What is life? It’s a question that humans have been asking themselves since at least George Harrison made that song. Well, in the year of our lord 2023, we finally have an answer: It’s endless suffering.
Between the climate crisis, the financial crisis, the housing crisis, and Elon Musk continually attempting humor it’s clear that humans are made to suffer. You’re born, you work and then you die. Maybe if you’re lucky you get to have one really good brunch before you croak. But all in all, real life is a hellscape that we push through for the fleeting moments of dopamine we get when we see a video of a panda falling down.
I can’t promise you it will get better (because that would make me a liar) but I can give you a way to escape that doesn’t involve the bottle. I can give you farming games. Just a list of them, rather. If you really want them you gotta buy them yourself.
Farming games are cute and joyful and they present worlds where the only problem anyone has is deciding what to do while you wait for your crops to grow. It’s magical. So here are the 10 best farming games to help you forget about the endless suffering that is your real life.
Stardew Valley
Let’s get this out of the way first. This isn’t just a farming game, it’s THE farming game. It presents you with the perfect escape from your hellscape. You inherit a farm that has no property taxes or bills that you have to pay. Just a nice idyllic life where you can farm, and build a nice quaint life for yourself. The residents of Pelican Town can be befriended and you can cultivate relationships with them. You can even get married and have a kid, so it really is the ultimate fantasy for gamers. This won’t just be a way to escape your life, this will become your new life. When you shuffle off this mortal coil they’ll find you slumped in your chair with Stardew Valley the only thing bringing light into the dark room.
Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life
An updated remake of Harvest Moon: A Wonderlife, this will give you all the same cozy farming life-sim vibes as Stardew Valley but with some twists. For one, it’s not pixel art so you can play it even if you don’t like indie games. The other way it differs is by having the town and characters develop and grow as the in-game years roll on. So now you can not only live in a fantasy world where you get married and have a child, but you can watch them grow up without the threat of them rebelling against you as you slowly drift into alcoholism from your inability to pay inflated grocery prices.
Disney Dreamlight Valley
Do you know what’s better than struggling with the hardships of life? Taking virtual selfies with Ariel. Disney Dreamlight Valley lets you do just that. It’s essentially Animal Crossing with Disney characters except it’s better because there are actual things to do, the developers actually add content to it regularly and Scrooge McDuck is a much better exploitative capitalist overlord than Tom Nook. There’s no better way to turn a blind eye to life’s problems than by cultivating the perfect little Disney village. You get to interact and befriend characters from various Disney/Pixar franchises, there’s quests to complete, different storylines, and a pretty big focus on farming. Tending to crops that you can then use to cook various meals to eat for stamina or to help Remy’s restaurant will make you forget you even have a real soul-sucking job. Whether you’re a Disney adult or just someone who yearns for the innocence of the Disney Corporation, this is the game for you.
Pokémon
You might be thinking to yourself that Pokemon isn’t a farming game but I’m here to tell you it is. While the majority of your time is spent battling Pokemon, the series at its heart is all about farming. You tame wild creatures, you breed and nurture them until they grow strong much like what happens on a farm. The series, especially the Switch entries are filled with large barren fields not unlike what you would see on a real farm. You can harvest various fruits and berries, and you travel from town to town buying and selling wares to assist you in caring for your creatures. The life of a Pokemon trainer is extraordinarily like that of a farmer, you even profit from how well you take care of your livestock. Albeit from winning battles instead of slaughtering them for meat. And to top it off, your Pokemon all end up at a farm upstate when you inevitably lose to Cynthia.
Farm Together
Farm Together gives you everything you want in a farming game but it also lets you bring people along with you. Deluding yourself into thinking life is okay is much better with others and Farm Together allows you to farm with friends or strangers. You can make tending to crops, caring for animals, customizing your farm, and pretending everything is fine into a group activity. The in-game time even advances when you’re not in the game so when life rips you away from the one bright spot in your life so it can shovel cow manure into every one of your orifices, you’ll always have something to do when you come back to the game. Turn self-delusion into group-delusion when you Farm Together.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Farming kills is still farming and with Modern Warfare 3’s awful spawning, you can camp and farm kills for hours. Life’s problems don’t exist when you’re wrecking noobs.
Final Fantasy XIV
Forget real life and play the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV which has an expanded free trial that you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning HEAVENSWARD and STORMBLOOD expansions up to level 70 for free with no restrictions on playtime! Soon to also be available on Xbox Series X & S!
Patch 6.2 introduced the Island Sanctuary which is a solo instanced area that’s basically a farming game. Honestly, even without farming, FFXIV is the best game to make you forget real life is endless suffering but this is a farming game list so I have to specifically mention farming otherwise they won’t release my family.
The Last of Us
There’s no better game to farm engagement than The Last of Us. Either one of them works. Last of Us fans are the most unhinged people on the internet. Last of Us haters are the most insane people on the internet. No matter what you say, both groups will come at you with the most brain-cell-murdering comments you’ll ever hear. I can’t wait for the quote tweets of this entry with death threats and insults to my mother. Come on Last of Us fans/haters, come at me, get our social media numbers up while you make a fool of yourself in the name of your favorite/least favorite video game psychopath.
Fallout 4
The constant omnipresent threat of nuclear annihilation is tiresome so take a break from it by setting up a farm settlement in a post-nuclear apocalyptic wasteland. Sure you may be on a supposedly urgent quest to find your son in Fallout 4 but he can wait a few more years while you farm. With Fallout 4, you can imagine a simpler, better life than your real one, where the capitalist hellhole was replaced by a capitalist hellhole with cheery 50s tunes and giant mole rats to shoot. As a bonus, unlike your real life where it seems if you don’t send the first text your friends would never contact you, your best friend Preston Garvey will call you every 30 seconds to show he cares.
Rune Factory
Set in a wholesome JRPG universe that makes up for its lack of waifus with its abundance of experience points. Farming is nice and all but sometimes when you come home from work you want to slay monsters while imagining them as annoying Andy from HR. Rune Factory lets you do it all, farm crops, and XP in equal measure. Everything you want from a cute farming game is here, relationships, crops, livestock, land with no taxes, etc. but it also lets you go dungeon-crawling, take on quests, and level up. Everything you do in Rune Factory nets you experience points which is a nice way to escape from the real-life system of every action taking bits of your HP bar away. In true JRPG fashion, Rune Factory has so much for you to do that once you get hooked, your friends and family won’t see you for weeks and you can immerse yourself in a nice cozy fantasy world where Andy from HR doesn’t exist.
