Game review: Astro Ranch - iPhone / iPod Touch

It has the power to turn willpower into space dust as it sucks innocent players into its mesmerising far-off rainbow-coloured world.

It also does strange things with time, draining away hours of your life while fooling you into thinking you’ve only been playing for five minutes.

Astro Ranch contains strong traces of Harvest Moon, Farmville, Animal Crossing and even The Sims but the overall flavour is unlike anything I’ve tasted before.

It’s a uniquely creative, cute and colourful experience on the iPhone and iPod Touch which will appeal to anyone with an interest in time management, farming sim or virtual life games.

The story which opens the game tells of how two space explorers from the Farming Federation, twins Sindy and Max, get into difficulties during a mission. As their ship hurtles towards a planet one of them escapes and the other (your choice of Sindy or Max) crash lands.

It’s your job to help your character pick him or herself up and get stuck into a new life on this alien world.

You start off by acquiring a plot of land which comes with a farmhouse, barn and well.

The local mayor is helpfully on hand to get you started with setting up your ranch and giving a tour of your new surroundings.

During the tutorial you’re shown the basics of planting seeds, watering, harvesting and selling crops to earn the money you’ll need to flourish.

After this you’re left to your own devices to meet the cast of wacky characters and discover other places of interest within the crater that’s now your home.

The game world is not especially vast so exploring does not take long.

The rest of the game revolves around running your space ranch, which includes cultivating crops, looking after livestock, playing mini games (such as fishing and panning for gold) and carrying out jobs for the locals.

And great fun it is too.

The in-game shop is the place to go for buying a wide range of items and upgrades for your ranch using in-game credit.

Alternatively you can visit the online store to use real-life money for purchasing game items such as new costumes for your character or furniture for your farmhouse. You can even use real money to buy extra game currency.

Meanwhile, a mailbox outside your house allows you to send messages, gifts and coins to other players.

Inside the farmhouse you’ll find your wardrobe, trophy cabinet and a bed to revitalise your character’s energy.

There is also a computer which you can use to check stock prices. Values of produce and farm animals fluctuate throughout the game, which adds an interesting strategic angle as you must focus on the right things at the right times to generate the most income.

Another consideration is experience. The more you do in the game the more your experience rises. When it reaches a certain level you go up a rank, which unlocks new items you weren’t previously able to buy.

The seasons pass quickly in Astro Ranch, with each game day taking just a few minutes.

In Farmville on the PC and its equivalents such as Tap Farm on the iPhone/iPod it takes real-time hours and days to grow crops.

In Astro Ranch it takes just a short while for seeds to mature. The advantages of this are you can earn money from your crops much quicker and it doesn’t matter if you take a break from the game for a day or two. When you next play you pick up from the exact point you left it without any game time having passed and no crops going to waste.

The side-effect of this is you need to keep a close eye on everything happening on your ranch while playing. It can get quite intense when there is a lot going on at once.

This is not the most profound game ever invented but there is a good amount of depth to it. You are always kept busy during the game with plenty of hands-on work to do but also taking time to look at the bigger picture is important. There are a lot of items to buy and decisions to make which will determine how successfully your ranch develops.

Everything takes place within a beautifully designed, vivid and visually dazzling world.

The inspiration for the setting is said to be a “1950s sci-fi universe” but it reminds me more of The Magic Roundabout – a surreal, groovy, trippy animated world.

Graphics in the game are lovely and the overall presentation is very eye-catching.

Getting around the lush virtual environment is easy – all you do to tap where on the screen you want your character to move or you can pull him along by dragging your fingers across the screen.

The controls here generally work fine, although I’ve found it too fiddly sometimes getting my character into precisely the right position for interacting with an object.

The on-screen interface is nicely uncluttered with quick access to everything you’ll need, though I’m not completely comfortable with the process for performing actions in the game.

This involves tapping on the item you want to use in your backpack. This puts the item’s icon in the top-right corner of the screen. You then drag the icon and drop it where you want to use the item.

This seems overly complicated to me. I’d rather skip the dragging stage and just tap where I want to use something. Also, sometimes when dragging an item my fingers get in the way of seeing where I’m placing it.

Another couple of things I’m not fond of are the loading times being too long and the lack of in-game help. You get the tutorial and there are instructions for planting crops, raising livestock etc but some more assistance while playing wouldn’t go amiss.

For example, sometimes I lose track of what I’ve got in my inventory and it would be nice if tapping on the items identified them again. Also I’ve spent many fruitless and frustrating game hours trying to get the hang of the blasted fishing mini game and some better instructions for that would be useful.

None of the imperfections I’ve mentioned here or any of the other shortcomings in the game (such as a very limited selection of characters to interact with) greatly detract from the overall enjoyment of Astro Ranch.

I’ve found playing the game to be a pleasure.

Astro Ranch has been a long time in the making and has been a real labour of love for its developers at Tag Games. The effort put forth shines through in this special game they’ve created.

I see Astro Ranch as being one of the biggest releases on the iPhone and iPod for a good while, and also believe it’s got the potential to become one of the defining titles on the platform.

Verdict: 9 out of 10 – I didn’t know running a ranch could be so much fun until I played this crazy, far-out game. From the bizarre names given to vegetables and animals to the combination of space and farming, Astro Ranch oozes character and imaginative ideas.

Watch the official gameplay trailer for Astro Ranch: