Farming (or on this case, ranching) simulators are a dime a dozen now, and Cattle Nation doesn’t fairly do sufficient to face out within the practically oversaturated style regardless of doing a number of issues fairly nicely.
Welcome to Cattle Nation
In Cattle Nation, gamers are shifting to a small, Western settlement to begin up a ranch. I bought my fingers on the preview, which options the primary week of play. The playable week highlights the Welcoming Committee, a bunch of townspeople who will introduce you to areas round city. On the finish of the week, there’s a competition to shut the chapter.
That’s the place the beta ends (though, I used to be capable of restart the competition over and over because it was fairly buggy and would restart as a substitute of ending).
For essentially the most half, Cattle Nation performs like what you’d anticipate. A day consists of caring for your crops and livestock, speaking to the village folks, exploring, and mining.
The Good Aspect of the Western Entrance
The aesthetics of Cattle Nation are cute, particularly on the precise farm. Adorning and designing have been a few of the highlights of the sport for me, although the Cattle Nation beta provides gamers fairly a little bit of indoor and out of doors objects to embellish and construct with proper from the beginning.
One other facet of gameplay that stands out is the mining. It’s very distinctive for the style, with a vertical, blocky design that’s extra paying homage to Terraria or Minecraft than any widespread farming sim. This wasn’t a nasty factor, and it’s a giant bonus for the opposite vanilla elements of Cattle Nation.
Cattle Nation can be very strong about its theme. The Western font is unimaginable to disregard, and each participant has a heavy accent and lingo to match. Whereas this might be a bit overdone, I favored the truth that it stayed true to what it goals to be.
Cattle Nation’s Individuals Had been Fascinating, However Sparse
The most important downside with Cattle Nation was simply the village. Indie farming sims are largely beloved due to the folks inside them. Probably the most profitable titles perceive and make the most of this, and Cattle Nation doesn’t hit the mark.
Practically each NPC within the beta is a romanceable NPC. It seems like a spot for the recent singles emigrate to, and there are only a few folks exterior of them. This makes the city really feel actually shallow and prefer it’s constructed across the participant as a substitute of a spot the participant is shifting to.
It doesn’t assist that the NPCs don’t actually go anyplace. They largely stood round and didn’t really feel like that they had any goal within the recreation besides to exist for the participant to speak to. It doesn’t really feel such as you’re a part of a neighborhood in any respect, and it actually hampers how immersed you will get.
Nonetheless, the Welcoming Committee of characters who gamers can spend time with all through the week was very well-written. It’s unlucky that the city feels so shallow when the writing of the characters feels so deep.
General, Cattle Nation Has Some Main Beta Woes
Cattle Nation remains to be in beta, so there’s a very good likelihood that the problems may be labored out. Contemplating the excessive elements of gameplay, it will be actually nice if Cattle Nation felt extra immersive by launch – cozy farming sims is likely to be round each nook, however these of us who love them will preserve taking part in them.
Cattle Nation was previewed over roughly 3 hours of gameplay on PC with a key supplied by builders. All screenshots have been taken throughout the preview course of.
