Description of Sim Farm
SimFarm was billed as “SimCity’s Country Cousin”, yet that fails to set expectations. SimFarm simulates running a small farm (which may grow into a big farm) and plays very differently from its SimCity “cousin”.
Where SimCity favored active (but simple) play, zoning and building roads until you ran out of money, SimFarm requires a patient approach. SimFarm has plenty of buttons and levels and a high degree of nuance, but rather than actively building your farmstead, you’ll be spending much of your time planning the planting schedules for fields, choosing which crops to grow, and when to sell harvested crops.
In many ways, SimFarm presages the idle games of today. Much of the game will be spent waiting for crops to mature and be harvested; once harvested, you either sell the harvested crops right away or wait for market prices to improve (while risking further downturns and inevitable deterioration of the harvest). You are able to toggle the game speed to make things go faster, but this is a game which you play in turns both passively and actively. Patience is the key to doing well on your farm.
There are MANY different crops available in SimFarm, each of which is modelled with unique grow-times, susceptibility to pests/weeds/fungus, optimal grow temperatures, water-needs, and storability. Aligning your plantings and grow seasons with weather favorable to your selected crops and planning several seasons of appropriate crops for each field well in advance are key to a profitable farm. The husbandry aspect of SimFarm is less detailed and is more akin to a mini-game than a proper bit of gameplay. For instance, while you can raise cows, you’re not going to be able to set up a dairy farm and make that your primary business. Animals consume resources and eventually reproduce. While selling animals can supplement your income, it’s hard to make your bread & butter, especially since it’s easy to accidentally sell a “mother” before the calf/foal/lamb/piglet depicted in the mouse-over image becomes its own “animal” to be sold. If anything, animals are the most fun for the havoc that they can cause when they get out—if a fence gets blown down, a couple of cows can make pretty short work of a field.
The weak-spot for SimFarm is a lack of documentation. While the in-game help has vital statistics on crops and animals, there’s very little on HOW to do many of the activities you need to perform or schedule to keep your farm running in the black. Though the interface is not unintuitive, it may take some getting used to before you get a handle on what you’re doing. Additionally, the town has a bad habit of shrinking after new developments are voted on and constructed; there’s no indication (that I’ve found) for what causes the town to shrink or how that shrinkage (or growth) is tied to the farm’s performance. It’s usually not a problem, but if you’ve sunk the money into getting a crop-duster, it can be frustrating to find that suddenly the town’s airfield is gone.
SimFarm holds up well, and while there have been many farming games since, few farm sims take as in-depth an approach as this classic. This title may also catch the interest of idle gamers who’ll enjoy exploring this precursor to genre; a bonus for idle-gamers is that emulation will allow you run SimFarm in its own window while you multitask, waiting for your harvests to come in.
Review By P. Alexander
External links
How to play Sim Farm
- Download the SimFarms.zip file.
- Extract the Zip file to your retro games folder.
- Double-click or drag the SimFarm.exe to your DosBox launcher shortcut icon.
Awesome fan site here with guides and everything you'll need : http://www.oocities.org/timessquare/3806/simfarm/
Comments and reviews
Guest 2024-04-24 0 point
Save games aren't working right in some versions of Dosbox. If that's the case, you'll need to create a dedicated disk image for the game - and also hope that the disk image also works.
I got it working with a 250MB disk image, but I think that's a bit too large for the game.
Uberken 2021-01-23 4 points DOS version
Stilz - use Dosbox, it will run any old dos software.
Most old DOS games use 8-bit software, which will not run without emulation on Windows 7 or later, which are 32 or 64-bit depending.
cubano 2020-10-02 10 points
My best friend had the mac/pc hybrid game and brought it over and installed it for me once. I was going to download this game, but the nostalgia and memories of him got to me just seeing the screenshots. He died in 2005. :-(
katy molko 2016-03-30 -2 points
i can save my city, because this game is only a "democity".... :(
broady 2015-11-01 -6 points
Keep yor feey moving or you ass will hit the ground mother rocking disease control
Paulo josé 2014-11-30 0 point DOS version
recreate the live in farm you plant coltive and creat the animal´s the milk .... is very fun..
scarybear 2014-02-21 0 point DOS version
worked fine on Boxer, couldn't be any more happy with this!
Simfarmguy 2013-04-11 1 point DOS version
It keeps saying can't open packed script file. Tried using chrome and IE
Sara 2012-04-18 0 point DOS version
Wow this is awesome!! Thank you so much, I've been wanting to play this game again for a very long time...I'm so glad you didn't give me a virus like all my other attempts!! LOL Thanks again!
admin 2011-05-16 2 points DOS version
Changed the game archive, this is now the DOS version, patched and already installed. Thanks for the feedback.
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Download Sim Farm
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DOS Version
9 MBGame Extras
Various files to help you run Sim Farm, apply patches, fixes, maps or miscellaneous utilities.
25 KB
Windows Version
- Year: 1995
- Publisher: Maxis Software Inc.
- Developer: Leaping Lizard Software, Inc.
Mac Version
- Year: 1993
- Publisher: Maxis Software Inc.
- Developer: Leaping Lizard Software, Inc.
FM Towns Version
- Year: 1994
- Publisher: Fujitsu Limited
- Developer: Leaping Lizard Software, Inc.
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