Best Nintendo Switch Life Sims And Farming Games
A 3D remake of GBA’s Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, Marvelous’ Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town offers up the celebrated original in sparkling form. The underlying game might be getting on a bit (it released back in 2003) but it’s still a fine take on the farm sim genre — simple, straightforward, and satisfying.
Keeping your farm running smoothly day-to-day and pursuing romance are all part of the game and if you’re after a classic Harvest Moon game without the complexities and complications of later entries, Friends of Mineral Town provides just that.
Forager (Switch eShop)
Throwing mining, monster-slaying and scavenging into the sim-style mix, Forager has you building an island community, expanding out and defending your land from nasties. This game is a life sim game for those who find Stardew Valley a bit too slow for their tastes.
A few clumsy design choices are overcome with a sizeable dose of charm, so if you’re looking for a not-that-slow life, Forager might be just the ticket.
My Time at Portia (Switch)
My Time at Portia has crafting at its heart, and its timers and missions can be tough to grasp at first. Give it time, though, and it may very well become one of your most-played Switch games.
Set in the titular post-apocalyptic town, it’s your job to bring Portia back from the brink by completing missions and crafting your way back to prominence. Your relationships with the townspeople grow along with your crops and — provided you can get over that initial crafting hump and put up with imperfect performance on Switch — there’s a good chance you won’t be able to tear yourself away.
The sequel, My Time at Sandrock, covers much of the same ground, although we preferred Portia.
Littlewood (Switch eShop)
For people who loved the collect-craft-combat loop of Fantasy Life, this game might scratch that same itch, and it’ll certainly take up a fair few hours – even if the “combat” part is missing. Littlewood is an incredibly impressive game for a solo developer, and though none of its ideas go particularly deep, it more than makes up for it in breadth. Fans of the life sim genre should definitely seek this one out.
Doraemon: Story of Seasons (Switch)
Doraemon: Story of Seasons‘ painterly visual style is one of the loveliest on Switch. This crossover is one of the slowest games on the list — perfect if you’re looking to chill those beans right down. The fact that it offers a solid, relaxing romp and fabulous farming featuring everyone’s favourite robotic blue cat from the future is almost incidental because… We. Can’t. Stop. Looking. At. It!
And if you can’t get enough, there’s always the sequel, Doraemon: Story of Seasons – Friends of the Great Kingdom, which essentially offers more of the same lovely-looking farm sim fun with everyone’s favourite blue space cat.
Kitaria Fables (Switch)
A fantastic tribute to Fantasy Life that nails the kind of grindy combat that many people love, Kitaria Fables is genuinely sweet and impressively well-made for a three-person team in under three years. If Fantasy Life is a Wagyu beef steak, Kitaria Fables is a really, REALLY good burger, so if you’re jonesing for a tasty action-farming adventure, Kitaria Fables has you covered.
Garden Story (Switch eShop)
Games are often about escapism, and Garden Story offers yet another way to lose yourself in the virtual world: the hero protagonist is a grape, burdened with great purpose. Garden Story may lure you in with its Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley-like aesthetic, but this game about community and saving the world turns out to be an RPG in farm sim’s clothing.
Rune Factory 3 Special (Switch)
The real draw of this game is simply the ability to play Rune Factory 3 on a console that doesn’t have ‘DS’ in its name. About 90% of the experience is exactly the same as the original, and that remaining 10% doesn’t exactly cover a whole lot.
Luckily, Rune Factory 3 is and always was a great farm sim/RPG hybrid, and it’s something that we can still easily recommend to new and returning players alike. If you fall into the latter group, we’d encourage you to consider carefully how much you want to shell out to replay this on modern hardware. It’s a great game, but it’s effectively the same thing as your DS copy.
Wytchwood (Switch eShop)
Wytchwood is a crafting game, through and through — and a good one. It smartly puts its focus purely on the act of gathering materials to create a wide range of objects, with little else to distract from the core crafting mechanic. Trying to locate specific items can at times feel exhausting and drags down the pacing of the game, and the gorgeous visuals are unfortunately hampered by a slight frame rate jitter.
Ultimately though, Wytchwood is a relaxing and addictive jaunt into the world of crafting.
Slime Rancher: Plortable Edition (Switch eShop)
Upon hearing the title of Slime Rancher: Plortable Edition you might be forgiven for imagining a dozy, snoozy farm simulator that bears a resemblance to Stardew Valley with some Dragon Quest Slimes and a first-person perspective thrown in. If that’s you, well you’re only half right, or maybe a quarter right.
