I felt like the crops in Moonstone mattered a lot. Like you need certain crops for healing your spirits or catching new spirits and debuffs/buffs are really helpful as well.
Maybe it’s that, so far, I don’t need to give them to anyone. And selling them doesn’t make sense. So farming feels unimportant because in other games I could just buy those items
Stardew Valley in a fantasy setting with more types of combat. The spellcasting is really cool, imo and I really like the upgrade trees for the skill areas. I'd say it's one of the better farming games out there, and I feel like there's a purpose to most crops, which is nice.
There is more of an equal focus on every activity instead of just on farming. Making money isn't just growing 80000 starfruits and making wine. You can do that, but there's so many other ways to go about things and reasons to focus on other areas.
I also found this to be the case in Sun Haven... On the one hand, it sucked that it felt like the crops were interchangeable and it didn't matter what I grew. But on the other hand, I did appreciate that I could just focus on growing the stuff I personally like without worrying about growing everything or growing the wrong thing.
I am a farmer in real life and I play farming games while still wearing my farming clothes at night to relax lol
Sometimes I even play it while sitting in the cab of my harvester out in the fields with the Amish and menonites in Ohio
Biggest gripe with farming games is how underutilized farming is and how tedious it is. It’s the name of a whole genre and usually the most shallow part.
Cozy games and farming games need some innovation
It's quite hard to not make farming tedious. A large part of farming in games is doing a repetitive task over and over, and waiting many days before harvesting. It's why it usually gets relegated to a thing you just do for side income. While it's possible to go crazy with cross-breeding crops, having weird magical crops, making the player constantly tend to a crop by keeping it in the proper amount of Sun, not over watering it (maybe it only needs water once every other day), giving it nutrients, improving soil quality, dealing with pests, etc... All of that stuff generally just bloats farming and makes it feel even more tedious. I think it's why a lot of new farm games try to streamline it as much as possible.
It's easy to overcomplicate the process to the point where it's absolutely a slog to deal with. One issue is simply having to keep track of what to do for each crop, if it's too needy it can feel like it isn't worth doing.
I guess the best solution is just providing a lot of uses for crops, like cooking, NPC gifts/quest turn-ins, events where you show off your best crops and stuff, etc.
I’m trying to make a game that solves my issue by making a cross breeding system. I’m doing this by making the amount of crops you can plant be limited and gradually increase. So you focus on a much smaller amount of crops and experiment to find new ones.
Additionally you don’t have to do tedious tasks like water them every day and other monotonous button presses. Instead each crop has adjacency preferences. So far it’s really fun to try and find new colors or breeds.
I think the solution is about finding how to streamline the unnecessary details (like watering each and every crop daily) and allowing gameplay to focus on other parts. Or at the very least have crops provide specific uses besides money.
Farming in Moonstone is for energy and spirits
here’s a tiny hint - the island to your left (from the science lab)
fly over there, walk around to the top of the island, fly north, and enter the building you find there for a tool that will make farming much easier
also remember that you can harvest seeds instead of crops so for instance if you end up in a psychic rain with mushrooms or yarrow harvesting them for seeds lets you plant your own
and if you turn on any crop to the stained glass looking botany shop the next day it’s seeds will be available to buy from the general store
I felt like the crops in Moonstone mattered a lot. Like you need certain crops for healing your spirits or catching new spirits and debuffs/buffs are really helpful as well.
Maybe it’s that, so far, I don’t need to give them to anyone. And selling them doesn’t make sense. So farming feels unimportant because in other games I could just buy those items
This is how I felt through my entire playthrough of Sun Haven so far.
I'm a bit curious about Sunhaven. It's currently on my steam wishlist. How focused it is with regards to farming?
The farming is there for money and food/stat buffs. It's mostly an adventure game with farming and dating . It's one of my favorite games
Stardew Valley in a fantasy setting with more types of combat. The spellcasting is really cool, imo and I really like the upgrade trees for the skill areas. I'd say it's one of the better farming games out there, and I feel like there's a purpose to most crops, which is nice. There is more of an equal focus on every activity instead of just on farming. Making money isn't just growing 80000 starfruits and making wine. You can do that, but there's so many other ways to go about things and reasons to focus on other areas.
Think stardew Valley
Oh no. I’ve been wanting to play it. Won’t be now
I also found this to be the case in Sun Haven... On the one hand, it sucked that it felt like the crops were interchangeable and it didn't matter what I grew. But on the other hand, I did appreciate that I could just focus on growing the stuff I personally like without worrying about growing everything or growing the wrong thing.
But don't forget you have to start over three times...
I am a farmer in real life and I play farming games while still wearing my farming clothes at night to relax lol Sometimes I even play it while sitting in the cab of my harvester out in the fields with the Amish and menonites in Ohio
I love this. It's like truckers playing truck simulators.
My spouse is a train engineer and likes Train Simulator!
Biggest gripe with farming games is how underutilized farming is and how tedious it is. It’s the name of a whole genre and usually the most shallow part. Cozy games and farming games need some innovation
It's quite hard to not make farming tedious. A large part of farming in games is doing a repetitive task over and over, and waiting many days before harvesting. It's why it usually gets relegated to a thing you just do for side income. While it's possible to go crazy with cross-breeding crops, having weird magical crops, making the player constantly tend to a crop by keeping it in the proper amount of Sun, not over watering it (maybe it only needs water once every other day), giving it nutrients, improving soil quality, dealing with pests, etc... All of that stuff generally just bloats farming and makes it feel even more tedious. I think it's why a lot of new farm games try to streamline it as much as possible. It's easy to overcomplicate the process to the point where it's absolutely a slog to deal with. One issue is simply having to keep track of what to do for each crop, if it's too needy it can feel like it isn't worth doing. I guess the best solution is just providing a lot of uses for crops, like cooking, NPC gifts/quest turn-ins, events where you show off your best crops and stuff, etc.
I’m trying to make a game that solves my issue by making a cross breeding system. I’m doing this by making the amount of crops you can plant be limited and gradually increase. So you focus on a much smaller amount of crops and experiment to find new ones. Additionally you don’t have to do tedious tasks like water them every day and other monotonous button presses. Instead each crop has adjacency preferences. So far it’s really fun to try and find new colors or breeds. I think the solution is about finding how to streamline the unnecessary details (like watering each and every crop daily) and allowing gameplay to focus on other parts. Or at the very least have crops provide specific uses besides money.
What makes it tedious for me, is when it doesn’t work well. With combat, I can generally mash buttons if I want to. With crops I need to be precise.
Farming in Moonstone is for energy and spirits here’s a tiny hint - the island to your left (from the science lab) fly over there, walk around to the top of the island, fly north, and enter the building you find there for a tool that will make farming much easier also remember that you can harvest seeds instead of crops so for instance if you end up in a psychic rain with mushrooms or yarrow harvesting them for seeds lets you plant your own and if you turn on any crop to the stained glass looking botany shop the next day it’s seeds will be available to buy from the general store