Super Farming Boy review - "Tackling farming and capitalism with combos!"
- Solve farming with crop combo puzzles
- Pinch and pull to plant, water, harvest, and cash in
- Work hard to pay for powers, tools, saving your friends
If you're reading this, you've either committed to living on a farm or will never set foot on one, but that won't stop you from pursuing agricultural escapism.
You could spend the rest of your life playing farming sims, and you still wouldn't get halfway through them all. Most of them involve tilling the land, planting seeds, watering, harvesting, and making a profit, but what if there was even more strategy involved WITH NUMBERS?!
Lemonchili has got us covered with Super Farming Boy and his quest to make farming a fun and adorable numbers game under the dark cloud of capitalism. It IS a 2D farming adventure, but let's see what levels it takes us to.
What is Super Farming Boy?
If you've already read the title, this will likely be a story about farming revolving around a boy. Well, prepare to have your mind blown about Super Farming Boy since it's all that and more!
You play as Super Farming Boy (Super being his actual name) as he lives a chill life on a farm with a blob house, a group of helpful friends, and his mom. He's having a chill time doing his chores with all his handy tools and powers when a literal dark cloud of capitalism appears in the form of the snappily-dressed Korpo, R.C. (™).
After a brief hostile takeover, he seizes all of Super's tools, powers, friends, and mom as a form of taxation. However, he gives him the chance to get them all back by having him do some farming for his company, where he gives over everything he produces, gets paid, and then pays for everything that was taken. FARM ON!
Super Farming Boy has the power
There's only so much you can do with the farming genre, but then again, the whole point of design is to come up with a new presentation. Super Farming Boy has done just that with its take on farming as a puzzle.
Typically, this involves creating a schedule and arranging crops to facilitate better organisation and management. Not only is Super Farming Boy more about where you plant the crops, but it also actively encourages you to seek out the most elaborate and fruitful patterns.
When a crop is harvested, it emerges in a specific pattern, harvesting any other crops it comes into contact with, thus relying on the domino effect. It's engaging to discover and try out new patterns, and even more satisfying to reap the fruits (and veggies) of your labour.
Another appealing aspect is the context. Super Farming Boy lives a truly blessed life with farming work to keep him busy and unnatural physics to make it entertaining. This is completely disrupted by the all-too-relatable reality of being forcefully bought out by a corporate monster and being forced to work yourself out of debt.
The days are filled with whimsy as you explore the town, talk to the various characters, and adapt to the different seasons, which quite radically change your farm. The nights are filled with exhaustion and literal ghosts that haunt you, and you rest only for an evil corporate overlord to appear at your bed, take all your stuff, pay you for your efforts, and then sell back your powers and friends that were yours in the first place.
It's a harsh yet strong motivator to keep you playing and earning as much as possible.
And yet, despite all that cold, complex reality, the overall atmosphere is light and friendly. Even as you work your puzzling palms to the bone, the sounds and sights are there to lift your spirits.
Super Farming Boy has all the charm of a nostalgic '90s cartoon with the sharpness and animation to make it look like it belongs on any modern device. SFB was created for the on-the-go lifestyle, as shown by his mastery of domino-style farming, which is your challenge to master yourself. Every new day is a new opportunity to grab some new seeds, learn some combos, and save up for another of SFB's powers and friends.
Harvest hurdles of Super Farming Boy
If you're going to run a farm, fictional or otherwise, you should aim to be efficient in how you arrange your crops and handle your tools. Super Farming Boy has a lot of options and can work fast, but sometimes the technical problems get in the way.
You must rely on tap and sliding controls to do most of the work, which is fine when you're just starting. However, within a few days, your farm will become cluttered with so many objects and crops that you may find yourself tapping things you didn't want to, planting in the wrong place, or doing other things that waste valuable energy.
On that note, things move a bit too fast…literally. The days are short, leaving only so much time to plant, water, and harvest, and that's just the baseline.
First, you need to make sure that there's actually room to farm by destroying rocks, boulders, stumps, sticks, and whatever other blights nature decides to decorate your farmland with. This means your money will be used to purchase various tools and energy, enabling SFB to conduct some work eventually. Good stamina is not one of his standard powers.
Tilling and toiling with Super Farming Boy
Super Farming Boy is a 2D top-down farming puzzler where a kid with farm-related powers must farm his way out of debt to save his friends. Its take on farming is creative with a relatable dash of reality that's softened by whimsical graphics and sounds.
The technical elements may hinder its efficiency, along with limited time and numerous obstacles, but these can all be considered part of the challenge. And, only by overcoming that, can you truly call yourself a Super Farming Boy, too.
Super Farming Boy review - "Tackling farming and capitalism with combos!"
Super Farming Boy is a fun take on the farming genre by challenging you to plant crops to make harvest combos and earn big bucks before you quickly pass out.
Will Quick
Will Quick is a travelling writer currently dedicating his time to writing about the games he spends his free time playing. He's always on the lookout for the smaller and stranger of the bunch so he can shine a light on them.