My Life on a Farm 3D Review (3DS eShop)

My Life on a Farm 3D is standing proof that you can take a poor game concept and, with the proper lack of care and ingenuity, rework it into something that is just as poor as — if not potentially worse than — its source.

Life on the farm feels a lot like life in a previous TREVA title, Me & My Pets 3D. This is because the environment of My Life on a Farm 3D is almost directly lifted from its predecessor, from your lonely house to the nearly deserted neighbouring town. Changes come in the form of some colours and decorations, as well as new locations that look painted in with a cheap program. In fact, a lot of the assets from this game, including animal images, vaguely call back to the time someone tried to restore that fresco of Jesus. The whole thing feels like a quick pave-over of the other game, and the fact that the end-of-day screen still says your location is a pet hotel instead of a farm is only further evidence of this.

Just like Me & My Pets, people will wander onto your farm with requests of you. Instead of taking care of animals this time, they will want certain amounts of farm-produced goods within a certain time. Such sensible orders include “21 down and 5 strawberry cupcake” or “49 honeycomb and 5 cashew cookies.” Acquiring these goods is all about tapping. Things just seem to grow naturally around your farm as you need them. There’s no ordering, no planting. You just tap on something to pick it up. Well, unless it’s not ready, of course. It’s there, looking fully visible and ripe, but tapping on it will tell you to wait a certain number of in-game hours. Showing an “in process” version of the material or simply not showing it at all until it’s ready would’ve been less frustrating, but boy howdy now that’d just make too much sense!

Things that aren’t just foraged from your land take slightly more effort to process, but the same minimal amount of brainpower. Certain crops are gathered by running over them in a set path with your tractor, steered by the touch screen or motion controls. When you need objects from animals, you don’t actually buy or breed them. That’s not farm life! You just buy them for cheap off of people who wander onto your farm. That will then give you access to the dull touch screen mini-games you need to gather things like eggs, milk, or wood.

When you want to make your strawberry cupcakes or cashew cookies, it’s a manner of having the recipes and materials. Recipes are picked up in the town’s cafeteria, because nothing says homemade, farm-fresh goodness better than cafeteria food. An impressive number of recipes are available, but they are unfortunately confusingly organized and there isn’t any real “cooking” performed; if you have the ingredients, you just drag them onto the slots in your kitchen and come back later to find it in your inventory.

You can also complete orders to earn money to upgrade your animal pens and buy items for your creatures. Or don’t, since you can also cash in play coins for $100 a pop. Scenarios are often dependent on things other than orders, but finishing them doesn’t really yield any sense of satisfaction, either. The animals also share the same short, canned animations that were seen in Me & My Pets, so don’t expect to be drawn to any favourites.

The music for My Life on the Farm 3D is just about as obnoxious as Me & My Pets, replacing the bossa nova scat with a repetitive “Who-oa whoa!” The title screen has no music at all; just the bug-eyed, soleless stares of animals wondering what you’re doing here.