Agricola - The King's Farmer

Its a fun little game

This is a fun little in game in which you as the player are a farmer and aspire to become the king around 1800-ish AD. Your task is to build up a respectable farm and perform a few other tasks in order to be considered worthy of becoming king. Finding out what exactly you have to do is part of the player's task (so it will not be spoilered here). It's not exactly a blockbuster game, but fun nevertheless. Some aspects of the game become repetitive after a while after the player has figured out what exactly the rules are. Becoming king appears to be almost impossible at first, but after figuring out how everything works, the game becomes easier. In my last two runs, this worked out. To modify the gameplay a bit, it has a few different starting setups (consisting of two perk cards each), of which most become available only after achieving some milestones during play. They are a nice addition and likely to be interesting when coming back to the game after a few months.

What a game. It's punishing. "The King died, Game Over" WTF!? But is it all luck, or is there real strategy? There are definitely plenty of mistakes to be made and learned from. I feel I am getting closer to victory. The repetitiveness of checking crops, checking cows, going hunting... might not be for everybody. But it is meant to be old school, so you should know what you are getting into. I recommend this game!

I didn't grow up with the 80s games this is based on, but it's a really neat management sim. The basic farming is straightforward, but the gameplay actually gets pretty interesting as you expand your resources. It’s not a game I’ll obsess over or play for 10 hours straight, but it has a great, relaxed vibe. It’s a perfect little game to boot up every now and then to kill a few hours while listening to a podcast. For its price, it's definitely worth it.

Developed and published by kann zaubern, Agricola - The King's Farmer is claimed to be inspired by legendary economic simulation and strategy games of the 80s and 90s, such as the C=64 and Amiga hits Kaiser, Die Fugger, Winzer and more. However personally I believe that due to it's short gameplay loop and largely random elements that force repetitive strategises with little opportunity for forward planning that the game misses its mark as an economic simulation game. Overall whilst there are nice elements such as crop prices fluctuating depending on weather over all the players success is heavily reliant on random chance and the game quickly becomes monotonous. The game would be reasonable value in the £3.00 – £4.50 price range but at it’s current standing price I cannot recommend it at this time. [h1]Story [/h1] The game is very light on plot, the basic story is that the king is looking for an heir candidates and in order to be a successful candidate you have to have a successful farm and racehorse. First of all.. that’s not how royal inheritance works but suspension of disbelief aside you are informed this at the start of the game with a box of text and also should the king di…