Gaming on a Budget – Harvest Life (Nintendo Switch)

In our ongoing series of Gaming on a Budget, we look at relatively inexpensive games that you can sink hours into while saving your money for other things, whether it be more expensive, AAA titles, or just the wants and needs to life! Today, we take a look at Harvest Life, a Story of Seasons / Stardew Valley wanabe that actually does a few things really well. Let’s take a look!

In Harvest Life, you take over your grandfathers farm – think you’ve heard this one before? Well, you have, and frankly the daily grind of this farming simulation title isn’t much different than other games, except this time around everything is much more streamlined. There are no tools that you need to think about here, at least not like Harvest Moon style games. Instead, you have more main items at your disposal, and they will be used automatically when the time and place is right. These are your bucket, generator, axe, and sword. Each can be upgraded with money at the local blacksmith, with no need for ores.

Harvest Life reminds me more of a mobile style game ported to the Nintendo Switch than a game built for consoles. Everything here is streamlined to the max, and your only concerns are your health and sleepiness meters, the amount of water you are holding, the amount of animal food you are holding, and how much electricity your farm has. Outside of that, you will spend your days gathering animal byproducts, growing and harvesting crops, and putting items in your local farm stand for the residents of the town to come and purchase.

I actually like this mechanic – it forces players to grow and produce a wide variety of crops, unlike in other games where you just end up planting what is most profitable. The more variety of stock your store has, the more costumers you will get. After all, if Johnny heads to the farm to buy a pumpkin, and you don’t have any, he’s not buying something else instead. He’s just going home.

And that’s about all you need to know about Harvest Life! You can check out 1 hour 30 minutes of the game by clicking on the link above (after it’s live on January 14th at 8:00 PM EST)!