Yes, yes one of the best ever games here. Thanks Stephen and everyone making it possible.

I've played this game for a few hours since downloading. I'm finding that it just goes on and on. The farmer moves more quickly and the harvesting and digging get faster as upgrades become available. I would like definite "levels" rather than stray awards that seem to arrive out of the blue.
There isn't enough room on the farm for all the different buildings but there doesn't seem to be an upgrade for more space.
I really enjoy time management games but I'm finding this one a little frustrating.

........................Moderator Comment.............................

Thank you for your feedback.

I am a day late in leaving this. Sorry!

Downloaded and play for less than an hour. Seems to be an interesting game. I did had to play the game in a window, could not play full screen. Could be something with my laptop (Win7 professional/ Acer Aspire) or a conflict with something I already have. Not much of a big deal. Even playing in window mode it was still interesting. Just a few things I noticed. The farmer harvest grass? Really was it to hard for the developer to check some farm websites or blogs? Farmers harvest hay NOT grass. Yes I know this is not really important but from someone who grew up (and still lives) on a farm these little differences are annoying.

Still an interesting a fun game for kids. Maybe it will teach them that food does not come from the local Wal-Mart store.

Even with the part that annoyed me I give this game 5 stars.

........................Moderator Comment.............................

Thanks for the feedback. sorry for the late comment from me

@Marie: I also use Kapersky and have no problems to install/run this or any another game. When you have such problems it looks you´re settings are really not in order.

Downloaded on my Dell laptop Win 8.1, but would not extract properly. After extracting and trying to run Setup, it would try to extract the program with WinRar, leading to an error message. Not the first time GOTD files have not run properly on this system (does fine on my Win7).

No problems in Vista 32SP1. The game may plod along at the start but certainly becomes more hectic farther along; though I thought it unnecessarily complicating to have to keep switching screens to keep track of events (and since you can't queue up production for your livestock you're constantly jumping back to that screen). And the stupid farmer will as happily plow under crops as harvest them. I've yet to decide whether the "fun factor" outweighs the irritants.

...........................Moderator Comment..............................

Thanks for the feedback jgf

@ Artur - do you by any chance have Kaspersky for your AV?
I used to have it (while it was on free trial for my new computer) and I would get that same error every week. Had to completely turn it off/ install the game in safe mode/ then re-enable it. I tried all the settings and it would always flag the setup.exe to only be read only even when I set it otherwise.

When I was looking for what could be wrong I saw several others had problems while running Kaspersky also.


If you don't have it, maybe could be your antivirus or firewall? The forums that whiterabbit point to are very good for looking for solutions :)

...........................Moderator Comment..............................

Thanks for the feedback Marie. hopefully Artur will be able to get the game installed.

It's a nice little diversion. At first it seemed relaxing but I feel that the farmer needs an assistant to help him fulfil all those contracts! I agree it's great for a coffee break. Thank you for this one as we don't always need the frantic pace of some of the other games.

...........................Moderator Comment..............................

Thanks for the feedback DJ

Is anyone else unable to change the price on their goods? I go to the 'marketplace' screen, when displays the price and demand and so forth. Beside the price there are up and down arrows, but clicking on them doesn't do anything, the price stays at $2. I've tried when I have the goods freshly stored, when I haven't had those goods, before and after I 'transfer' goods for sale... never does anything. What am I missing?

...........................Moderator Comment..............................

Hi Beth, I have no problems changing the price. Are you clicking the up and down arrows?

i.e.

#5: "The farmer is very slow, you can line up the work you want done by him (which is a good option), get yourself a cup of coffee and watch him him mowing, digging and sowing. Sell your stuff and watch him again."

Thanks Irene. I'll pass the info on... If my wife was expecting a fast paced time mgmt she too would have been disappointed, but now she can wait until she's in the mood for a slower paced game -- like WR she likes those too. :)

* * *

#10: "Thought it would be a good game for my grandchildren but it won’t open. Keeps giving a “buffer” error — and this is using the best computer I have (Windows 8). Uninstalled."

Just a wild guess but using your best machine may be the problem. Remember up top WR said the hardware specs are Old, e.g. DX 8.

....................Moderator comment.........................


Thanks for answering those queries.

Hello Moderator. I can't use another file archiver. I wrote that I unzip file from the site without problems by the 7zip archiver. If I can do this, that's mean my file archiver is ok. Am I right? Then I got the files setup.exe, setup.gcd. I click setup.exe. After that the activating process goes ok. After this step it's shows Win-RAR archiver, which I can't choose, because it's in the setup.exe. I don't have Win-RAR on my computer. I normally use 7zip. How can I use another file archiver in this step?

