The cozy farming genre is oversaturated, to say the least. Games show up month after month, attempting to find fun ways to put a spin on a classic formula. It wasStardew Valleythat kicked off the genre’s mainstream popularity back in 2016, and since then, we’ve had some fantastic takes likeFae Farm,Fields of Mistria, and even a farming addition toAnimal Crossing: New Horizons.
Unfortunately, many of them can feel almost too familiar.The recently released Cattle County is a great little spin on farming in the Wild West, but it too is not an entirely new experience. Last year, though, a little game calledLightyear Frontierlaunched into Early Access on Steam and Xbox via Game Pass. When I played it a year ago, it was unlike any other farming game I’d tried out, and it’s already drastically improved a year later, with so much more yet to come.
This one… this one is something new.
It Feels Like A Mix Of Great Games, While Providing Something Fresh
It feels cheap to say ‘X game is like Y meets Z’, but it’s a good way to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with. Lightyear Frontier is like Stardew Valley meets Slime Rancher, but also Subnautica without water, but also like… Armored Core? Not really, but therearemechs.
Set far in the future, after Earth’s available farmland has begun to decline, the mission to find habitable planets sends your character into outer space. After crashing on an alien planet, you’ll recover your gear and get to work. The deal? Once you complete all of the tasked deliveries and quotas, you’ll be granted ownership of the entire planet. Honestly, sounds like a dream.
The most interesting spin on this particular farming game, however, is that as you’re exploring the planet or setting up farms, you’ll have a big ol’ mech at your disposal. This can be used as a tool for gathering, as well as fitted with attachments and mods as you progress to enable better and more efficient production. Want a new field for crops? Switch out those legs for a tiller and get to driving. It’s basically an all-in-one tractor with legs… until you don’t want it to have legs.
The world itself is vast and beautiful as well. Across several biomes, you’ll find plenty of new crops, creatures, and resources to discover, all while an underlying mystery has you delving into ruins and discovering the planet’s long-forgotten secrets. Back on your farm, you’re free to build, decorate, and cultivate a large-scale agricultural facility, with plenty to unlock as you build up your home and available resources.
Now Is A Great Time To Jump In, Even If You Tried It Last Year
So if it launched last year, and it’s still in Early Access, why am I talking about it now? I played 25 hours of Lightyear Frontier back in July 2024, completing everything the game had to offer at that point. Even then, I was singing the game’s praises and potential, excited to see where it would head during its development. I jumped in once more recently, a year later, and I’m blown away by the improvements developer Frame Break has made to the game. It’s nigh on unrecognisable in the best way.
The map is entirely different than it was a year ago, and much larger in scale, giving me a whole new lease on my space-faring life. The sizing and proportions of your mech and Exofarmer (your little character) compared to the world around you are also redone, making the scale feel much more significant. On top of that, base building has been refreshed entirely.
Before, you’d set down a tent (which you could not enter) and begin to unlock and place more farming utilities. Once upgraded, the tent would become a house (which also could not be entered), and you’d have more room for farming, and so on. Now, however, you place down your central flag and build everything around it with free rein, houses included. You can fully build and decorate your dream home-far-away-from-home, while you work on improving your mech, creating an ever-improving farm, and set off to explore all that this mysterious planet has to offer.
It’s a fantastic and familiar farming game, but also one that’s like nothing you’ve played before. And, if the last year is anything to go by, it’s only going to get better from here.
