Alice Greenfingers

Pros

• A simple but addictive approach to the farm sim formula
• Easy to pick up but offers difficult challenges in the late game
• A huge variety of different upgrade options for your farm

Cons

• Narrower feature set than other farming sims
• Graphics are vibrant but starting to show their age

Alice Greenfingers is a simulation game that puts you in charge of your own farm and asks you with plotting its longterm success. Games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley have proven that the monotonous tasks behind gardening and running a farm can hold a strangely compelling appeal to gamers. But despite the cartoony design of Alice Greenfingers, it does things a little different from its gaming contemporaries.

That's because those latter games put a more significant focus on exploration. While you may ostensibly be working as a farmer, you also find yourself courting potential love interests, visiting festivals, and exploring scary caverns. The fantasy and social elements play a significant role in the genre. For better of worse, Alice Greenfingers has stripped those components out in favor of something more strongly in the simulation genre. By carving the genre down to its most basic core, it manages to be a simpler if more focused game.

The result is something that's functionally more similar to a casual game like Diner Dash. Each round is a distinct day where you're left to juggle a bunch of different tasks against the specter of a ticking clock. Things start off easy. You dig a hole, plant seeds, water them until they've grown, and then sell them at market. But as you start to reach later levels, basic complications stack on top of one another until you're left juggling a bunch of different prospects. Different crops offer different values on any given day, and they all require their own special care, and circumstances can change in the moment that require you to mix up your strategy on the fly. You're fundamentally repeating the same basic tasks over and over again, but the flow of managing all of your spinning plates at once adds a great sense of tension to the game. It can become incredibly challenging later on despite the simplicity at the heart of the game.

Adding a little more complexity to the game is the potential to upgrade your farm. The better your score on each individual level, the more money you have to spend improving your tools and increasing your potential to make even more money. New implements allow you to more efficiently accomplish your goals, while new seeds can offer you a more diverse portfolio of produce to grow, and you can even invest in livestock as your farm begins to flourish. And the inclusion of an achievement system that plays out over the course of the entire game further encourages you to reach outside of your comfort zone and start experimenting with the core gameplay systems in brand new ways.

Pros

• A simple but addictive approach to the farm sim formula
• Easy to pick up but offers difficult challenges in the late game
• A huge variety of different upgrade options for your farm

Cons

• Narrower feature set than other farming sims
• Graphics are vibrant but starting to show their age