Cattle Country Preview - A Tootin' Time

Farming (or in this case, ranching) simulators are a dime a dozen now, and Cattle Country doesn’t quite do enough to stand out in the nearly oversaturated genre despite doing a few things pretty well.

Welcome to Cattle Country

In Cattle Country, players are moving to a small, Western settlement to start up a ranch. I got my hands on the preview, which features the first week of play. The playable week highlights the Welcoming Committee, a group of townspeople who will introduce you to areas around town. At the end of the week, there’s a festival to close the chapter.

That’s where the beta ends (although, I was able to restart the festival over and over again as it was quite buggy and would restart instead of ending). 

For the most part, Cattle Country plays like what you’d expect. A day consists of taking care of your plants and livestock, talking to the village people, exploring, and mining.

The Good Side of the Western Front

The aesthetics of Cattle Country are cute, especially on the actual farm. Decorating and designing were some of the highlights of the game for me, though the Cattle Country beta gives players quite a bit of indoor and outdoor items to decorate and build with right from the start. 

Another aspect of gameplay that stands out is the mining. It’s very unique for the genre, with a vertical, blocky design that’s more reminiscent of Terraria or Minecraft than any popular farming sim. This wasn’t a bad thing, and it’s a big bonus for the other vanilla parts of Cattle Country.

Cattle Country is also very solid about its theme. The Western font is impossible to ignore, and every player has a heavy accent and lingo to match. While this could be a bit overdone, I liked the fact that it stayed true to what it aims to be.

Cattle Country’s People Were Interesting, But Sparse

The biggest problem with Cattle Country was easily the village. Indie farming sims are largely beloved because of the people within them. The most successful titles understand and utilize this, and Cattle Country doesn’t hit the mark. 

Nearly every NPC in the beta is a romanceable NPC. It feels like a spot for the hot singles to migrate to, and there are very few people outside of them. This makes the town feel really shallow and like it’s built around the player instead of a place the player is moving to. 

It doesn’t help that the NPCs don’t really go anywhere. They mostly stood around and didn’t feel like they had any purpose in the game except to exist for the player to talk to. It doesn’t feel like you’re part of a community at all, and it really hampers how immersed you can get.

However, the Welcoming Committee of characters who players can spend time with throughout the week was very well-written. It’s unfortunate that the town feels so shallow when the writing of the characters feels so deep.

Overall, Cattle Country Has Some Major Beta Woes

Cattle Country is still in beta, so there’s a good chance that the issues can be worked out. Considering the high parts of gameplay, it would be really great if Cattle Country felt more immersive by launch – cozy farming sims might be around every corner, but those of us who love them will keep playing them. 

Cattle Country was previewed over approximately 3 hours of gameplay on PC with a key provided by developers. All screenshots were taken during the preview process.