With all the farming sims in the gaming scene, I do wish we had more scifi themed titles. Just imagine the potential? I could use robots to plow the fields for me, and all sorts!
I can only think of one scifi farming sim. That was Innocent Life for the Sony Playstation Portable. I have been playing it more in recent months (Emulation is a wonderful thing!) and despite the enormous grind and unskippable cutscenes when I’m forced to watch the characters walk slowly from one area to another, I love the game’s atmosphere and worldbuilding.
Why am I going down this weird trip down memory lane? If I don’t review a futuristic farming sim now, my beginning will be wasted. Thankfully, I am going somewhere with this, and today’s episode of Scar Tries features my opening experience with The Last Craftsman. A code was provided by AuraTummyache through Keymailer for this piece, thank you for that! It is available in Early Access.
While The Last Craftsman has been well received on Steam, it seems to be criminally overlooked with only a handful of reviews. That’s a shame, because this is an impressive crafting sim packed with features. While it is more designed around research and development than farming, you can still make a ton of money through crops. The advantage of all the future technology comes into play here, as much of the grind that other farming sims possess do not apply here. Crops grow without the need to water them every day, and you can automate a lot of production. This gives you more time to explore the expansive map The Last Craftsman offers. It did not take long for me to realize just how much effort AuraTummyache has put into his game.
The basics of the genre are all present here. You are the new craftsman in the town of Gear Springs after the previous architect died, so it is down to you to deal with the whims of the citizens! The map is fairly large and split into several zones, and offers a ton of places to explore. The biggest strength of The Last Craftsman for me is the research system. Items come with dozens of different properties such as Plain, Cute, Fruit, and so on, and you have to tailor the town’s needs to those properties. Fortunately the research mechanic helps this a lot, and by sacrificing resources, you gain more knowledge and the ability to craft new things. It is a simple gameplay loop but that is the beauty of it. I just found myself eager to keep exploring.
I have reviewed a lot of farming sims on here the last couple of years. The Last Craftsman might not be the most refined, but it is probably the most refreshing. I was not sure about it when I first started playing it, but a few hours in and it really left an impression on me. For $10, you can not do much wrong with that price, and there is more than enough in The Last Craftsman to keep your interest.
