Agricola - The King's Farmer

Endlich mal ein Entwickler der Mut zum Multiplayer Hotseat hat. Das Spiel erweckt wieder die alten Erinnerungen an die glorreichen C64 und Amiga Zeiten. Nächstes Wochenende wird wieder am PC mit Freunden gespielt. Die Grafik geht in Ordnung Musik nervt nicht und die Steuerung per Maus gibt es keine Probleme. Menueführung ist auch super einfach und intuitiv. Längerer Test folgt wie gesagt am Wochenende.

What a game. It's punishing. "The King died, Game Over" WTF!? But is it all luck, or is there real strategy? There are definitely plenty of mistakes to be made and learned from. I feel I am getting closer to victory. The repetitiveness of checking crops, checking cows, going hunting... might not be for everybody. But it is meant to be old school, so you should know what you are getting into. I recommend this game!

Ich kenne das Original nicht, aber die genannten Inspirationen habe ich damals als Kind alle gespielt und fand mich daher schnell im Spiel zurecht. Die verfügbaren Hilfetexte haben die restlichen Lücken gefüllt. Das Spiel ist wie damals typisch, ziemlich repetitiv und bietet nicht allzu viele Möglichkeiten. Macht mir nichts aus, das habe ich erwartet, sollte man aber vor dem Kauf wissen. Für mich ist gerade das das Entspannende und hat bei mir schnell zum "noch eine Runde" Effekt geführt. Neben der Nostalgie. Ich habe inzwischen mein 2. Spiel durch (beide alleine), noch nicht gewonnen, und mir macht's Spaß.

The gameplay is very short. After a few sessions, I’ve found that focusing on potato farming is by far the easiest strategy; their price-to-weather ratio offers the best return. It’s a shame that the hunting mini-game from the classic version is gone, replaced by an automated process. The racing algorithm could also use some tweaking—95% of the time, the 2:1 odds win, whereas the original game offered more unpredictable outcomes. I hope the game continues to be developed.

Ein richtig entspanntes Spiel. Der Aufbau des eigenen Hofes macht viel Spaß, weil man immer etwas verbessern, erweitern oder optimieren kann. Die Mischung aus Landwirtschaft, Management und Fortschritt ist gut gelungen und sorgt dafür dass man schnell länger spielt als geplant.

This is a fun little in game in which you as the player are a farmer and aspire to become the king around 1800-ish AD. Your task is to build up a respectable farm and perform a few other tasks in order to be considered worthy of becoming king. Finding out what exactly you have to do is part of the player's task (so it will not be spoilered here). It's not exactly a blockbuster game, but fun nevertheless. Some aspects of the game become repetitive after a while after the player has figured out what exactly the rules are. Becoming king appears to be almost impossible at first, but after figuring out how everything works, the game becomes easier. In my last two runs, this worked out. To modify the gameplay a bit, it has a few different starting setups (consisting of two perk cards each), of which most become available only after achieving some milestones during play. They are a nice addition and likely to be interesting when coming back to the game after a few months.

Its a fun little game

Eine kleine, liebevolle Wirtschaftssimulation. Ich habe damals das C64 Original gespielt. Lang lang ist es her. Pro: - herausfordernd - schöne Grafik - Pferde - wer liebt denn bitte keine Pferde. ;-) - guter Spielflow durch die Erfahrungspunkte und die Weiterentwicklung des Hofes Con: - herausfordernd - etwas repetetiv - überschaubare Handlungsoptionen Empfehlung: ja

Developed and published by kann zaubern, Agricola - The King's Farmer is claimed to be inspired by legendary economic simulation and strategy games of the 80s and 90s, such as the C=64 and Amiga hits Kaiser, Die Fugger, Winzer and more. However personally I believe that due to it's short gameplay loop and largely random elements that force repetitive strategises with little opportunity for forward planning that the game misses its mark as an economic simulation game. Overall whilst there are nice elements such as crop prices fluctuating depending on weather over all the players success is heavily reliant on random chance and the game quickly becomes monotonous. The game would be reasonable value in the £3.00 – £4.50 price range but at it’s current standing price I cannot recommend it at this time. [h1]Story [/h1] The game is very light on plot, the basic story is that the king is looking for an heir candidates and in order to be a successful candidate you have to have a successful farm and racehorse. First of all.. that’s not how royal inheritance works but suspension of disbelief aside you are informed this at the start of the game with a box of text and also should the king die without an heir there is a small box of text explaining the kingdom fell to a chaos and ruin with no specifics. During the actual game there’s no story elements aside from a handful of events with flavour text such as the king growing sick or your plough breaking or horse dying so that you need to temporarily rent one for the year but nothing more than a single line of description. [h1]Presentation[/h1] Gameplay presentation is simply serviceable, the art style is quite basic but consistent and whilst there are several small icons that are most likely AI generated but they don’t distracted from the overall look. The game advertises a soundtrack by Cologne-based musician klangkombüse and the music quality is surprising thematic but hardly plays between rounds and only for a short duration. The lack of variation can result in you quickly growing tired of it. It should be noted there are no resolution options for the game so it is stuck in full screen, I believe this is most likely to make the game require as little alteration as possible for it’s android release. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] Gameplay begins by selection between 1 to 4 players, as the game allows for hotseat mode, the game saves the player names between games so if you are playing regularly with friends this is nice time savour. From there you are able to select a starter deck that gives you two minor bonuses, whilst the game description states there are numerous starter decks there are only two initially unlocked. There is no in game hints on how to unlock more decks nor after several game have I managed to unlock any more. I suspect to unlock decks you need to complete the game successfully but this is speculation. If you manage to upgrade a starter decks card during play it remains permanently upgraded between games so there is a minor roguelike element to this but further more forces a player to focus on a single deck for maximum benefit. Upon starting all players have two bare fields with a work horse and plough, a single barn and two fields with a milk cow and calf, two sections of forest, and finally 10000 gold (which is actually not very much). You also already have the minimum require workers for these initial plots. The game then starts with the following gameplay loop: 1) Randomly determine the years weather: 2) Receive money from Milk sales & Events Occur: 3) Managed your farm and properties: 4) End of year horse race and end year In order to be declared heir you must max out your fields, pastures and forests, have built enough barns and storehouses, hunted enough animals and finally have a winning horse. Collecting crops and wood adds towards exp which allows you to draw and chose one of 3 perk cards to place on your perk deck for the rest of the run. This is a nice mechanic but the effects are so minor and infrequent and often underwhelming that they are an after thought that can’t be relied upon or used to build a strategy. Initially fun the game but quickly becomes tedious due to it’s slow start, a series of poor weather rolls can quickly cause a run to be completely salvageable through poor crops and crippling events, even during a stable run the lack of variation between turns quickly grows tiresome as you are going through the motions and just hoping that random chance doesn’t halt or stagger your progress to heavily. [b] Pros: [/b] - Interesting concept and a revitalisation of often overlook genre. - Integrates modern progression system with reasonable success. - Music and artwork is passable. [b] Cons: [/b] - Little to no plot. - Gameplay grows very tedious and repetitive in a short time. - Success heavily reliant on RNG rather than choice removing player agency. - Due to above con the game fails to be a true economic simulation game. - Provides little explanation or in depth detail about most upgrades in the game.