades with the money gotten for sold crops. some are cosmetic, others provide tools and even animals. the former lets you have a bigger selection of shapes and better conditions (water, fertilizer) for better results, plus eventually the ability to rotate pieces, and some animals can be farmed, e.g. in winter when you can't grow much.
veg isn't just cosmetic either. they all come in various tetris shapes, might be harder to place but more beneficial, and some might be worth about the same money regardless of quality, while others are worth a lot more if planted with care. plus of course there's the whole season thing, best to plant spring stuff in spring, etc. there are season-specific tasks to do for some extra cash as well.
villagers (and a village) got added in an update, a staple in the farming genre, not so much in the world of tetris-likes. harvest random flowers on your farm (include them in a valid configuration twice) and give them to people to make them like you and tell you more about themselves. there was an insane amount of ellipses in the dialog, but it got trimmed in a patch, should be a better reading experience now. it's all optional though, nothing to gain whatsoever.
the graphics are great, audio is functional. some windows should be resized or rearranged to remove excessive scrolling, keep that for the mobile version. no instant text display toggle but clicking reveals the whole sentence instantly and quietly. still a lot of unnecessary clicking. when will devs ever stop forcing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ typewriter effect? there's a slider for the annoying text display sounds at least. music and sound sliders are the rest of the settings, no windowed mode, resolutions or anything else, pretty lazy. and there shouldn't be any mention of tapping in a pc game.
other than these annoyances, it's a really cool, fun and relaxing tetris-like/farming thing, easily worth the full price of 4 eur. addictive as hell too, hard to stop playing, just one more day, a few more of this, a bit more of that.
square farm is a tetromino-based placement puzzler, much like the fantastic planaris 2+ or inline, but this one has a really nice farm-flavored coat of paint and other farming sim elements.
each day/level is a grid, gotta place veg seeds to either fill a row, a column or a 3x3 area. combos (e.g. completing both a row and a column with one placement) yield better produce. pieces appear in 3s at first, plant them all and another batch becomes available. keep planting until you run out of energy, which is not a timer but based on the number of planted seeds. if the board fills, the farmer helps you out once per day, otherwise the day ends early.
10 days per season, 4 seasons per year. remember when that was a thing? 4 seasons, I mean. it's endless/repeating, play as long as you want, but there's new stuff to unlock even in year 3, plenty of content for a relatively small game. seeds don't cost money, so basically you can set your own difficulty and choose a preferred risk/reward ratio. and it doesn't matter if a row has different types of veg, as long as it's a full line, it's fine.
you can select 4 things to work with on any given day, more stuff becomes available as time passes and as you buy farm upgrades with the money gotten for sold crops. some are cosmetic, others provide tools and even animals. the former lets you have a bigger selection of shapes and better conditions (water, fertilizer) for better results, plus eventually the ability to rotate pieces, and some animals can be farmed, e.g. in winter when you can't grow much.
veg isn't just cosmetic either. they all come in various tetris shapes, might be harder to place but more beneficial, and some might be worth about the same money regardless of quality, while others are worth a lot more if planted with care. plus of course there's the whole season thing, best to plant spring stuff in spring, etc. there are season-specific tasks to do for some extra cash as well.
villagers (and a village) got added in an update, a staple in the farming genre, not so much in the world of tetris-likes. harvest random flowers on your farm (include them in a valid configuration twice) and give them to people to make them like you and tell you more about themselves. there was an insane amount of ellipses in the dialog, but it got trimmed in a patch, should be a better reading experience now. it's all optional though, nothing to gain whatsoever.
the graphics are great, audio is functional. some windows should be resized or rearranged to remove excessive scrolling, keep that for the mobile version. no instant text display toggle but clicking reveals the whole sentence instantly and quietly. still a lot of unnecessary clicking. when will devs ever stop forcing the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ typewriter effect? there's a slider for the annoying text display sounds at least. music and sound sliders are the rest of the settings, no windowed mode, resolutions or anything else, pretty lazy. and there shouldn't be any mention of tapping in a pc game.
other than these annoyances, it's a really cool, fun and relaxing tetris-like/farming thing, easily worth the full price of 4 eur. addictive as hell too, hard to stop playing, just one more day, a few more of this, a bit more of that.
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