Farming simulators and farm management games are not uncommon nowadays, but Global Farmer by Munich-based studio Thera Bytes is based on an interesting idea that sets it apart.
I checked the game out at Gamescom 2024 in Cologne, Germany, and was introduced to the basic premise of the game. Basically, its world is built from OpenStreetMap, and you can pick the location for your fields anywhere on Earth.
It doesn’t even need to be actual farmland. As long as the game identifies a piece of land as suitable for your needs, you can set your farming operation there. If you want to place your fields in the park behind your real-world home, it’s very likely that you can.
You don’t even need to worry if there’s no available land exactly where you want it, as the game allows you to edit the map and share your creation on Steam Workshop.
This basically creates a little digital twin of Earth in the game, and the engine calculates land value, soil, and climate depending on real data points.
Once you’ve chosen your location, you can purchase the land you want and start your farming operation.
Interestingly, the developers have diversified the environments depending on the area of the world, so if you establish your farm in Japan, you’ll find cherry trees, shrines, and appropriate scenery, leading to different-looking farms when you change location. Incidentally, the graphics are quite pretty, which never hurts.
The gameplay is structured more like a tycoon game than a vehicle-focused farming simulator, so you won’t get to manually drive tractors, seeders, and harvesters. Yet, you’ll have to purchase and manage them, hire workers, and establish your ideal crop rotations.
You can build your facilities and create your ideal farm, designing it down to the layout of buildings, parking areas for vehicles, and paths between the fields.
The developers actually went to a consultant specialized in farming to make sure everything is as realistic and believable as possible.
Once you’ve established your farming operation, you can fulfill contracts and optimize and increase your revenue, which will in turn allow you to further expand your farms.
The game can already be wishlisted on Steam for PC and will launch in early access this year, so it’ll be interesting to see how far its developers will bring it and how deep the simulation will be when Global Farmer fully releases down the line.
Yet, for now, the core gameplay seems solid, and the brilliant geographical idea Global Farmer is based on provides it with charm, diversifying it from most farming and tycoon games. It’s certainly more evidence that the digital twin model can be used effectively in gaming and simulation.
Personally, I can’t wait to start farming the soccer field behind my house, or perhaps my favorite park in Tokyo, the massive Yoyogi Park. I’m positive the local governments won’t mind at all.
If you’d like to enjoy more of our content from Gamescom, you can check out the hands-on preview of the Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake and a related interview, on top of an interview about the new MOBA Predecessor.
