A review code was provided for this game by Keymailer and Playtonic Games
Sometimes, there are signs that things aren’t going to go well before you even realize that they are there.
As I opened up Cattle Country, a cozy farming sim with a western bent to it, I set out to name my farm. In that process, I made a typo. I tried to hit “backspace,” and the backspace button just didn’t work. I had to make a new file to properly name my farm. I thought it was weird, but I didn’t think much of it. From there, I started my first day on the farm after the most generic cozy farming introduction imaginable.
After about 10 minutes, something happened in my house, so I hit the button on my Steam Deck that suspends the game. After I took care of what I needed to, I turned the game back on, and suddenly, there was no sound. I thought that was odd and restarted the game again.
Of course, I quickly realized that Cattle Country doesn’t save until you end each day in the game. So, I had to start my file all over again. A little later, I had to “suspend” my game once again (welcome to dad life), and once again, the sound in the game was completely gone when I opened it back up.
It was at that point that I realized that I had just signed up for a not very great ride. But the signs were there from the first moment. Cattle Country is mildly buggy, lacking in almost any decent on-boarding and quality of life features, and frankly, even if it fixed up all of that stuff, it’s still one of the most generic and unremarkable cozy farming sims that I have ever played.
I Liked The Mining Because It Was Dark, And That Fit My Mood While Playing The Game
As previously stated, Cattle Country is a cozy farming sim from the creators of the Blossom Tales games (which are games that I enjoyed a lot). The formula is exactly what you would expect. You are put into a big farm area filled with rocks and trees, and your home is just a tent. Your goal is to clear your field, plant seeds, and work your farm so that you can keep making money and keep growing both your town and your farm.
So, as you play the game, you will quickly establish a routine of sorts. Each day, I would take care of my crops and animals (just chickens, more on that later), and then I would decide what to do outside of the farm for the rest of the day. You can fish, mine, forage, talk to people in town, and do a few other things.
Almost all of this stuff is perfectly competent, and there’s even a few elements I liked. Taking care of crops and animals is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from any game in this genre. You water your plants, you feed the animals, nothing crazy. I actually thought the fishing mechanic was pretty enjoyable, as it has a very quick minigame that makes it a touch more interesting than most fishing mechanics in cozy games. There are also tons of trees to chop down if you need wood and tons of rocks if you need stone. You can pretty much always find something to do in Cattle Country.
The highlight of all of these activities was the mining for me. The town you are in happens to be an old mining settlement, so there is a massive mine that you can dig through whenever you want. It is filled with ores you need and other treasures. The game gives you rewards for mining deeper and deeper down. As of this review, I was 100 levels down into the mine. The next challenge was to get down to level 250. I also tried to mine to the right instead of straight down, and after several minutes of this, it felt like this mine was just about endless. As you go deeper in, it gets dark and difficult to get back up, so you need to craft lights, ladders, and ledges so that you can still see and make it back up afterward. This is a genuinely cool mechanic. I also just got my first elevator as I wrapped up with the game, which allowed me to get down deeper into the mines much faster. There is way more than meets the eye with the mining in Cattle Country, and it was easily the most fun I had playing the game.
That crafting mechanic that you use for mining gear is prevalent in pretty much every other facet of the game as well. As you play the game and level up different traits, you will unlock certain blueprints that will let you craft various decorations, tools, and meals that buff you in different ways. So you have a lot of freedom to build up your farm and your interior decorations however you wish.
The Magical And Mysterious Animal Icon. What Could It Mean?
Unfortunately, the game kind of falls apart in every other way outside of these basic mechanics. The crafting is a great example of how the game explains absolutely nothing to you, much to its detriment. Early on in the game, I unlocked the ability to craft an “outhouse.” The description said that you should probably use the outhouse every day. I had no idea what the outhouse would do, but I had to assume it would be beneficial in some way. So I used some resources and crafted one. I then proceeded to use it and… nothing. I was thinking maybe it would restore some fatigue or do something for me. There’s a chance that it is doing something for me, but I couldn’t see any tangible benefits. The game isn’t clear at all about if anything is happening when I go potty. Later on, I unlocked the ability to craft a beehive. I figured that honey would be useful in cooking or to sell, so I crafted it. I set it down on the farm and… nothing. I had no idea how to activate it. Finally, when summer came a week or so later, a flower grew next to my beehive. This was what was needed in order to activate it, but the game doesn’t explain that.
