My Farm Life

In Brief

My Farm Life is a farm management game. It was originally given away HERE via Alawar games on the 26th January 2014 where it received a positive 64% out of 413 votes with 23 comments. Check out Ilona and TopazMystigue's excellent feedback about the game HERE

Introduction:

One minute Lisa is signing a contract to be the star of a new show, and the next she's knee-deep in chores as she starts taping the first episode of My Farm Life! Plant and harvest crops, milk cows and shear sheep, and purchase equipment to produce the goods Lisa's customers want, all while smiling for the cameras. With the help of a local merchant and three super-powered assistants, Lisa should have no trouble meeting her goals in this fun Time Management game!

Reference accessed HERE. 24th May 2019

Installation:

My Farm Life downloads to a 55.3 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 62.3 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\My Farm Life

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the shortcut to the game, plus three others ''Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and a shortcut to a free online game. These latter three shortcuts can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation; there are details about this issue in the read me that unpacks from the downloaded zip file.

The Game:

My Farm Life is another farming time management game with some nice twists. When naive Lisa signs a contract to star in a new TV show, she is completely unaware that this is not for a sophisticated soap opera, but rather a farming reality show. This is the premise of My Farm Life, a game that is very similar to the Ranch Rush series, albeit with some interesting twists.

My Farm Life features 50 levels and two modes, namely casual and expert mode. Depending on how quickly you finish any level you will get an expert rating, which means more money and a better starting position for the next level. The game offers a lot of playing time and can easily compete with similar titles in this respect. For variation there is also a lasso mini-game thrown in on a regular basis where the player can earn additional money by encircling identical animals. Moreover, you can earn up to 35 achievements.

With regards to the gameplay, My Farm Life is relatively tame when it comes to innovation and originality. Crops can be planted on soil and must be watered, animals have to be fed with grass and water to produce eggs, milk, or wool, and machines will process those products into different goods. On each level you will have to fulfill different orders, but they always consist of delivering a specific number of certain products to the barn. In what is by now a standard feature of these types of games, you’re able to reorganize the farm at any time by re positioning machines, buildings, crops and other stuff wherever you want to in order to make the work a little easier and more effective for Lisa.

The interesting features introduced by My Farm Life reminded us of Farm Craft, including the ability to call helpers, the alternation of day and night as well as the aforementioned mini game. Of course the number of new features is rather limited, but they are really fun and add a lot to the game. Calling helpers is tied to your show’s rating, and the rating is increased by performing the same action multiple times in a row, for example planting or watering crops and delivering products to the barn. The higher your rating, the more skilled the helper is that you may call. Unfortunately those helpers can be too helpful, especially if they collect and deliver crops or raw products from animals to the barn which you actually need for a machine.

The alternation of day and night, on the other hand, works extremely well. Thieves (who are hired by the show’s producers!) will try to steal crops and products, and have to be chased away by your flashlight or dogs. Animals will go to sleep and stop producing during the night, and a night trader will offer various products to help you reach your goal. This adds another level of complexity to the game, and despite the lack of true innovation, the mixture of entertaining elements from other farming games works very well.

What also works incredibly well is the constant addition of new upgrades, crops, animals, and other features that will surprise you in nearly every level. Thus My Farm Life never seems to get repetitive or boring and it’s certainly an aspect that will please a lot of time management fans. The graphics of the game are charming too, and the animations of the animals are funny to watch.

In the end, My Farm Life is a solid and rewarding time management game without any outstanding features or aspects. If you are tired of farming games or never really liked this niche of the time management genre, you will probably want to pass on this game. If this does not apply to you then My Farm Life will certainly charm you with gorgeous graphics, a quirky story-line and a huge number of products, achievements, and features to keep you motivated.

Reference accessed HERE . Originally posted by David Becker on Feb 28, 2011, re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 25th Jan 2014 and again 24th May 2019

Conclusion:

My Farm Life is a typical farm oriented time management game with a cute storyline, reasonable playing time. That includes a Casual and an Expert modes with Achievements. Engaging pace. Interesting use of day and night. The helpers are a nice idea, but the execution is flawed.

Scoring:

⦁ Game-play – 7
⦁ Graphics – 7
⦁ Audio – 6 (okay but gets annoying after a while)
⦁ Replay value – 7
⦁ Originality – 6

Videos & a Slideshow of My Farm Life:

You can see a slideshow of about 25 images showing the introduction to the game with story board HERE. You’ll find videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Big Fish Games

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting My Farm Life to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away My Farm Life with the usual ads/toolbars removed and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If My Farm Life doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums). Also, check out the free games available via Indie Gala HERE , the latest additions include Antisquad and War of the Human Tanks. The latest game from Epic Games is an atmospheric adventure exploration game called RIME HERE (worth £29.99/$29.99/€34.99/₽499). The next free game via Epic Games starts on 30th May and will be City of Brass (worth £15.49/$19.99/€16.79/₽435) a first-person action adventure, inspired by the Arabian Nights, ; also, there are nine pages (15 games per page) of free games available via Steam HERE