Management and simulation games offer an engaging and captivating formula, making them a popular niche in modern gaming. New games in the genre can often succeed without changing and innovating on the established norms just by implementing them within new themes and settings. but they have the potential to offer a unique and memorable experience if they go the extra mile.
Global Farmer, developed by Thera Bytes GmbH and published by Aerosoft GmbH, is a farming management game recently released in Early Access. Global Farmer lets the player set up and manage their farming business anywhere in the world using real-world map data. While the game is not in a polished state, I was hoping to find the foundations of a good management title with the addition of immersive real-world maps.
I love simulations and management games. Farming Simulator is one of my favorite titles in the genre, and I knew Global Farmer was not going to have the same close-up engaging gameplay, but the idea of creating my farms anywhere in the world sounded appealing to me. I’m from Iran, and a popular summer vacation for me is going to my grandmother’s farmhouse in northern Iran. The house is surrounded by rice paddy fields, and I wanted to find our farmhouse and play the game in a familiar location.
But when selecting Iran in the overworld map, I saw a warning that indicated there isn’t enough data for the region and the map might not look accurate. Even then, I was very disappointed when I realized I could not just zoom in on the map and choose where I wanted to set up my base. I had to select one of the cities listed on the menu, and I couldn’t find any city close to our farmhouse. More strangely, some large and industrial cities on the list, like Tehran, have little to no farming fields in the real world. But I still found the city of Ramsar, a place that I’m familiar with and is known for various farming products such as honey, tea, and hazelnuts.
I load the map, and it looks very barebones. Like a very zoomed-out level of Google Maps, with only the major streets and a few green fields here and there. The game doesn’t correctly format the Farsi text so it’s all jumbled up, but I just find a place for my base, and the tutorial is telling me to buy a field. I can’t seem to find how I should do it, then I realize the green fields, which are actually parks or forest areas in the real world, are considered farming fields in the game. I buy one of Ramsar’s parks, plow the land, and start planting onions… and then the game crashes.
I was pretty disappointed on my first try. I boot the game back up again and I have a look at a few other cities from Iran in the list, and it’s the same for them. Ironically the city with the most number of fields available is Tehran, because there are more and larger parks in the city. At this point, I know Global Farmer at least in its current form, is not able to fulfill my goal of setting up a realistic and immersive farming business in my country. But maybe the game offers a better experience in Europe or Northern America. I should mention here that each region in the world map requires a separate data file, carrying between 5 to 10 GB, so in addition to the base game, Asia, Europe, and North America data files have added up to about 25 GB of downloads, which is way too large for the barren experience that it actually offers.
I started another game, and while I was getting familiar with the UI and the mechanics, the game crashed again. It’s an Early Access release, so a few hiccups are expected. I try once more and manage to play for about an hour. Even if I don’t consider the promise of being able to farm anywhere in the world, Global Farmer is just a below-average management game in its current form. The UI and graphics are confusing and underwhelming, the gameplay and the management aspects are very basic, there are visual and mechanical bugs every few minutes, and as I’m starting to get bored with the game, it crashes… again.
Early Access releases are a way to gather feedback from the players and improve the game while offering them a chance to play and enjoy what is there while the developers work on the finishing and polishing. Global Farmer is so far off from what it promises, that it’s likely to disappoint players who pay for what is advertised in the game’s Steam page. Maybe Global Farmer can deliver on these promises with further updates or in the official release, but in its current form, Global Farmer doesn’t need Early Access feedback from casual players; It needs internal testing and feedback from dedicated QA teams.
Nima played Global Farmer on PC in Early Access with a review code.
