Princess Farmer, Epic Games' latest freebie, brings plenty of silly charm and fun match-3 puzzling

Following last week's Sophia the Traveler, this latest Epic Games Store freebie is yet another cutesy puzzler called Princess Farmer. However, instead of searching for various objects in a laid-back fashion, this time you'll be yanking vegetables from the ground and shoving them back beneath the soil to make matches. And, although that sounds like hard graft, in truth, it's actually fairly chilled too. 

That's probably not particularly surprising given the genre. Match-three puzzlers, while sometimes tricky, aren't the most taxing on the brain. There's a reason people are often critical towards Candy Crush for its casual nature, after all. That doesn't make them bad, particularly if they're packaged in an affable way and mix up the objectives to keep things interesting, as Princess Farmer does. 

We'll start with the setting, since that's likely to be the divisive part. You play as the titular Princess Farmer, an anthropomorphic bunny who is promoted to royalty after finding lipstick buried in the ground. If that silly premise doesn't tell you that the game doesn't take itself seriously one jot, I don't know what will. 

It sports an adorable pixel art style that might be an overload of cuteness for some. Throw in the dialogue, which is best described as DoggoLingo, and I can see it grating for anyone who rolls their eyes whenever a bird is referred to as 'floofy.' It doesn't particularly bother me. In fact, I quite like it. It makes me nostalgic for a seemingly dying part of the internet that was a lot more innocent and fun-loving. You know, before certain social media sites were taken over and turned into an awful engagement-farming mess? 

Hop to it

If you can get past that or even love it, there's plenty to enjoy here. The story clips along at a pleasant pace with a low-key sense of humour that raises smiles rather than chuckles. Outside of that, you'll engage in that aforementioned spot of match-three gardening. It's a tiny bit different from what we're generally used to, for a few reasons.

The first is that Princess Farmer is usually a premium offering. We're used to free-to-play puzzlers on mobile, so one that doesn't bombard you with deals or stop you from playing until you've watched an unskippable advert for Kingshot is refreshing. Here, once you beat a stage, you can immediately hop to the next. It's delightful.

Reason two is more mechanical. You don't swap vegetables by swiping on them; you move left and right before pulling them out of the ground or popping them back in. In totality, it's not all that different. It still has those dopamine-providing combo chains with pink blobs exploding across the screen. It's merely a different delivery method. However, it feels different enough to help it stand out from the crowd.

It mixes up the levels themselves, too. You're not simply forced to chase scores over and over here. One level might ask you to make a particular type of match - horizontal or vertical, for example - while another requests a specific number of vegetables. It's a smart touch since it forces you to approach each stage differently, preventing things from going stale too soon. 

My only real issue is with the controls. Moving from left to right teeters on the brink of acceptable and too slow. Likewise, passing through the overworld feels too lengthy at times, having to skip over several nodes before getting to one you can interact with. It's hardly a dealbreaker but certainly a blemish on an otherwise beautifully presented puzzler.