....................Moderator comment.........................

Hi Artur, misread your original query. If it's already unzipped, then it must be another problem. did you check the event viewer directly after trying to install. Thee may have been some information that could shed light on the problem

Cute, but I seem to be having some trouble with the game sticking---when I go to the cowshed to transfer some grass to milk, a window bubble comes up with instructions for demolishing or upgrading the building, but it won't go away, and I can't click back on the farm or market icons to continue. I have to exit and restart the game. It's happened three times already. It may be that I'm doing something wrong (I've never been a TM fan so I might be unfamiliar with something here). I would like to give this a shot. The music's kinda cute :).

Thought it would be a good game for my grandchildren but it won't open. Keeps giving a "buffer" error -- and this is using the best computer I have (Windows 8). Uninstalled. Hope others have better luck.

Downloaded and ran quite well on my XP3 machine. I also used WinRar to unzip but had no problems with it. I played the game for about 30 minutes but the tediousness set in rather quickly. I kept waiting for a level to be completed but then understood that it was a sim game and not my cup of tea(or coffee this early in the morning for me). Thanks, Stephen, for your work and also to the GGotD team. It gives this old lady something to look forward to each weekend.

Perfect little game to play with my grandsons, thank you

H o w ... s l o w ... c a n ... y o u ... g o ? S...u...p...e...r ... s...l...o...w!

I tried the coffee thing mentioned by Irene up there and it true True TRUE!

ILIKEGAMESTHATAREFAST! No games that are

S

L

O

W

.

Oh, well, maybe we will have a FAST game tomorrow, huh?

After unzip VirtualFarm.zip and run setup.exe, succesful activating process, I saw the WinRAR unzip self-extracting window. After click "Extract" I saw this: "The archive is either in unknown format or damaged". What's wrong?

....................Moderator comment.........................

Hello Artur, check the FAQ's that I've linked to at the end of the main review (see comment number 1). Sometimes using a different file archiver will sort the problem

Because I enjoy playing Farm Frenzy, I thought this would be something for me too.

After playing it over an hour I find it a bit boring.
The farmer is very slow, you can line up the work you want done by him (which is a good option), get yourself a cup of coffee and watch him him mowing, digging and sowing. Sell your stuff and watch him again.
Especially the digging takes a long time.

I'll try it later to see whether the feel maybe changes. ;)

....................Moderator comment.........................

Hi Irene, generally I don't like time management games, apart from most of the farm management games (must have been a farmer in a past life). I found the slower pace was more agreeable, less stressful, and therefore more enjoyable. That said, we all have different ideas as to what constitutes an enjoyable game.

Thank you for a fun game. I'm not a heavy gamer, but like games that I can start and stop quickly and easily.

....................Moderator comment.........................

:D

Hey, Stephen! PC Gamer are giving away 10,000 free Steam keys for the game 'pid', for retro-gaming fans (keyboard controlled game). Check the site, and my comments there: http://sharewareonsale.com/s/might-and-delight-pid-sale.

....................Moderator comment.........................

Thanks for the heads up Mac, I already have the game; but, will tell my kids to get a key for their Steam accounts. Hopefully community members into the Steam client will benefit from your info.

:)

Hi. I don't know if we, the users, should post info about bandles but I got this info in an email and I thought that maybe it would interest some people. If it is not appropriate or something, please delete my comment.

The text of the email and the link:
http://www.gog.com/newsletter/2014_summer_newsletter

2014 DRM-FREE SUMMER SALE
BEGINS NOW!

200
FLASH DEALS
UP TO 90% OFF

Constant stream of amazing, time-limited offers.

+
30
DAILY DEALS
UP TO 85% OFF

Two new bundles of games each day for 24 hours only!

+
700
GREAT GAMES
UP TO 50% OFF

Available throught whole 2014 DRM-FREE Summer Sale.


Stay tuned to GOG.com during the Sale for some great suprises! :)

....................Moderator comment.........................

No problem Watcher. not seen you for a while. hope all's well? Thanks for the info. will check them out to make sure the sites are safe. Will delete if i find problems. :) Check out my links. there's loads of fantastic deals 9usually every week now). Steam start their summer sale on the 19th or 20th (I've been told), Gamersgate are already well into their summer sale and all of the other sites I've linked to have lots of good deals. It's best not to post links as they tend to get sifted out by the spam filter. I add my links once I've posted the basic review.