The game also doesn’t explain how to acquire some pretty key upgrades. I’m through two seasons in the game, and the only animals I have are still chickens. I have not unlocked the ability to craft a barn that would let me get cows that I know are available at some point. My theory is that I need to level up a certain stat in order to unlock that ability. One of the stats for my character depicts an animal. It is the only stat that hasn’t leveled up once since I started the game. I have absolutely no clue what the game needs me to do to upgrade this stat. I have my chickens that I take care of. I feed them, give them water, and pet them every day. I have a dog and a cat that I give water to and pet every day. There appears to be a hunting mechanic in the game (which I haven’t used to this point). Perhaps hunting is how I upgrade it, but that seems really unlikely (Editor’s Note: After looking at another review, this is indeed a hunting stat). The point is, it’s absolutely insane that I don’t even know what one of the stats in the game is, and I don’t know how to level it up. I’m pretty sure this stat’s lack of growth is seriously holding back the growth of my farm. I do want to note that because I had to restart my file, I opted to skip the opening tutorial (which was really just a quick wall of text and that was it on my first attempt at the game). I guess there’s a chance that I’m missing some tutorials because of that, but the opening tutorial was so barebones anyway that I really doubt it. The game should ideally have tutorials in a menu that you can reference at any time either way, but it doesn’t.
The stats annoy me in some other ways, too. As you play Cattle Country, the end game appears to be to get through a checklist that gives the town “recognition.” This is so it can be an actual town instead of just considered a mining settlement. The problem is, of course, that I have absolutely no idea how to unlock all the things that the game wants me to do. The bank in town appears to be the main way you fund “projects” in town. For example, late into the summer season, my farming stat leveled up, and finally, I had the option to fund shipping routes to other towns. This is the only town upgrade in the game I’ve been able to find so far outside of one that is available from the very start. So I think that at least some of the big town upgrades are tied to leveling up all of the stats in the game. The problem is that this is kind of annoying. If I’m correct (which, once again, I’m not sure, as the game doesn’t tell you anything), this means that you basically have to “grind” like an old school JRPG in order to unlock all of the projects in the game. I like the fishing minigame, but I also don’t really like to do it for more than a minute or two. Same with foraging. As I’m passing by a bush or a tree with fruits, I don’t mind taking a split second to grab some, but it’s not something I really want to focus on. It appears that Cattle Country doesn’t let you fully play the game the way you might want to if you want to unlock everything. Even if that isn’t the case, I don’t understand why the game doesn’t just give you all the projects in the game to fund at your own pace instead of doling them out in such a weird way.
Welcome To The Pioneer Life, Which Is Oddly Similar To The “Go Back To Your Grandfather’s Farm” Life
The trend of not explaining anything extends to the town life in the game. I was shocked when I opened up the game’s map for the first time and realized how few details it had. You can see all the buildings on the map, but the game doesn’t tell you what any of the buildings are for. Thus, you need to go into each building to figure out where the shops are. The shops also don’t have any sign anywhere telling you what their hours are (at least, that I found). It seems like some shops are closed on one weekday, as well as on the weekends, but I wouldn’t usually know until I showed up and no one was at the shop. If they take a lunch break, I also have no idea. This is a small feature that has been in every cozy farming game I’ve ever played. I have no idea why it isn’t here.
