3rd World Farmer

Great interaction, but a little too short

Reviewed by Shawn from afro-ninja.com

3rd World Farmer is a simulation/strategy game where you must overcome the hardships of your location and raise your family, plant crops, and make money. When played correctly it’s a fairly short sim game, but still provides a decent amount of gameplay.

The instructions are a little vague when you first start this game, so take a few moments to read the in-game tool-tips and explanation menus. The game progresses in turns, so you have plenty of time to figure out what decisions you want to make each year. You start with a wife and two children, and after you earn some income you have several decisions at your disposal: buy farm equipment and earn greater crop yields, build farm buildings and raise livestock, send your kids to school, or have a baby. All stats affect each other accordingly. For example if you send a kid to school they wont be able to help out around the farm much, but the next year they will offer more help than what they did before. They will also attract a better spouse if you choose to marry them later in life. There are many other things to buy and take into consideration, but that would spoil some of the fun if I explained them all.

Graphics are very good, although there is no animation to accompany any of them. There’s no visible change in time/season/weather either, every turn uses the same background. Everything you buy is displayed on your farm in some way, and everything is modeled as a nice 3-d render. Unfortunately there’s no sound though. I think at least having some kind of ambience music would have been nice.

Each year a random event will happen that affects your earnings. It’s almost always something bad, such as a crop failing, getting robbed, wells being washed out, etc. These can cripple you early in the game but with a little luck these events will soon be almost harmless to you, as after 15-20 turns you’ll make far more money than you can even spend in a turn. It’s kind of nice to have a flash strategy game that doesn’t take forever to play, but this one is over pretty quick. I would have loved to had the option of buying extra things, even if only for looks. House upgrades, pets, something of that sort. I’m also confused by a strange design decision in the game- as you play, you are offered several ‘benefits’ to purchase. Things such as cheaper medicine, cheaper schooling, etc. Unfortunately once you buy all of them, the game is automatically over. So basically if you want to keep playing the game, you must choose one that will never get purchased. I saved crop insurance till the end, but I was never able to use it. So even though I had thousands of extra dollars to spend each turn my crops were still at risk of complete failure.

The only glitch I found in the game was that for some reason one of the crop squares stopped letting me plant crops on it. Not sure why it occurred, but it didn’t really hamper gameplay any. Overall 3rd World Farmer is an excellent strategy game that’s just a little on the easy side. With high level purchases and extended gameplay mechanics, this could turn into an incredible sequel.

Click here to play 3rd World Farmer






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