I originally bought this game for my girlfriend because she grew up playing the GTA games and I figured this would be right up her alley. Well she tried it, liked it, but didn’t really have much time/motivation to play it, Infinity Nikki has been her game lately. One of my buddies saw it in my steam library and with another friend we decided to start a co op game. Usually sim management games aren’t my thing, but starting with a tutorial and literally losing everything and having to start from the bottom it has been super satisfying seeing our empire rise one dime bag at a time. The graphics are goofy, the locales and the characters are wacky, it’s clearly inspired by the same attitude as the GTA games, but once you past that the games are not very similar. The main gameplay loop is buying seeds, growing your crops and then selling your yield in the town. As you go, you unlock more tools, equipment, and other odds and ends to help build you empire. As for combat, it is there, but I really haven’t had much of a reason to engage with it yet. As long as you avoid the fuzz and the random miscreants around town you really don’t need to keep your guard up, at least in the early game. I’ve had a blast so far, especially playing with my friends. I know almost everything is more fun with friends, but being able to schedule one (or two) times a week to play is a great way to not only keep in touch with your friends as you get older, but it’s also a great way to keep it casual in terms of time spent playing one game. Your character does have a rank that increases based on how much product you sold which in turn unlocks more stuff to help you throughout the game, but it hasn’t felt too grindy so far, which is great.
As mentioned above this game is much better with friends, it’s hard and unfair to judge it right now as it is still in early access, but what’s here is a great start. There’s a Cartel update that is supposed to be coming out relatively soon at time of writing, so I can’t wait to hop on and play with the bros when that comes out. For those who like to make their own fun in games like this I can’t recommend it enough, there’s mini games to play on the TV which is a fun way to kill a few minutes while you wait for a deal to be shouldered or crops to grow. Or if you want something more abstract my buddy and I spent a whole in game day trying to round up all the wooden crates we could find and would shove them into our in game house to try and piss off the other friend we were playing with, it’s those type of scenarios that really makes a co op game extra fun for me, you get to put your own stamp on it, in more ways than just the player customization. Long live the bowl cut bros, may our yields be high and our records clean.