Slime Rancher is a tricky game to pin in a single box; it’s part Stardew, part Subnautica, and when you come across what few enemies there are, part DOOM Eternal. All right, we might be slightly overdoing it with that last one as all shooting is done to either feed things or lightly douse them in water, but we’re standing by it.
Moonlighter (Switch)
Remember Recettear, the game that replaced Harvest Moon’s farming guff with running a shop? That mantle has been taken up by Moonlighter, a recent RPG roguelite that combines dungeon crawling with the art of shopkeeper.
It hits a sweet spot somewhere between satisfying swordplay and nitty-gritty economic sim, although some players may feel it gets ‘grindy’ after a while in its mechanics. Nonetheless, Digital Sun Games has produced a lush work it can be proud of; one that even touches on our humanity in an optimistic way.
Spiritfarer (Switch eShop)
It’s not exactly rare for a game to be about delivering folks to their deaths – usually via high-calibre ammunition – but it’s certainly something new to see a game about ensuring a peaceful, fulfilling end of life. That’s what Spiritfarer is, and it’s certainly a unique thing; an instantly striking, benignly haunting little gem that’s more subtle than you’d expect for a title with such big ideas.
Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town (Switch)
While not by any means the best Story of Seasons game on the market, Pioneers of Olive Town is promising and disappointing in equal measure. A bevvy of patches fixed up a lot of the issues we had in our review, so we’re comfortable recommending this one to anyone who’s already exhausted some of the higher-scoring offerings on this list, but don’t expect a game that’s up to the quality of Friends of Mineral Town!
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (Switch)
Lovers of Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon may not find this game to be exactly the kind of farming they enjoy – it’s more like, you know, actual farming, with all the tiny changes in fertiliser recipes and water temperature that farming requires. But for anyone who needs to practise mindfulness, patience, and appreciation for the small things, Sakuna: Of Rice And Ruin may just be the therapy you need.
Farming Simulator 20 (Switch)
If all these airy-fairy fantastical worlds aren’t serious enough for you, the Farming Simulator series enables you to put your nose to the grindstone and drive tractors, harvest crops and watch numbers go up without all that romance and relationship nonsense.
Switch has a few Farming Simulator entries to choose, and if you’re not one to enjoy a long, languorous journey to success, you’d be better off sticking to the more abstract, more attractive, friendlier farming sims.
However, once you get into Farming Simulator’s low-key and repetitive groove, there’s a wealth of wholesome, calming work to get lost in and a satisfying flow to cultivating a field, sowing seeds, harvesting, repeating and watching those numbers go up. Getting the key to a brand-new combine harvester never felt so good.
Plantera Deluxe (Switch eShop)
Plantera Deluxe is an incremental little game that puts you in charge of garden which you tend periodically. The game saw release on both 3DS and Wii U, and while the Switch ‘Deluxe’ version doesn’t add a whole lot, the base game is just as addictive as ever.
Obviously, its mobile, casual clicker nature isn’t as deep as the other winners above and below, but if you’re after something to really unwind with and the others all seem like too much hard work, Plantera will keep your green finger(s) occupied.
Graveyard Keeper (Switch eShop)
If Stardew Valley was less about turnips and more about receiving corpses via the deliveries of a communist donkey, then removing the skin, organs, and blood of said corpse in order to make paper, fertiliser, and stamina potions, then burying the body in your own personal graveyard… Well, then you’d have Graveyard Keeper.
Surprisingly dense and more suited to long playthroughs than short 15-minute bursts, this graveyard-management game has plenty for you to do — as long as you’re not squeamish.
Lonesome Village (Switch eShop)
Lonesome Village takes elements of life-sim legends and a large handful of Zelda references and wraps them together in very cute packaging. It may not have the richest narrative, but it will absorb and soothe you – even in its short playtime.
Barring a few drawbacks with player experience, specifically around menu navigation, this game offers up some good wholesome fun without the sweaty button-mashing of combat. If you’re puzzling over a new cosy game to play, Lonesome Village just might be your solution.
Disney Dreamlight Valley (Switch eShop)
Disney Dreamlight Valley is a frictionless, relaxing spin on life sims that manages to remain heartwarming and charming. Dreamlight Valley’s unique identity relies heavily on fresh interactions with your in-game friends, and developer Gameloft will be adding to and supporting it with regular updates to keep the Night Thorns from creeping back in — which will be essential for the game’s longevity.