Virtual Farm:

Installation:

Virtual Farm downloads to a 30.9 MB zip file that unpacks to a read me and a wrapped setup file (the orange colored file with the key symbol), plus there's a setup file with security (setup.gcd) that's protected from being hacked (because the previous giveaway system was easily cracked). This file may case some security software to alert the user to a possible malware attack, but it will be a false positive.

The game giveaway team check all game giveaways for malware using several well known anti -malware suites. There has never been a game giveaway infected with malware since the project started back in Dec 2006. (The owners know that allowing such things would compromise their business, so they make sure all software given away via the giveaway and gamegiveaway sites are thoroughly checked for all types of malware before allowing community members to download any files.

To register and install the game click on the orange colored icon. The installed game is 23.5 MB in size. and installs to the following path by default:


C:\Games\VirtualFarm_game

The path can be changed to any path you prefer, for example I always save my games to either my G or J drives ((I have several hard drives in my main computer). Once the game is installed you can delete the giveaway setup files. There,s no shortcut installed to the so yopu'll need to remeber where you installed the game so that you can create one.


I've tested the game on a Win 7 and Win 8 systems and it works on both

Introduction:

Yee-haw. Slip into the tractor seat and turn a small farm into a booming business. Choose your Virtual Farm crops, then till your ground and water your fields. Harvest your produce and take your goods to market. Once there, set the prices and keep a close eye on demand. With tons of upgrades to earn, you`ve got plenty of customers to satisfy in this hillbilly Time Management game. Virtual Farm will have your entire family squealing like, well, pigs.

Reference accessed HERE 14th June 2014

You can play the game online for free HERE to see if it's worth downloading


The Game:

Have you ever wanted to run your own farm? Here is your chance in the new game Virtual Farm. Till your fields and plant your crops to see if you can turn a run down farm into a prosperous business in this cute simulation game.

You play as an old farmer who has inherited a farm in dire need of your help. The only successful crop growing on the farm is grass. A green thumb, a healthy dose of patience and a keen eye on the market will help you to turn the grass into profits and thereby expand your crops to include new vegetables, fruits and flowers. As you earn money, you can purchase additional plots for more crops, up to a total of 60 beds.

Although you have to start small and be content growing grass and tomatoes to sell, eventually you’ll earn enough dough to really get things moving! New farm equipment will be available for purchase. Get a new tiller to help fertilize the ground, upgrade your harvester to help you get those crops to market faster, build a larger storage center to keep goods on hand until their demand is high and even trade in your watering can for a far-reaching hose. Who could ask for more?

But there is more! Not only can you grow a wide variety of crops but you can also build support structures to turn your produce into other goods. Take all of that boring grass and feed it to your cows. They’ll produce milk which can be sold for a lot more than the grass. You can even purchase a churn and turn the milk into fresh butter.

Other produce can be used with different buildings as well. Cucumbers can be fed to the sheep that will produce wool. Sell the wool as it is or purchase a spinnery and weave the wool into fine textiles. Have a lot of tomatoes on hand? Great! Build another pen and feed the tomatoes to your pigs. You’ll be able to sell meat at the market for a huge profit. More support buildings will become available as you progress through the game, constantly increasing the potential earnings of the farm.

Locals will contact you and ask for specific harvests. Sign contracts with them and deliver the goods on time for the biggest profits. Fail to deliver in a timely manner will result in the loss of your cash deposit on the contract, which could spell certain doom for your farm.

Another aspect of the game that can make or break your farm is the market demand feature. Every few minutes, the demand for various products will change at the market. If you keep an eye on these demand levels, you can charge exorbitant prices for any of your products when the demand is very high. This can give you a much needed cash boost now and then. Just be sure to reset your prices lower when the demand goes down, or you’ll end up with stockpiles of product that just won’t sell.

I found the game remarkably similar to Alice Greenfingers in many ways, though without the high level of customization for your farm. The overall premise is the same – plant stuff, harvest stuff, sell stuff, make money, buy stuff, wash, rinse, repeat. And, as with Alice Greenfingers, toward the end of the game, the tediousness set in. Endless harvesting of plants as quickly as possible over and over and over again, just to keep up.

One other frustrating aspect of Virtual Farm is that although there are a lot of different production buildings you can purchase, there doesn’t seem to be a way to fit all of them into the lot at one time. I could be missing something, but I wasn’t able to have all of them going at once. This became a big problem as the tasks later on call for a wide variety of products and I had to demolish certain buildings to make room for others and then switch them back later on, at great cost.

