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The following is a non-sponsored mini review of Refarm. The game is available on Steam for just a few bucks! Other small tidbits will be mentioned afterwards as well.

As I scroll through the "base building" tag on Steam, I come across this newly released gem, created by developer "otterhands", that ended up being a lot shorter than I anticipated, but brings a slightly eerie and addictive atmosphere to the farming sim genre that reminds me of many other idle games in the past.

Refarm is not complicated in the slightest, yet the premise feels promising to me. It's almost as if even after finishing the game, it feels that the game calls back for just a little bit more farming, to feed itself of its infinite loop.

The game begins in a blank world of sea, waiting to be filled with agriculture and life. You play God in this, which contrasts from other farming games where you play as a tangible character.

Pixel Genesis

The nuanced "goal" is to farm, of course, in which harvesting gives not only money but also experience points towards leveling the crop specified, which gives these green gems alongside increased money from further harvesting. It is quite a hyperactive game, in the sense that you continuously level up your crops, these blips and bleeps charm you as a positive loop. The game's design is in its name: farm, then refarm, then again and again.

Vindicating this further is that you not only buy more land with money, but also that you unlock more crops and decorations as your green gems start to accumulate more and more, yet accelerating the quiet, yet already addictive feedback loop.

All of this unfortunately tedious work ends up feeling like a more chaotic clicker game than it being incremental focused. At least, until you unlock the ability to build housing and then the... the houses give birth? I don't know how else to describe it, they generate citizens that tend to your crops.

Unfortunately, these citizens also need food to live. You need to have enough berries for them to continue their work, otherwise they will just straight up pass out from exhaustion. Kind of brutal?

From there, the game starts to slightly shift its tone, not visually but mechanically. I won't spoil the rest, but it became a lot more hectic as it went on for its short initial playthrough. Nevertheless, it ended up being really interesting of a concept to hope for future updates, possibly adding new crops, building types, and expanding the limited world space you have.

The less polished.

As for the games downsides, it's the fact that you end up spamming the mouse button a lot more than you would expect. Unfortunately, I don't think you are able to command your citizens to tend to specific crops, they just kind of wander until they find a crop to harvest or until they fall asleep. Therefore, the majority of this game is you doing manual work, and it gets very tiring despite once again mentioning how short the main playthrough really is... In other words, don't play if you are at risk of carpal tunnel syndrome.

Not only that, I've found the tile-placement to be a lot more awkward then I would expect, coming from games such as OpenRCT2 and Parkitect where the placement feels satisfying, to me Refarm has an issue where tiles being placed don't always match up with my cursor.

It feels like an old game with DPI-scaling issues, in retrospect, which in my opinion is something that should be forever left in the past! Harshness aside, it was not nearly as bothersome, as demolishing your tiles and buildings gives you a nice refund. Still, the controls should be touched up a little bit more to help bring more fluidity in the gameplay.

In conclusion, Refarm feels like a game that, while rough around the edges in its control and responsiveness, has a surprising amount going for it for the tiny price, alongside bringing different ideas into the farming sim genre that I think make it stand out from others that I've played.

Once again, this was not sponsored or affiliated by otterhands. If you would like to buy the game, click here to view the store page on Steam. Thanks for reading, and remember that your Refarm will be waiting for you!

Other unrelated tidbits!

I started working on new courses, including a CSS course to hopefully get my act together to clean up the site's layout. There will be additional updates to the site in terms of information and other links to the rest of my stuff!

I'm also a developer, working on any prototyping idea that intrigues my small mind. If you would like to see that or have any other bits of feedback, contact me on Bluesky!

I'm also going to do another review of another short game that I found on Steam, because I really liked writing this review a lot!

And that's it! Stay tuned for more tidbits and rabbitholes from yours truly! Have a good one.