by Tim Peters

Created on: July 25, 2008   Last Updated: August 10, 2008

The great thing about video games is that they provide an escape. All you need to do is choose a video game and you can do things you wouldn't dream of in real life. You can be an astronaut, a police officer, a mayor, a pilot, a superhero, or even a criminal. In Alawar Entertainment's Virtual Farm, you can also be a farmer. But while some games have managed to turn the elements of farming into addicting gaming, Virtual Farm offers all the menial chores of agriculture without any of the fun.

The game consists of three areas: The farm, the market, and the work area. Farming requires almost no effort. All you do is click on the appropriate tool or an appropriate destination and your farmer will do the rest. Selling goods requires just a click to transfer them to the market and another click or two if you want to bother optimizing your prices. Upgrades, new crops, and processing equipment are available, but they serve little purpose other than to provide other things to click on. Occasionally you'll be asked to fill special contracts that will earn you some easy money if you can click fast enough. But as you can see, the whole game is just clicking, clicking, clicking. Any more clicking in this game, and you'd think it was a cicada simulator.

The only real challenge presented in the game is in product rotation. If you don't match your offerings to what people want, you're not going to make as much money. But even if you do decide to do this by clicking on the pricing arrows until you get a green thumbs up, there's very little to prevent you from turning a profit. Crops are usually sold no later than ten seconds after you put them up for sale. There's no maintenance costs to your farm other than replacing cash crops. The only incentive you have to improve your farm is in the upgrades and buildings you can buy. And while those upgrades to the tools look okay, they hardly make the tedious pointing and clicking any more entertaining. And the sounds and music are just plain dull. There's absolutely no reason to recommend this game to anyone.

While many games offer the ability to manage various types of businesses, they often turn out to be no better than a spreadsheet with a user-friendly makeover. With more interesting features, Virtual Farm might have escaped this monotonous rut. Instead, Alawar Entertainment gives us more of the same in a different package, so it gets a 1 out of 5.

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