You might not know this about me, but I really love the idea of farming in video games. I just… almost universally hate the implementation of farming in video games, especially games that took a look at FarmVille and thought, “Hey, let’s do that, but worse in every way!” And unfortunately, I haven’t managed to get sucked into most of the cozy MMOs that offer farming. I’m extremely picky about them. In fact, one of the few that really got my attention was Milkstone Studios’ Farm Together, which is not really an MMO, but it did offer a cute and engagingly grindy farming system along with housing and multiplayer gameplay and a DLC-driven monetization that actually wasn’t overly pay-to-win. I sunk a ton of time into it, and I’d probably still be playing the thing if it had more features or were still being updated.
Well, good news for me: I knew Milkstone was working on Farm Together 2 but hadn’t paid it much attention until I happened to stumble into it on Steam this week, and apparently, it’s about to hit early access next month. Even better news for me: It has a lot of the features I was wanting and turns it into something much closer to the cozy multiplayer title I was craving all along, but with the smart farming mechanics from the first game.
“Farm Together 2 improves over the original game in every way, offering a better polished experience and becoming the best way to enjoy your own farm!” the team says on Steam. “Start from scratch, with a small plot, and end with a huge area that extends further than the eye can see! Grow crops, plant trees, take care of the animals, and much more! Spend your hard-earned money in new expansions to place the hundreds of new items to unlock! Hop onto your tractor and speed up the tedious tasks with the new automatic mode!”
The features that have me most intrigued are the addition of an actual town with NPCs and shops (very different from the original’s setup), the expansion of the housing system, the terraforming system, and the fact that the game is once again somewhat persistent, as time continues while you’re logged out, meaning other players can access your farm (with your permission) when you’re away.
The team is also promising “pets, farmhands, rideable horses, [and] seasonal events” as well as town customization, minigames, visiting NPCs, and fine-grained tools, plus a “completely playable and pretty much bug-free” build, which sounds like exaggeration, but the original was surprisingly clean, so maybe.
Monetization will apparently be the same: buy-to-play with themed DLC, no “battle passes or live service trickery” – again, one of the reasons the original had stickiness for me. It’s set for PC and Mac for now, with console releases in the future: “PS4/XB1/Switch versions not 100% guaranteed, Xbox Series / PS5 very likely.” Apparently, it works on SteamDeck too.
The May launch is technically an early access and is definitely missing content, though, so maybe keep it on your wishlist for now. And remind me I said that when I’m itching to buy it anyway.
