Cropolution

This is a really bad game. My thoughts will be all over the place, because this game did not respect my time, I will not spend the time organizing it. Tl;dr: This game is made by someone who does not understand farming games, on no budget with no talent, and yet it costs as much as Stardew Valley on sale. 1. The math behind this game is non existent. For example, an 8 tier crop, which sells for 731 gold, with an initial investment of 256 gold, that's a profit of 485. To obtain it you need to farm 128 tier one crops, convert it to 64 tier 2 crop seeds, farm them, convert these to 32 tier 3 seeds etc. that's 255 total growth cycles. Guess how much gold does 128 tier 1 crops sell for? 512. that's a profit of 256. With half the total growth cycles meaning **tier 1 crops have higher income per action than higher tier crops**. Not to mention they take less time to grow, AND you risk your higher tier crops getting eaten by locusts. You can work around the locusts by waiting for one locust cycle to plant your crops right after, but if you don't min max this "cozy" game trying to play it as intended, it's simply NEVER worth farming anything but tier 1 crops. This alone makes me seriously question the competence of the team behind this. How does one make a farming game where the optimal behavior is to farm the first crop? Worse of all, with significant time investment, you start unlocking higher tiers of seeds in the shop. Great! It will be finally worth to farm anything else. Except higher tier seeds also cost more. tier 1; seed cost 2, crop value 4 tier 2; seed cost 6, crop value 10 tier 3; seed cost 14, crop value 21 So the margins keep getting thinner. that doesn't matter, you're making more money per action, and that's all that matters right? except, every 1/3 plant cycles there will be a LOCUST SWARM, THE ONES FROM ANCIENT EGYPT, and it will eat ~90% of non-protected crops, and ~50% of protected ones. So in the end the margins do matter a lot, if you don't want to micro around the locusts. I believe if you plant without any consideration for the locusts you cannot earn money by buying tier 3 seeds. It's as if the developers didn't play their own game. The sprinkler takes an hour or more to unlock, and while taking up 1 space it will only water the 4 adjecent spaces. It also costs 1000 gold, which is equivalent to selling 1.5 tier 8 plants, or the profit from selling 500 tier 1 plants. Again, the math here is awful. With one watering you can plant 3 crop cycles. One cycle at the 2x speed mode the game provides takes ~30 seconds. The sprinkler saves you ~half a second, every 1 and a half minutes of no rain. a 0.25% efficiency improvement. But well now you don't have to look after your crops, that's so good for you right? If not every space of your farm is sprinkled then you still have to look after it. If you don't water the ground grass will grow over spaces, even ones previously fertilized and sprayed, and you will lose those "buffs". You also CANNOT unroot the sprinkler, so if you make a nice grid of them, right next to your home, but later want to upgrade to the better sprinkler, you're out of luck. 2. incredibly buggy. You can unpause the game while viewing controlls (no rebinding in the year of our lord 2024), After I roladed I couldn't open chests for some 10 seconds, random stuff like that, you can really feel that the game is held together with ductape. 3. No Quality of Life, of any sort. You have 99 crops to sell? you better click your mouse 99 times. You have 99 seeds to buy, well, you know what to do. You can't close the menus with escape key, and you cannot even pick up previously placed sprinklers. How has nobody thought of it as a problem, that you can brick your farm with sprinklers and chests? 4. extremely low variety. There is a total of ~30 *things* in this game, ~10 crops, ~10 bugs, ~10 fish. You can see them all by looking at the gold statues in the museum. The don't differ in any way, except crops start requiring fertilizer around 5th tier. Wow. All the bugs and fishes are caught the same exact way, 0 variety. 5. Somehow this slops costs as much as stardew valley when 50% off. This game would *maybe* be worth for a farming fanatic if it costed 1 dollar. 6 is a crime. 6. the progress is INCREDIBLY slow. I estimate it might take 20-30 hours of doing the same repetitive tasks to 100% this game. No idling either, if you don't want your all your crops to be eaten by locusts. Now, I imagine the devs will fix those things specifically after reading this review. Maybe when you play it higher tier crops will sell for more, the sprinkler will water 8 spaces, the locusts will be twice as rare and there will be an option to bulk buy/sell/evolve. I wish the best for the devs, but I cannot see myself returning to this game for any reason, after the horrors I experienced today.

Stardew Valley is on sale, just go get that instead.

