You know how Microsoft Flight Simulator uses real-world map data to let you fly anywhere you want in the entire world? Well, what if a farming game did that, but instead of flying over the map you could grow asparagus on it? Huh? What if?
Okay, maybe Global Farmer doesn't pack the same thrill as a flight sim that simulates the entire planet, and as you're about to find out, it's nowhere near as pretty. But it's still kind of a cool concept. Is there a park in your neighborhood? You can load it up in the game and grow onions all over it. That's a thing you can do.
I personally had loftier aspirations in Global Farmer than turning the old baseball field at the end of my block into a zucchini patch. My first thought was actually to turn The White House lawn into a peanut farm, in tribute to our 100-year-old former president Jimmy Carter. Unfortunately, I couldn't get Washington DC to load into Global Farmer, perhaps due to the huge amount of parks and green spaces (over 3000, apparently) that the game has to convert into simulated farmland. I also tried Stonehenge, but when I loaded it up it didn't even show those big-ass rocks (some call them stones) that make Stonehenge one of the world's top 50 henges.
I finally settled on Liberty Island, home to the Statue of Liberty in New York (even though she's very clearly loitering off the coast of New Jersey). Lady Liberty didn't quite come to life in the game: I can see the huge base of the statue, but not the giant green torch-and-tablet bearer herself.
Eh, close enough. Let's just pretend the statue is being cleaned of all that green gunk or that she just strolled away as per the climactic and not at all stupid events of Ghostbusters 2.
My first task is to build an actual farmhouse, which I discover I can't actually do on Liberty Island for reasons I don't quite get. I look for a suitable spot on the coastline of New Jersey, though I can't find a good spot in Flag Plaza, or along Freedom Way… jeez, we really laid it on thick when naming stuff around here, huh? I finally find a spare lot to build on, which Google Maps informs me is the location of the less-than patriotic sounding Sysco Metro New York Food Distributor & Restaurant Supplies. Let freedom ring!
It's actually pretty fun how Global Farmer breaks down every bit of green on the map into a separate little potential field. Scouting for where to plant my first field on the island, I find a little tiny grassy area next to a building, and check it out on Google Maps. It's just… a little grassy area next to a building. But the game will let me grow crops on it. Cool.
I once drove across this great country and let me tell you, its highways are lined with 75% corn and 25% cigarette butts, so it's an easy decision as to which patriotic crop I should grow first. (Corn. If that wasn't clear.) Unfortunately, the game's calendar is on January, which is not exactly corn season, so I set the growing to begin in May and fast-forward. As the weather warms I hire a couple of workers from the menu and they eventually show up on the island (there's no indication if they swam or took a boat) and seed the field so my corn begins to grow. A few short, fast-forwarded months later my corn crop has come in: 15 kg of corn grown in the shadow of Lady Liberty, ready to be combined with immobilized xylose isomerase and unconverted oligosaccharides to form high-fructose syrup. Mmm!
Of course as a 'Murican I have no idea how much a kg is, so I consult Google again and discover I've grown 33 pounds of corn, which I figure is, what? 33 ears of corn, roughly? I sell them at market for 72 Euros, which I also have to convert (I am using Google more than the game) to more patriotic currency: $79.
Real talk: I'm feeling underwhelmed by my cashflow after nine months of game time, so I look for a second field to hopefully double or even triple my corn profits. Over on Ellis Island I find an appealing collection of farms, by which I mean some little grassy areas divided up by sidewalks that are probably even smaller than the farm I'm growing corn on now.
This new farm is fallow, so before I can grow I have to buy a tractor, a seedbed preparator, some irrigation equipment, a fertilizer spreader, and more stuff to turn dead dirt into corn-cultivatin' soil. With all this spending I need to think more about earning, so I check the list of farming contracts and discover someone wants 500 kg of carrots within the year.
Carrots aren't particularly patriotic, but I take the job anyway because making money is patriotic as hell. I also expand my farms over to Governor's Island, where I'm delighted to see Fort Jay's distinctive moss-covered retaining walls have been determined by Global Farmer to be farmable fields. Time to fertilize, irrigate, and plant a shitload of carrots.
It takes almost the entire year, but growing on my two teeny tiny fields and Fort Jay's long narrow pointy ones yields enough carrots to fulfill my contract. Like every proud American farmer, I'm rolling in Euros! Time to turn my sights to livestock: sheep, which I house at my farmhouse but let graze beneath the majesty of the place where the Statue of Liberty stands except for right now because she's not there. Also, just like my workers, I'm not sure how my sheep are getting to the island. Do sheep swim? Are they instinctual seafarers?
Something goes a bit wrong at this point: though I'm generating kilogram upon kilogram of wool from the six sheep I have chowing down on Liberty Island's delicious grasses, the game doesn't seem to recognize I'm fulfilling my quota and won't let me proceed, so I call it quits there.
Shame. I'd hoped to someday pack all of these islands deep with American corn and New York wool I could sell for millions of Eurobux. Maybe I'll give it another try somewhere down the road: Global Farmer is in early access on Steam, so there may still be a few wrinkles that need ironing out.