Reference accessed 14th June 2014











Images & Video:


You can see a slideshow of about 50 images, showing the initial prompt screens etc HERE

You can see several video's of Virtual Farm HERE, HERE and HERE,

System Requirements:

Operating System - Windows /XP/Vista/7
Processor - 900 Mhz or better
System RAM - 256 Mb
Video RAM - 16 Mb
Direct X - DirectX 8.1 or higher

The above specs relate to computers from about 10 to 15 years ago.




Conclusion:

I've spent 3 interesting hours playing this game this morning before I posted the complete review. I definitely recommend this game. On first look I tohught it looked rather basic, but there was quite alot of tasks to complete. One of the beauties of this game is that there's no real end to it. You can continue to work your farm indefinitely it seems although once you’ve purchased all of the upgrades, there isn’t much else to do aside from sell the produce. If you enjoy farm and growing sims like Alice Greenfingers and Farm Frenzy, then you’ll probably get a kick out of Virtual Farm. It’s at least worth downloading for free. :)

Problems:

If you are posting late in the day I would also suggest posting in the main giveaway forums, in the game discussion section because I cannot moderate 24hrs a day over the weekend. If you've installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn't guaranteed). Sometimes you can still register the game after the giveaway has ended so long as you managed to start the download before the giveaway ends. I've tested this and sometimes the grace period lasts for up to 2 hours, but more often than not 1 hour is the norm.

It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them. MyPlayCity has the most with over 1000 games to choose from. Today's game is available 24/7 from MyPlayCity and Jenkat Game . Please do remember to un-check any boxes during installation otherwise you may find one of several things happening, e.g. toolbars installed, home page changed, browser changed, files installed over several locations on your computer (Jenkat). All of these can be reversed, but can be an annoyance. You browser will be opened when you close a game from these sites down, but it's innocuous.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Games, Games, and yet more Games plus Download, Installation & Game play Problems:






If you have any problems installing or getting to work today's game please go HERE for help. I've posted all of the common problems and solutions in a FAQ thread, which you can find in the sticky section of the forums by following the above link.





There's well over 100 games on sale over on Steam at the moment with discounts from 9% to 90%. You'll find all the deals via the Specials tab on Steams front page HERE. The usual weekend sales include between 33 to 66% off the Wargame franchise (Airland Battle, European Escalation and Red Dragon), 75% off the Indie Game The Movie bundle (Super Meat Boy, FEZ, Braid, Indie Game: The movie plus dlc), and 50% off Thief. Thew latest 48hr deal is 50% off Platformines, 62% off Pro Evolution soccer 2014, 75% off the Serious Sam complete pack (you can buy most of the game sin the pack separately), 50% off all other thief games, 50% off Drunken Robot Pornography (yesterdays 48hr deal that ends later today), 70% off shadow Warrior, 60% off 3DMark, 75% off Jade Empire, 50% off VVVVV, 50% off Kinetic Void, 50% off Worms Revolution Gold Edition, 85% off Velvet Assassin, 90% off Puzzle Indie Pack (), 50% off Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition, 75% off Warp, 60% off Hotline Miami, 80% off Waking Mars, 50% off shadow Warrior Redux, 75% off Hard Truck Apocalypse: Rise of Clans, 50% off Tex Murphy franchise, 66% off Trapped Dead, 75% off Gemini Wars, 60% off Foul Play, 75% Hacker Evolution Duality, as well as many more.

You'll also find some excellent deals over on the following Game sites, some of which have summer sales on. (Steams summer sale starts next week):

GreenManGaming
Gamersgate Summer Sale
GOG
Desura
Gamestop
GameFly

To be honest there are too many game deals around too list them all. Just visit the sites I recommend above and I'm sure you'll find something that suits you for a very decent price. If like me you prefer Steamworks games, many of the above sites also sell steamwork games.

If that's not enough, check out the Game Discussion forums HERE for details of other games either free or on deals such as the Indie Game bundles (there's over 20 of them - If you purchased all of them you'd be paying around $80 for around a thousand dollars worth of games); or check out the four day sales at IndieGameStand. I've updated the Indie Game bundle thread to include all the latest bundles. you'll find that thread HERE.

The latest IndieGameStand game is Blasted Fortress, a physics-based castle assault game with an added layer of resource management. This bundle ends around 5am Monday GMT.

The latest Daily Indie game is Skyward Collapse, at the moment you can get two keys if you pay more than $1.2; (one for a friend or family member perhaps?). You'll find that deal HERE. They also have a bundle of several games that'll cost you less than $1.50 HERE

Most of the bundles retail for around $5 give or take a few dollars, but you can pay as little as a dollar for some.

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A Request for helpl>:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of 'potential' cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you've checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

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