The game also doesn’t show you where villagers are at any point. So, if you want to talk to certain people to romance them, it can be a pain in the ass to find them. Especially in the early going of the game when you haven’t figured out any of their routines yet. Surprisingly, the game does have little icons on their character portrait to tell you what items they like and dislike, but fittingly, you can’t expand these items and get any details. It’s just a very small little icon with something that looks like a bed, for example. It was rare that I could easily tell what someone actually liked with these little icons. Am I supposed to keep gifting this girl different beds? That seems forward, no? So even when the game does try and give you some sort of quality of life element, it still manages to fall short.
Not that any of the villagers in the game felt particularly worth romancing anyway. One of the main selling points of Cattle Country is that you are a pioneer going west, but outside of a few cowboy hats, and villagers that say “ain’t”, this game doesn’t really feel much different than any other cozy game in terms of the atmosphere. You also get a gun, and occasionally, bandits will attack you, but the mechanic is so half-baked that it never really mattered much to me. The game also has festivals, as you’d expect from a cozy farming sim, but they all feel pretty mediocre in every way. Both the summer and fall months only had one event, which was pretty surprising to me as well. I feel like it’s pretty common to at least have two or more events in a season with these games. Cattle Country is surprisingly lifeless in almost every way. It has next to no personality or charm to it, and thus, I didn’t care too much about spending any time with the villagers that I couldn’t find half the time anyway.
Slower Walking Speed = I Have Less Time To Interact With Different Gameplay Mechanics. Is A Slow Walking Speed Actually Improving The Game???
Cattle Country has tons of other mild annoyances that continued to pile up the longer I played. Your walking speed is obnoxiously slow. Getting from your farm just to town takes way too long, and it’s not even far away. The game appears to have a shortcut system of some sort, and I know this will come as a surprise, but I still have no idea how to unlock it.
The game feels like it has some other odd bugs sprinkled in just like the ones I encountered from the start of the game. There is a “go fish” game in the saloon that appears to take place at least once a week, according to the dialogue from the guy who sits at the go fish table. I was able to play a game once and win, which earned me money. I have been to the saloon damn near every night since then, and I haven’t been able to play again since. I have no idea what day they play or how I can activate it again.
The inventory management in the game is also very annoying. You have to have items in your bag if you want to craft things. It can not be in a storage chest or anything else. So when you want to craft, there is a lot of back and forth and digging through your chest inventory to see if you have everything you need. Because this was so annoying, I tried to keep a lot of the basics on me at all times. This meant that I’d also get overloaded more often and have to make more frequent stops to offload things. Combining that with a pretty slow walking speed is not great. It’s just one thing after another with Cattle Country. I played almost the entire game with a gnawing annoyance, frustration, and even some anger as I continued to trudge along and do my best so that I could give it a proper review. I stopped after two seasons and about 14 hours. This was in part because my review embargo was coming, but also because I genuinely couldn’t stomach playing any longer. I can’t imagine playing any longer would have improved my perception of the game in any way.
Is This What It’s Like When Your Straight-A Daughter Comes Home With Her First F?
Those emotions of frustration and anger come because I was genuinely excited to play Cattle Country and thrilled to be able to review it. I really adored the Blossom Tales games that this same developer made. They are essentially Zelda clones, but they are very competent and well made. Even more importantly, those games were brimming with personality. They are incredibly cute and fun games. I really enjoyed them, and I actually think they’d be a great “first Zelda” for my daughter to play down the road.
So I’m just kind of shocked at how lifeless this game is. The lack of quality of life elements and the mediocre gameplay is one thing. But I didn’t expect Cattle Country to feel so generic and bland, too. I feel like even if Cattle Country added more quality of life elements, and fixed up most of my other myriad of issues with it, this still wouldn’t be much more than a very serviceable cozy game. I’d say it’s a bit dull but competent, and maybe give it a 6.5 or a 7/10. That is not at all what I expected from this developer, and it is a massive bummer to me. I imagine as this game gets patched up over time, it will become an acceptable and decent cozy farming sim. But as it is, I’d recommend you stay far away. And even if it gets fixed up, I’m not optimistic it will really be worth your time in a genre with plenty of options.
Score: 5.0/10
Big Nerd Gaming 
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