Princess Farmer [Xbox]
Developed by Samobee Games, and published by Whitethorn Games; Princess Farmer is an icon-matching puzzle game within a wider visual novel style story. You play as the titular character, who, previously just a normal farmer, becomes a Princess Farmer upon meeting magical Mother Gaia. Along the way, you’ll be introduced to various other characters, including Garlic and Carrot, whom you’ll be able to grow relationships with, depending on the conversations you have.
Levels are presented as VHS tapes, with nine episodes, as well as a Quick Play tape being available. Each morning, you wake up and go off on an adventure, travelling across the lands and harvesting veggies in match-3 puzzles. You can do this either alone, or co-op buns with a friend, though I’d highly recommend sticking as a solo bun, as it’s mega frustrating when playing with a friend, as you’ll inevitably mess up each other’s matches unless you have great coordination together. You also get the choice when starting each ‘episode’ as to whether you want to play as a ‘Action Bunny’, ‘Puzzle Bunny’ or ‘Balanced Bunny’, which will determine whether you want quick and easy puzzles, or a bit of challenge; or even somewhere in between. Quick Play episodes can be chosen or allowed to be picked at random, with difficulties ranging across Easy, Medium and Hard - without the ‘Bunny’ options.
The visuals are very colourful and cute, with Princess Farmer frequently blushing due to her flirtatious antics with the characters around the world. There are ‘villains’ that get in your way, and you’ll sometimes need to challenge them by achieving matches faster than them. Your relationship status with each character you’ve interacted with across an episode will be ranked at the end, showing if you’ve reached ‘BFF’ status with them or not - and you’ll be given various gifts from them depending on how you’ve done, such as new outfits, Heart Coins and more. The soundtrack is chirpy and upbeat, with plenty of cute tunes to chill out to as you play; though they do tend to repeat a tad.
Levels will sometimes provide different tasks, such as giving you specific matches that are required, and it may or may not have to be in a certain format, whether vertical, horizontal or diagonal. Shinies can be found too, and including a shiny in your match will boost your score. Episodes keep things fresh, with different gameplay elements such as Bonus areas and Danger zones that will positively or negatively affect your score if you get a match within those areas - and they tend to rotate throughout the soil to up the ante. Similarly, you can play ‘Storm’ based challenges against enemies, where you each will be fighting to fill up your storm meter by getting matches, in order to put off the other player, and ruin their veggie field with the Grumpy Block!
You’ll earn Heart Coins as you harvest veggies, and this currency can be used to purchase a wide range of ‘Hare Dyes’ as well as new outfits to wear. The amount you earn is dependant on how well you do during each level, with Mother Gaia giving you a final ranking based on your points scored. For the most part, it seemed to be fairly easy to achieve the highest rewards, although there were a few levels that I suddenly found myself only scraping past the lowest reward tier - so who knows how that happened!
Available for £12.49 on Xbox, Princess Farmer is a fun time and is ideal if you’re looking for a cute puzzle game to pass some time with. Upon starting the game it mentions ‘Season One’, but I’m unsure if this is just to play into the episodic format, or if it’s a suggestion that additional episodes will be added in the form of a ‘Season Two’ later - but hopefully that is the case!
In the end, we decided to give Princess Farmer the Collecting Asylum rating of 8/10.
Are you interested in Princess Farmer? What do you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!
- V x
Thank you to Whitethorn Games for the Princess Farmer Xbox review code!
