Monday, January 27, 2025

Being weird doesn’t mean good gameplay but does mean a closer look

Farmers Finances was a game that I discovered shortly after I started seriously looking at Print and Play. It placed first in the 2016 9-Card Design Contest, which was why I found it so easily. I played it occasionally for a couple years and then set it aside.

I will say that, when I was doing a heavy possession purge while preparing for a cross country move, Farmers Finance survived.

It’s a commodity trading game that consists of nine cards. Plus one die and a few tokens. I have seen a lot of minimalistic games over the last several years and Farmers Finances is still impressively minimalist.

In fact, three of the cards are used to track money and the market. There are only actual six cards that you are doing stuff with. Four wheat and two cows. You spend the entire game buying and selling these cards over and over.

The last time I really looked at Farmers Finances, I couldn’t decide what I thought of it. I felt like it was a unique, downright fascinating design. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure the actual gameplay was that strong.

Obviously, you want to buy low and sell high. And you can increase the value of your wheat by turning it into bread. The decisions are pretty obvious and the random market changes have a big effect on how things go.

Having gone back to it after a number of years, I feel like the pros and cons have actually just gone more extreme. On the one hand, I found the choices even more limited. On the other hand, I have played dozens of Print and Play games and I have still played nothing like it.

Ultimately, Farmers Finances is like a dancing bear. It isn’t that it’s a good dancer. It’s just amazing that it dances at all.

And here’s the thing. The game is nine cards. That’s not the minimum amount of construction for a Print and Play but it’s still very low. It’s such an unusual experience that I think it’s worth making and playing.

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