Another Farm Roguelike: Rebirth

I’m not going to deny my absolute love of management sims. There is, for me, something deeply cathartic about making a plan, designing out an approach, gathering the resources, and doing it. I like seeing the end result and having the satisfaction of not only a plan well-executed, but of then getting to build that plan further and further into grander and grander things. I used to be a project manager, and I hated it. I’m sure there’s something to analyse there about my psyche, but this is a review of Another Farm Roguelike, and let’s be honest, neither of us wants that particular analysis. Another Farm Roguelike: Rebirth is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a farming-themed roguelike where players design and build a farm, planting crops, raising animals, and earning money to pay an ever-increasing rent. There’s something to be said about the fact that, even in a management fantasy, we are all still beholden to the capitalist demon that is the rental economy, but that is, again, not the point, and no one but me wants that. It is worth getting one obvious truth out of the way from the outset. This is a game heavily inspired by, if not a vague parody of, Stardew Valley. Its graphics, its sprites, its mechanics are all very familiar to anyone who has played any amount of Stardew. Eggs go into the mayonnaise machine, milk into casks, fruit into the juicers, and all the products get sold to invest back into the farm. There is very little about the particular chain of production that is unfamiliar here, to a point that it feels vaguely uncomfortable in how blatant it is. This is not, however, Stardew, as evidenced by the fact that the presence of rent necessitates building not a whimsical, fun farm that might have optimisation if the player playing wants that, but rather, a capital engine. This is a game that’s very much an optimisation challenge, even if it buries the lede a bit on that being the case. Much of how Another Farm Roguelike presents itself centres around it, first and foremost, being an anti-Stardew, with it repeatedly emphasising how much it does not feature the “cosy” elements of Stardew. I’m going to admit that this particular approach of denigrating another, perfectly lovely game rubs me the wrong way, though none of this is necessarily the fault of the game itself. Bad marketing doesn’t mean the game itself is bad, as any fan of the Dragon Age series can attest. More deceptive, though, is the game’s emphasis around player choice and diverse strategies. Another Farm Roguelike, the game’s page argues, is all about having a diverse range of play experiences. Each map is randomly generated, each segment within the map has random resources within it, all leading to the player being nudged to try a variety of different approaches to the problem of paying rent. Except none of that is true. Yes, there are a range of biomes, and yes, resources are random, and absolutely, there are a variety of starting bonuses the player can choose from, but fundamentally, each run of Another Farm Roguelike has one of two outcomes—the player either has the map layout to build an efficient farm, or they lose after two or three weeks. There is no middle ground. Much of the problem of Another Farm Roguelike is that, while it presents the idea that there are many valid ways to scale and grow a farm, in practice, there are not. The fact that rent grows exponentially while the farm’s engines grow linearly means that there will quickly come a point—usually after the second week—where it is physically impossible for the farm to raise enough money to make rent. This is, of course, unless the player has had both phenomenal luck in their map generation, the correct class to make the best use of the map, and the knowledge of what specific plays to make in order to best make use of what they’ve been presented with. What this creates, then, is a roguelike in the worst sense. Rather than growing and learning from each playthrough, and unlocking the tools to make the next playthrough easier, the player is beholden to the whims of the RNG, with no real chance of making a run with a bad RNG work. The other aspect of this flaw is that, once a player does understand how to win and what to look for in a map, there is very little reason to replay the game. Since the number of truly scalable strategies is so limited, the only winning move is to repeat what works for a given class ad infinitum until it’s just boring and trite. The worst thing a roguelike can be is repetitive. The game, to its credit, does offer a potential solution to the rent problem in the form of an “endless mode.” Endless mode removes the rent requirement entirely, allowing players to just build a farm to their heart’s content with no external pressures. To which I ask: then what’s the point? The entire premise of the game, everything it promises and everything it wants to be, is a challenging farm management sim. Take away the challenge, and all you’re left with is a knockoff Stardew that’s missing any sense of charm. This is the tragedy of Another Farm Roguelike: Rebirth. There’s a lot here to like. It’s satisfying to build a strategic farm, and the idea of having a range of biomes and layouts does add refreshing variety to each playthrough. However, when that variety is undergirded by the knowledge that building this farm is a Sisyphean task, much of the fun of it all is lost. What’s the point in building if none of it is ever going to be enough? 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