Pocket Farm Review

Pocket Farm by Egerter Software is part strategy, part time management, part arcade puzzle and all around not quite the best effort for a company that has prided itself on several "firsts" for the iPhone. Few of the game aspects hold up on their own and despite the combination of them, the game feels fairly flat.

fter selecting your choice of farmer, you can start your new farm simply by selecting an available square and using the all-purpose "action" button to purchase new items, work with the land or activate the special abilities of purchased items. This is repeated until you activate the item selling mini-game where you can click and drop vegetables in to baskets, hopefully chaining them up for bonus cash.

Pocket Farm uses a fairly kitschy art style that would be perfect for the game if it wasn't for the somewhat ugly standard interface and bland fonts surrounding it. The mini-game also uses this art style and almost pulls it off, but once again is let down by a poor interface design with ugly highlighting and no discernible way of identifying vegetables that are about to fall.

This could easily have been "the" game to have if you were following the farming game craze on Facebook, but despite all the effort that has gone into the art style only a basic amount of attention has been given to the gameplay itself. As a time-management game it's not pressing and the mini-game requires more luck than skill. It's fun, but there are better options.