Tiny Little Farm Review

Game: Tiny Little Farm
Genre: Simulation, Lifestyle, Other
System: Nintendo Switch
Developer | Publisher: Game Nacional
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $9.99 | UK £8.99 | EU € 9,99
Release Date: June 8th, 2024

No review code was used, I purchased the game myself.

Tiny Little Farm is a mini farming simulation. Can you make the tiny farm profitable?

Down on the Tiny Little Farm

You play as Anna, who is looking after her grandparents’ farm while her grandma is in hospital. Anna decides that making $25,000 would help them. A few on-screen notes explain how to plant seeds, and with a $100 budget, you are left to help Anna reach her target.

Unfortunately, the on-screen help is not overly helpful in Tiny Little Farm. For a start, it doesn’t say that the soil needs to be tilled first. However, once you work that out, planting is straightforward. Select the crop from the shop and then move over to the ploughed land. The crop is planted automatically, and your bag of money decreases.

Once planted, the crop needs to be watered. Each crop has four water circles, and will use one water droplet overnight and one at dawn. Most crops take 2 days to grow, so four water will suffice. Peppers take 3 days, so you need to top-up the water for them to grow properly. Trees vary in growth but will produce one crop every 2 to 4 days.

The market stall at the top of the farm is the quest board. You can only have 3 active quests, and there is no way to remove them. There is a limited number of quests, so towards the end of the game, you won’t have anything to work towards. Generally, the reward money is more than selling the individual crops, with just a few exceptions (notably the last quest – I think I sold for $8,000 less than it was worth!). Sometimes people will give rewards of new crops, animals or recipes.

If you want to sell any of your produce, then you do so via the inventory – no shipping bin in this game! You will discover more crops and trees as you increase your farming level.

Tiny Little Farm Mini-Games

Tiny Little Farm has a couple of mini-games to break up the monotony of planting, watering and harvesting.

Once you have repaired the fishing shack (for a very modest $50), you can fish in the pond. First, cast the reel, then press the action button once a fish bites. Then, you need to keep the picture of the fish in the short green bar in the first gauge whilst the second gauge fills up. Although similar to other fishing games, the fish don’t jump around too much, so it’s fairly easy to catch them.

Although fish don’t sell for a huge price, it’s a good source of income. However, be aware that you will need quite a lot of fish to complete some of the quests, so sell cautiously to begin with.

Once the furnace is repaired, and you’ve learnt a recipe, you can play the cooking mini-game. Select the appropriate recipe (green ticks appear above the ingredients if you have enough) and then start cooking. The idea is to keep the temperature at the green markings, whilst the circular dial fills up.

I enjoyed the cooking game, but the quantities of ingredients needed was ridiculous. For breaded shrimp, you need 7 shrimp, 1 loaf of bread and 11 eggs. However, you need 6 eggs to make the loaf of bread. The resulting food does sell for more than the ingredients, but it was disheartening to wait for all the eggs to be produced, especially as the hens weren’t that reliable.

Not so much a mini-game but a mini-annoyance! After completing level 8, crows will invade the farm. They can be scared away by moving the cursor over them, but they will eat the crops if left to their own devices. This makes it difficult to fish or cook if you are growing anything.

The Problem With Tiny Little Farm

Unfortunately, the farm is infiltrated by more than crows. There are bugs and not the garden variety.

Trees must be planted on clear ground, not ploughed ground, but there is no way to revert the land once tilled. So you need to leave space for trees, even though you haven’t unlocked them from the shop.

One of the latter quests gives a reward of scarecrows and they do a great job of scaring away the crows. Unfortunately, once placed, you can’t move them.

However, the biggest issue is the disappearing act. It only happened after level 9, when I unlocked coconut trees. I planted my newly acquired tree, but the next time I launched Tiny Little Farm, the tree had vanished and was replaced with ploughed land.

This was not a one-off. With my newfound knowledge, I started a second playthrough. But by the time I’d completed the game, I’d lost 6 trees and both my scarecrows. Luckily, I made sure I’d completed the tasks which needed tree produce before exiting out of the game.

Gameplay

The controls are given on screen, and Tiny Little Farm plays without frame-rate issues in both docked and handheld modes. There is no touchscreen functionality.

There are 3 game instances per user, and the game autosaves at the end of each day, with an additional save on exit.

In addition to the vanishing trees and scarecrows, there are quite a few spelling and grammar mistakes.

Each day takes 5 real time minutes, but you can skip to night if required. It took about 8 hours to complete all the tasks and raise enough money to help Anna’s grandparents.

Conclusion

Initially, I really enjoyed playing Tiny Little Farm. The music was relaxing, and although the quests were challenging, they were achievable with perseverance.

Unfortunately, though, I can’t recommend it at this point. The unpredictable vanishing trees, compounded by the fact that you can’t replant them, means that playthroughs could be impossible to complete. I hope the developers can correct the issue, as there is a great little game hiding in the undergrowth of the Tiny Little Farm.

Final Verdict: I’m Not Sure

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