PN Review: My Arctic Farm (WiiU Eshop)

I’ve played my fare share of farming games. I usually like these types of games because I can customize what my farm looks like and there’s always some kind of social ladder to climb, or purpose for being there. Also sometimes its fun to be able to interact with your animals and earn their affection. ‘My Arctic Farm’ looks like a game you might play on your phone or tablet. One of those games you come back to every hour or so to check on your farms status. Its not something I would typically want to play on a console like the WiiU.

The WiiU gamepad is used to access your inventory and to show you each individual animal and their current status. The TV screen is the overview of your whole farm, you can see all of your animals at the same time here. There’s a super quick tutorial at the beginning of this game. Given to you by a creepy Eskimo. He’s kind of your guide throughout this “thrilling” adventure. When I first start out on my arctic quest I’m given 100 dollars and a penguin. At first I thought it was kind of cute that I had to keep my penguin energized by feeding him fish and giving him baths regularly but it gets old, quick.

As the day goes on your animals produce goods that you can sell for money. One thing I did like was the fast forward button, which makes the day go by quicker. However when time is sped up your animals get hungry quicker and each time you feed them they acquire a layer of filth for some reason. After like 2 or 3 helpings of food your animal needs another bath. This is all I seemed to be doing, over and over and over. Feed the animals, bath the animals, sell goods, buy new animals repeat process. I was constantly looking at the WiiU gamepad instead of the nice wintery scene on my TV screen because everything you have to do involves the touch screen.

The touch screen only shows one animal at a time so no matter how many animals you have on your farm you must sit and scroll through them all. Feeding each one, then bathing each one. If you had lets say 60 animals, by the time you were done feeding and cleaning all of them you would have to start all over. If you don’t keep them clean and fed they get sick and “leave your farm”. The only way to earn money in this game is by selling the goods your animals produce, or selling the animals themselves when they’ve reached adulthood. Everything felt so mechanical, there was no interaction what so ever besides all the tapping I was doing with my stylus.

I actually thought this game might be kind of fun despite the corny name and boring title screen. I wish I could even say that it had a good soundtrack or something but I cant. Besides the little background tune that played every once in a while all you had to listen to were animal noises. Crickets, wolves, owls and the creepy Eskimo when he felt like telling you another animal had gotten sick or was sad. I was so bored while playing this game I highly doubt it will ever get played again. Unless my seven year old niece wants to bathe my penguins for 2 minutes before she gets bored and begs me to put in a Mario game.

 I never enjoy dissing a game that someone has worked hard on but I have to be honest when I say I do not recommend this game. Especially for the price you have to pay, if I’m going to pay almost $10 for a game I want to be able to do something besides tap menu buttons and drag my stylus less than a half an inch across the screen. I’d say save the $7.99 you’d be paying for this game and buy something a bit more…fun.