However, what arrived at launch in 2022 was surprisingly touching and thoughtful right off the bat, cleverly playing on the nostalgia of anyone who’s ever counted themselves a Disney fan. It’s only grown since then.
Potion Permit (Switch)
Potion Permit makes an effort to implement engaging minigame mechanics through potion brewing and patient diagnosis, but outside of that, a lack of challenge and a feeling of repetition means it struggles to stand out in the vast field of life sims. Still, it presents a fun and enchanting experience which gets a massive shot in the arm from excellent presentation in both the audio and visual departments.
Potion Permit fits the bill for something to pick up now and then and pass a few hours, then, and there are certainly enough quests for you to sink your teeth into and keep you entertained for a while, even if it’s not as catching as the very best in the genre.
Harvestella (Switch)
Harvestella could be described as a high-end ‘good’ game, if that makes sense. Its performance issues and rather simplistic mechanics hold it back from being great, but its quest design, dungeon exploration, and successful fusion of very distinct gameplay mechanics make it quite compelling all the same.
The $60 price tag feels a little high for what’s on offer here, but this is absolutely a title that we’d recommend farm sim fans buy when the inevitable sales start to crop up. Harvestella may not be a challenger to Stardew Valley’s crown, but it does enough to distinguish itself as a worthwhile experience anyway.
Eastward: Octopia (Switch eShop)
A standalone DLC expansion which really could/should have been a standalone release, Eastward: Octopia may not bring many new ideas to a crowded genre, but this is an impressively well-executed expansion that nicely ticks all the boxes for a satisfying and relaxing farm sim.
Although it has some rougher edges, the decent gameplay variety, interesting story, gorgeous visuals, and surprising amount of content all come together to make this one an easy recommendation to any fans of the original Eastward. Even for those of you who fell off your playthrough of the original for one reason or another, we’d encourage you to consider coming back for Octopia—this is a much better-paced game and, some performance issues aside, it’s lost none of the charm that made the original so popular.
Mineko’s Night Market (Switch eShop)
For the most part, Mineko’s Night Market will be enjoyed by people who like to curl up with a compelling narrative and relaxing tasks. It’s fun gathering materials and discovering secrets. And you can PAT THE CATS?! Without sneezing! What a joyous, allergy-free delight.
We ran into some bugs and issues at lunch, but an extensive update for the game addressed snags on Switch, so if a secretive (sometimes comedic) story with night market stall management sounds up your alley, you’ll want to get your paws on this little life sim.
Fae Farm (Switch)
A gloriously thoughtful and beautiful farming game that’s packed to the brim with details and charm, Fae Farm is unfortunately let down by its lacklustre NPCs and social dynamics. But with the rest of the game being so enticing, we’re almost willing to let it slide.
A handful of bugs, a bit of a grind, and a sinfully boring spouse can’t quite take the shine off this wonderful, whimsical world that’s full of things to do and discover.
Palia (Switch eShop)
Palia isn’t anything special, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. There’s a fun gameplay loop to engage with here that fans of farm sims will be sure to enjoy, and though the MMO elements feel rather underbaked in this pre-1.0 release, the microtransactions don’t feel overbearing and there’s enough solo-focused content here to make it worth trying out.
It would be tough to recommend were it a full-price retail release but as a free-to-play offering, you’re sure to get at least an afternoon or two of good fun from it. Ultimately, it costs nothing but time and storage space to give Palia a shot; we’d suggest you download it and see if it’s for you—especially if you can’t get enough of farm sims.
Shin chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation -The Endless Seven-Day Journey- (Switch eShop)
Apart from mashing together two classic Japanese IPs (Kureshin × Bokunatsu), Shin chan: Me and the Professor on Summer Vacation -The Endless Seven-Day Journey- mashes together some quite contradictory concepts and comes up with something special.
You’ll be catching bugs and fishing rather than farming in this one. It encompasses the directionless, simple adventures of a child’s curiosity on a rural holiday, but they’re interrupted quite suddenly by a tightly directed (and completely absurd) plot. Wacky sitcom energy quickly becomes the drive and purpose in a game that could have been merely a wholesome meander-’em-up
There’s soothing magic of endless days running around fields and just seeing what catches the imagination, but also a heavy steer to play a story from end to end, packaging the never-ending summer into a punchy and dynamic 15-20 hours.
A very easy game to recommend, its sequel is also excellent. And if you can’t get enough of Summer Vacations, you’ll want to check out Natsu-Mon, too.
