I realize stardew valley has become the de facto farming game inspiration for all indies now but what I really desperately want is a game inspired by the sickos.png part of rune factory where each individual soil plot on your farm has both a level (and can level up from being used repeatedly) AND tracks soil nutrient values to force you to rotate crops and also the dirt has a Defense stat for how likely it is to be destroyed by hurricanes AND individual seeds/crops have levels and you can selectively breed crops to make them higher level and then they sell for more and make stronger food and also higher level crops give the soil more xp so that you can grow better crops more easily so that y
- she/her
- auratriolo.com/
Animation Lead on Wanderstop! She/Her & Transgenderrific! Past: Radial Games, Gaslamp Games
Mastodon
mastodon.social/@MOOMANiBEYou must log in to comment.
in reply to @MOOMANiBE's post:
who called it rune factory instead of soilsport
there was a gardening game like this, casual, maybe even popcap, early 2010s era mobile
found it! Plant Tycoon https://store.steampowered.com/app/16120/Plant_Tycoon/
also it's out of date (2018) but Max Kreminski made a great Gardening Games zine for gdc2018 https://mkremins.itch.io/gardening-games-zine
Max Kreminski: Gardening as a Mode of Play https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvlZinAvpwg
I dont think it's held in high esteem but Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley on 3DS (the non marvelous/minecraft inspired one) had some really interesting soil->crop variant mechanics and I think it's a lowkey underrated farming sim
speccing the dirt into a class and reincarnating it disgaea style to make more number numbers more bigger
Sakuna (of Rice and Ruin) definitely has some interests in these directions. See eg this screenshot.
It's about 2/3rds combat and 1/3rd farming, though, so not sure it's exactly what you're looking for. :)