Coziness, control, and crops: Farming simulators are the ultimate escapism

digitaltrends.com:

Stardew Valley, a 2016 indie game that places the player into the role of a farmer after they inherit a farm from their grandfather, has become one of the most popular and influential games over the last few years — with that influence impacting the indie space and major companies like Nintendo. Offering players the chance to “create the farm of [their] dreams”, the game’s polished farming system and open-ended story has earned the game a lot of well-earned love. So much so, that as of March 2022, 20 million copies of Stardew Valley have sold across all platforms.

The success of Stardew Valley certainly stands as a great reminder of just how popular farming games can be, and have been, even for titles where farming may just be one aspect of the larger game. And with a number of farming games set to be released in the next few years, including Square Enix’s Harvestella and indie title PuffPals: Island Skies, a question comes to mind in the wake of Stardew Valley’s popularity. What exactly is behind farming games’ continuous staying power?

To answer this question, I spoke with a handful of passionate players (and even people in the agriculture space) to get a better understanding of what stands out to them as the major draws of farming games — a genre that lets players take full control over their digital world.

From franchises like Farming Simulator that present a very real-world farming experience to titles like Stardew Valley that blend farming gameplay into an RPG story, the gamut of the farming genre is pretty wide and varied in what it can offer to players.

These games offer players the chance to have total control over their own farm, often at a slower pace of play. This includes crop selection, harvesting, animal