Developer: Mens Sana Interactive
Release Date: April 30, 2021
MSRP: $1.99
Island Farmer is the middle child in Mens Sana Interactive’s minimalist farmer series of games, and eschews the logic elements of the other two games. Instead, this game is part jigsaw puzzle, part memory game. The game shows you what your island farm should look like, then you hit play and the pieces get scrambled so that you can click and swap to put it back together properly.
It’s as simple as it sounds, but the graphical style is lovely. It’s a low-stakes Zen sort of experience; there are no timers and no move limits. When pieces are put back where they belong, they sparkle lightly. If you can’t remember exactly how the level should look, there’s a picture button at the top of the screen which will show you an overly of the properly arrangement. It would have been nice to have a distinct sound effect for when a tile snaps into the correct spot (rather than the generic one that you hear every time you complete a swap), and the sparkle effect could be a bit more noticeable, but if you like the concept, there’s really nothing here to dislike.
Steam achievements indicate that there are 28 levels, eight of which were added after the game’s release. I was in no rush, and completed about half that in a little more than an hour, so you can expect the entire game to take somewhere between 2-3 hours, depending on how quickly you work, and how good your visual memory is. That seems reasonable enough for the low price point. It’s not deep gameplay, but Island Farmer is a lovely experience, and a perfect coffee break sort of game.
SteamDB estimates that Island Farmer has sold somewhere between 4,100 and a 11,300 copies on Steam. It’s rated Very Positive, with the handful of negative reviews mainly complaining that the game isn’t something other than what the description indicates. It is ranked 735 out of 10,967 games released in 2021.
Nerd Girl Thoughts 