Farming (or on this case, ranching) simulators are a dime a dozen now, and Cattle Nation doesn’t fairly do sufficient to face out within the practically oversaturated style regardless of doing a number of issues fairly nicely.
Welcome to Cattle Nation
In Cattle Nation, gamers are shifting to a small, Western settlement to begin up a ranch. I obtained my arms on the preview, which options the primary week of play. The playable week highlights the Welcoming Committee, a gaggle of townspeople who will introduce you to areas round city. On the finish of the week, there’s a pageant to shut the chapter.
That’s the place the beta ends (though, I used to be capable of restart the pageant again and again because it was fairly buggy and would restart as a substitute of ending).
For probably the most half, Cattle Nation performs like what you’d count on. A day consists of taking good care of your crops and livestock, speaking to the village folks, exploring, and mining.
The Good Facet of the Western Entrance
The aesthetics of Cattle Nation are cute, particularly on the precise farm. Adorning and designing had been a few of the highlights of the sport for me, although the Cattle Nation beta offers gamers fairly a little bit of indoor and outside objects to embellish and construct with proper from the beginning.
One other side of gameplay that stands out is the mining. It’s very distinctive for the style, with a vertical, blocky design that’s extra harking back to Terraria or Minecraft than any well-liked farming sim. This wasn’t a foul factor, and it’s an enormous bonus for the opposite vanilla components of Cattle Nation.
Cattle Nation can also be very stable about its theme. The Western font is inconceivable to disregard, and each participant has a heavy accent and lingo to match. Whereas this might be a bit overdone, I favored the truth that it stayed true to what it goals to be.
Cattle Nation’s Folks Have been Fascinating, However Sparse
The largest drawback with Cattle Nation was simply the village. Indie farming sims are largely beloved due to the folks inside them. Probably the most profitable titles perceive and make the most of this, and Cattle Nation doesn’t hit the mark.
Practically each NPC within the beta is a romanceable NPC. It appears like a spot for the new singles emigrate to, and there are only a few folks exterior of them. This makes the city really feel actually shallow and prefer it’s constructed across the participant as a substitute of a spot the participant is shifting to.
It doesn’t assist that the NPCs don’t actually go anyplace. They principally stood round and didn’t really feel like that they had any function within the sport besides to exist for the participant to speak to. It doesn’t really feel such as you’re a part of a neighborhood in any respect, and it actually hampers how immersed you will get.
Nonetheless, the Welcoming Committee of characters who gamers can spend time with all through the week was very well-written. It’s unlucky that the city feels so shallow when the writing of the characters feels so deep.
Total, Cattle Nation Has Some Main Beta Woes
Cattle Nation continues to be in beta, so there’s a superb likelihood that the problems will be labored out. Contemplating the excessive components of gameplay, it will be actually nice if Cattle Nation felt extra immersive by launch – cozy farming sims is perhaps round each nook, however these of us who love them will hold taking part in them.
Cattle Nation was previewed over roughly 3 hours of gameplay on PC with a key supplied by builders. All screenshots had been taken in the course of the preview course of.
