Originally Posted July 7th 2014 on the Seafoam Gaming Forums

Title: My Arctic Farm

System: Wii U (eShop)

Price: 7.99

Release date: 6/26/2014

The main game/story

The third in BiP Media’s farm series, this game is about you, the player, who takes control of a farm in the middle of the arctic! And that’s pretty much the story. It’s a simple farm simulation, though this particular one might be a bit less of a simulation since I don’t think there can be arctic farms, but that’s besides the point.

Graphics

The intro to the game is told through a very nice and well detailed comic book cutscene. It’s clear the developers put a ton of care into this short little cutscene, and it’s well done. The main game unfortunately takes place in a 3D world, and while some animals look good (Like the snow owl or seal), others look downright strange (like the penguins and polar bears). Your assistants that give you tips and advice also look mediocre at best. Luckily the gamepad interface is clean and looks nice, and menus are easy to navigate.

Music and sound effects:

The music in this game is mostly quiet for the most part. Nothing intense or extreme, just quiet peaceful music, that fits the theme of being in an icy wonderland well. Sound effects go where they belong, the gamepad making a “click” noise whenever you tap something.

Gameplay

What really surprised me about this game, is that it’s quite addictive! It starts out with a simple penguin, which you must watch, feed and make sure it’s happy. When time goes by (You can speed it up if you are absolutely certain), it’ll begin to lay eggs to sell. And when you sell those eggs, you get more money, which you’ll need for food, medicine and more animals. You buy more animals, feed them whenever they are sick, sell whatever they produce, and that’s pretty much the entire game.

It’s not the most well made game of it’s kind, but it is a lot of fun to just go crazy selling items and completing the little tasks you are sometimes assigned to do (Like building a den, getting a certain amount of an animal, etc). You level up, too, which gets you even MORE stuff to sell or mess around with. It’s one of those “simple, yet fun” games that work very well, and it’s fun once you get past some of the minor problems in the game, such as the fact that whenever you tap the touch screen during a text conversation, it disappears. It’s so easy to accidentally be in the middle of feeding an animal only to skip a potentially important text prompt! Besides that, it can be entertaining for it’s intended target audience.

Conclusion

In the end, My Arctic Farm is a decent simulation game, that gets the job done of being addictive and entertaining. However, after a while it quickly begins to get boring, and then you’ll put it away for another day. At it’s current price, I only recommend it if you like the Arctic theme, and if you like these sorts of games or have kids/friends who do. I give My Arctic Farm a 5 out of 10.

Thanks to BiP Media for the review code.