Cattle Country - Switch Review
"A perfectly mediocre entry in a genre that hit the point of oversaturation a few years past."
The farming simulation genre is such a crazy genre; what was once a starved audience is now bombarded with new releases every month. There's always one certainty in life: a minimum of five farming sims in a Nintendo Direct. But with what is now such an oversaturated genre, a new entry needs to do something unique to stand out, and Castle Pixel and their publisher Playtonic Games' attempt is Cattle Country, a top-down pixel art game set in the southern USA.
The Good
Cattle Country handles the farming aspect impressively well, offering a satisfying gameplay loop of acquiring seeds, planting crops, maintaining and watering them, and then harvesting and either selling the produce or using it in cooking. I highlight this as a strength because many farming simulators tend to fall short in this area—particularly when it comes to awkward or inconsistent planting and watering mechanics. Fortunately, Cattle Country addresses these common frustrations by allowing players to use the right analogue stick for more precise placement. It’s a simple yet effective addition that significantly improves the experience and deserves more recognition than it’s likely to receive.
As has now become customary in farming sims, you can enter into mining dungeons to mine for precious metals. Cattle Country mixes things up here by going for a 2D platforming approach, complete with jumping, ladder placing, and the freedom to dig down in any direction you choose. The approach feels very akin to SteamWorld Dig, and coming from me, that is very high praise.
Castle Pixel, the developer behind the Blossom Tales franchise, has earned plenty of praise from us for both entries in the series. One particularly standout element of their games is the charming pixel art—especially the distinctive, stumpy character sprites. The studio has a real talent for infusing a surprising amount of personality into just a few pixels, all while crafting a vibrant world filled with rich detail and appealing aesthetics.
TL;DR
- Solid farming system
- Right-analogue precision
- 2D mining sections
- Gorgeous pixel art one would expect from the Castle Pixel team
The Bad
Farming sims are typically designed for long-term play, encouraging players to progress steadily through each season. While Cattle Country does introduce the usual new crops as the calendar advances, the overall experience starts to feel a bit mechanical. Right from the moment you’re handed your first farm, you’re given a checklist of objectives—but these tasks remain fairly standard and uninspired. After a few hours, the gameplay begins to feel repetitive, with little variation or meaningful motivation to keep pushing forward.
Furthermore, the southern setting seemed quite promising on paper, especially when the game opens up and you're greeted by some voice acting with a southern drawl. However, after just a few hours, this theme quickly dissipates, and what you're left with is a bog-standard farming simulation and a handful of NPCs that wouldn't be able to distinguish the difference between a g and an apostrophe. It almost feels like the setting was either an afterthought or a key aspect they lost sight of partway through development.
While I was playing a pre-launch version, it's tough to say whether this is a criticism that'll soon be obsolete; however, the loading times are quite poor on Nintendo Switch, especially when exiting a building. It made me not want to enter buildings to perform simple tasks or even see if there were any NPCs to chat with inside... and it was even worse when there was no one inside at all.
TL;DR
- Repetitive and meaningless objectives
- A setting with no meaning or purpose
- Long load times on Switch
Final Score: 6/10
Cattle Country is a serviceable farming sim that will likely receive some initial interest based on what it initially promises. However, once the initial beauty of its pixel art wears off and the southern setting gradually loses its meaning, what's left is a perfectly mediocre entry in a genre that hit the point of oversaturation a few years past.
Thank you for checking out our Cattle Country Switch review, thank you to Playtonic Friends for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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