Dinkum: How 2022 Turned Into The Year Of Slow Living Games
Dinkum is Animal Crossing, set in the outback of Australia. The characters talk in that same wibble-wobble voice, but these aren’t leopards and chickens and owls - they’re real people, people called names like ‘John.’ The story is also pretty much the same: you’ve left South City, a grim place of long hours and grey streets. You’re retreating to an island with a strange old lady called Fletch who has dreams of turning the area into some sort of paradise city where the grass is orange and the bugs are bitty.
This is a slow living game. An Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley bonanza. Except the aesthetic is different - rather than that sort of cutesy warm glow that makes you think you’re living in a perpetual Animal Crossing autumn or the long hazy summer days of Stardew Valley, Dinkum is bright, hot, and full of intense colours. There are also crocodiles. And they hate you.
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You’re tasked with building up a small bustling village on the island. Chop trees, hunt bugs, cook food, dig up treasure—we’ve all been here before. Why is it, then, that Dinkum has received close to 4,000 Overwhelmingly Positive reviews on Steam? Haven’t we all played this game before? The truth of it is that the solo developer behind Dinkum, James Bendon, has absolutely smashed it. This game seems to wrestle slow living out of the hands of Stardew and Crossing and beat them both over the head with it.
Dinkum is in its very early infancy according to the developer and its promised roadmap. If that’s the case, then this has the potential to be one of the most fully-realised games of its genre. There is already so much dangled over your head as a player, like teasing a dingo with a Dairylea, that it
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