The Farming One

Created for the Indie Game Maker Contest! 2014, The Farming One is an entry into the farm simulation genre mostly popularized by the Harvest Moon series. Unlike most games of its ilk, however, the farming portion is significantly accelerated due to the nature of the contest, and the judges only being required to play 1 hour of the game in order to make a good judgement. The selection of the game's name almost suggests it is a response to which entry to the contest you're playing at the moment. "The Farming One."

Yeahhh, I thought that wouldn't go down well. On to the review!

Graphics and Presentation
Utilizing Celianna's Farming tileset to what one could say its full potential, The Farming One has a charming aesthetic with decent mapping and a logical flow from location to location. It has a peaceful, friendly vibe to it that is only sporadically interspersed with off-putting remarks by baddies, such as, "I'll tear you a new one" (or something). But overall, the presentation and polish in this game is astounding. This game has a professional level degree of polish, with structures being re-used again and again, such as NPC phrasings, options and purchases requiring the same collection of money to be pursued in different arenas. I will talk about the balancing of the game now.

Gameplay
Gameplay consists of farming, where plants sprout up in only a few seconds, or perhaps more for the more "exotic" crops. You must use the money you earn from farming (which is collected instantaneously) to purchase... guess what? More crops! Which in turn purchases more crops, which in turn purchases more crops, which in turn purchases better crops, and then more crops again.

Luckily, this mechanic doesn't get tiring, because there are plenty of other options to get money alongside farming that can be just as profitable. There's methods of woodcutting, mining and fishing that garner instant monetary rewards, and each have their own stream of improvement buzzes.

As far as I played (which was 1 and a half times over) the game's balance hits a sweet spot, where no certain mode of collection is more valuable than the other - in fact, they work in tandem. In addition to the game being balanced, it also has a fairly quick risk-reward scenario. So it's almost as if you are pressured by time to choose the right strategies, and I haven't found one that breaks the balance yet (I'm sure someone will, at least to a small extent).

Story
The story is that some bandits have stolen everything from a town, so you have to rebuild it from the ground up, economically speaking. The more you invest into the town, the more NPCs will start showing up, until you have a happy town indeed. There is a certain choice that you can make that will significantly change the course of the game, which I found intriguing. I actually found the bad ending first, and then the good ending second. I thought when I was playing the bad ending, I was actually choosing the good one.

I'm a bit dull.

The characters all have individual portraits, which are stunningly drawn. The characters also have RTP sprites, which are standard, and you'll be pretty used to them. But nothing is completely out of place, and everything seems very well polished, and planned to a T. Just as you finish mastering all skills, you get enough resources for the game to end and it's a brilliant balance.

Conclusions
The Farming One could be accused for being limited in scope due to its short duration, but that is not the case I believe. The rewards for your actions are simply quicker, which causes a nice flow in a cute game with a good story. I thoroughly recommend The Farming One to anyone looking for a quick, satisfying play.