First I will say, for the price it's hard to complain. It's fun and simple, with nice music and sounds, but it is a bit lacking in balance and content. The game could use a tutorial as it just plops you right in without any idea of who you are or what you're doing. The world feels empty without any NPCs around to talk to and the other parts of the game besides just growing crops, watering and waiting around to harvest them, aren't introduced until you've done a lot of farming. Which makes me a bit sad, as I'd like to fish and catch bugs but you can't do that until you unlock the gear required for it and to do that is made rather tedious with the brutal nature of the game. The evolution of the crops don't really yield much of an increase in money especially considering how much time it takes to grow the new crops. It would be nice if I could just buy the new seeds once I've unlocked them. The swarm of bugs are utterly devastating, destroying the entire field of crops. Making grinding up to new items and unlocks in the museum way too hard. Speaking of the museum, you can't just walk out of the building you have to click on the pop up button to exit which feels a little clunky. The start up menu should have options to control the volume as it was a bit loud upon start up and I wasn't able to change the volume until I created a new file and started the game. Overall I've payed more money for worse games but I hope this criticism can be looked at and used as advice for where the game could improve. As it is right now I can't recommend it but if it gets updates addressing the balance issue of the swarm being too punishing, the evolved crops yielding much higher gold value, more content such as npcs to talk to and more things to do at earlier stages I can see giving this game a good review. It has a lot of potential but needs a little more time in the oven.

Cropolution is a fun little game to pass the time. In addition to a farming simulator (similar to Farmville), it has the added twist of being able to "evolve" crops. It also includes some interesting elements like fishing, breeding, etc.

This game is laser-focused on the traditional farm loop: plant crops, grow them, sell them. There is a crop-loss mechanic (locusts in this game), a way to combine crops to new kinds of seeds, upgrades you can purchase (fertilizer and pesticide) to increase your yield. Collecting plants can unlock new abilities in a museum, like fishing and bug-catching, and these are a different treadmill. This game is almost like a case-study in these mechanics, and these mechanics only. There's no "life sim" aspect of this game (nor is any advertised, to be fair). No NPCs, etc. There's no action economy, no managing energy or things like that -- your little guy farms and works without sleep or rest. There is even a fast-forward button to expedite growing crops, which makes sense, given how this game is designed. This is a nice feature, however, it also has the effect of lulling the player into a daze of min-maxing the farm plant/grow/collection loop and pretty much moving and clicking non-stop -- which, to be fair, I think was what the developer was going for. Personally, I do enjoy autistically optimizing collection-cycles like this lol. It's fun for me, but if you're looking for a chill life-sim kind of farm game with a slower sense of time, NPCs to interact with, and seasonality, I think you should skip this. I was not a huge fan of the art style, but it somehow feels good in motion. I haven't encountered really any major bugs. I should note: on release, there was a pretty (imo, game-breaking) issue where the value of crops did not scale with their cost or risk. That was fixed almost immediately, which flips this to a "recommend". Good sign.

If its cheap, buy it. you can go all out in saying why its a bad game / good game. but really - its a fun, cheap thrill and i enjoyed the clickfest. not a relaxing game - but its a fun kinda collect em all. just don't overthink it and meta. for the first out of an indy title - i'd say its a good start, and i look forward to what happens next.

This game is an interesting twist on the farming sim. It's faster paced, feeling more like an arcade/action game than a farming sim. I wouldn't call it relaxing, with the locust swarm coming often. I lost most of my money a few times due to poor timing of planting. I was tempted to turn off the locusts but it seemed I would be playing the game not as intended. I loved the variety of unique plants, bugs and fish. The music is nice and the animations are polished. Obviously it's no Stardew Valley and it wasn't meant to be, so expect a different overall pace and speed of progression. For what it is, give it a try!

Fun, addicting farming game. All the problems I had were quickly resolved with patches. Look forward to seeing more from Mr. Sasquatch.

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Cropolution is a charming and affordable 2D farming and evolution game with an addictive yet relaxing gameplay loop. The core mechanics focus on growing plants, catching bugs and fish, and evolving them into higher-value versions. Players can balance quick rewards with patience, as evolving items further takes more time but yields greater profits. While the game includes periodic locust swarms that add a challenge by damaging crops, this feature can be disabled for a more laid-back experience. The developers have shown dedication to improving the game with frequent patches and updates, addressing player feedback since launch. At under $10, it offers great value, even for those who might not usually gravitate toward this genre. While I've only been playing a short time, I'm enjoying it thus far and haven't encountered any major issues. Looking forward to future updates!