A farming simulator with a twist.
Cornucopia is a 2.5D side-scrolling farming simulator that was developed and published by Subconscious Games. Subconscious Games is a small studio based in Canada. The studio has only released one game which is Cornucopia.
Farm Life simulations or Farming simulation games have been around since the 90s with the release of the SNES game Harvest Moon which was designed to be a rural roleplaying game that didn’t feature any combat. Harvest Moon was also technically the earliest dating sim as you could walk around town and bond with single female NPCs. Examples of more modern-day farming simulators would be Stardew Valley, Fae Farm and Harvestella.
There is a lot to do in Cornucopia even with it still being in early access as of the current build. Much like most farming sims you focus on building your farm, planting new types of crops in a more relaxed gameplay in comparison to other simulators. The adventure is light and straightforward yet still has plenty of depth to keep you engaged.
The story starts pretty simply as it all begins when you’re discovered in a frozen block of ice in the old mines and taken to the hospital directly afterwards to be thawed. After waking up, you realize you have no memory of who you are or how you got there.
Luckily, there’s a house, one of many, available for you in Cornucopia, an old farm that needs a bit of work and a lot of TLC. It can be upgraded with hard work and there are plenty of crafting benches to help you make money throughout the gameplay. There are a lot of different mechanics to look out for from farming to romance and combat.
Farming in this game requires more attention to detail compared to other games. It’s not just about planting, watering, and harvesting. Proper soil conditions are a must, which includes composting and adding the newly created compost to the soil. Planting the right seeds in the right type of soil is vital, and the size of the crops affects cooking, making correct planting essential for culinary achievements.
Main quests can be picked up when walking around town but you can also get smaller quests via card packs. There a several different cards you can get. Some influence the weather, others help the trees and bushes you planted to grow more rapidly. Others give you combat or harvesting quests.
The best cards are the scratch cards that can give you a random assortment of items. You have two types of scratch cards normal and culinary. Normal scratch cards can give you an assortment of items from raw gems to polish and even hardwood logs. Whereas Culinary scratch cards will always give you a food item and unlock a new recipe to cook.
The combat of the game happens mostly in the different caves you can find such as the beach cave and the old mines. Just like in many other games, players progress through the combat areas level by level. After completing ten levels, they face a boss.
Along the way, they can discover secret doors while breaking rocks and overcoming obstacles to find the next ladder down. Secret doors can give you a variety of items to bring back to the farm with you and if a pot that you smashed dropped a bomb, you have a limited amount of time to pick it up before it goes off.
With Cornucopia being a farming game there isn’t a big surprise for Animal Husbandry to be a part of the games mechanics. You can raise the animals from young and even take them with you around town and into the different combat areas.
They can help harvest and even fight enemies making them an essential companion as they can use abilities such as healing or even debuffing the enemies as they get stronger. But that’s not all that they can help you with. Chickens lay eggs which can be used in cooking and cows can be milked for well milk.
The tools you start with upgrade over time as you use them. Some don’t change physically but give you new equipment to craft such as a sprinkler system when you upgrade the watering can. The tools have special charges which can be used to quickly get through large chunks of trees or used on monsters to take out a large portion of their health.
Speaking of combat you don’t necessarily need to make use of specific weapons such as bows, swords or even daggers as your normal tools and a torch can work just as well. While most farming sims have a backpack system that works like a normal inventory where you have to change your Hotbar equipment out by dragging and dropping the items it is very different in Cornucopia. The inventory space is split into rows as usual but each row can be swapped out on the Hotbar with the click of a button.
Another mechanic is the mini-games while a majority of them are easily available at the arcade some can be done on your farm or during festivals. The fishing mechanic comes with its minigames where you drop down balls to try and get one of four randomised river/ocean-based loot such as fish, nori or even just some driftwood. The festivals are a great place to be able to talk to almost all the NPCs at once.
The social aspect of the game is a big draw. There is a large cast of characters you can interact with and befriend. The romance system is more detailed than in other farming simulator games, necessitating multiple interactions, discovering their preferences, giving thoughtful gifts, and arranging meetings in different settings so it’s not just getting their affection meter to the max and pulling out a ring for marriage. Talking to the characters feels almost like working through a dating simulator mechanic-wise.
While the controls are easy to learn and you have a great backpack system there is a slight drawback with the 2.5D pixel art style of the game. When trying to navigate jumping puzzles it does take a while to get the hang of finding out where in the 3D background and foreground your 2D character is sitting leading to some frustration.
The sound design of Cornucopia is great. The music is catchy and doesn’t get highly repetitive. The sound effects were well made and add to the almost cute style of the game bringing up the cosy factor when you are just wandering around town or working on your farm. The combat music and sounds are great and feel like a throwback to older 2000s games giving it a dungeon-crawler feel.
The Graphics of Cornucopia are a little unique with the cosy 2.5D pixel style although the mix of 3D and 2D pixel art can take some getting used to, especially in the sidescrolling style. The UI is clean and the text is easy to read and adds to the unique style of Cornucopia. When speaking to each of the unique characters and during cutscenes there is some great art that’s drawn to show off the characters out of their 2D models that walk around the map.
Overall, Cornucopia is a great 2.5D farming simulator that adds a new take to a genre that’s been on the rise after the release of Stardew Valley in 2016. If you can get over the transition of the 2D character models and 3D base environment Cornucopia is a great farming simulator with dungeon delving for both new players and veterans looking for something relaxing and grindy.
