How does it work?

In Farm Story, the player takes on the role of a farmer and helps Farmer Frank nurture and harvest his animals and crops. The player interacts withe the game world by using his hands, and the action items are used to add objects into the virtual world. All a player needs to do, is stamp the item on the board, and the item appears on the board. Want some cows? Just stamp them on the board!

In order to win the game, the player must help Frank’s farm grow. When crops and animals are fully grown, they can be interacted with for resource points. Crops and animals display needs through thought bubbles that appear next to them, indicating what they are thinking of. If a tree is thinking of fertilizer, it means they need to be fertilized. A watering can bubble indicates the trees need water, and so on. If the needs of an object aren’t met within a set timeframe, that object will get upset and wither or stampede.

When the animals and trees are ready to bear resources, they will think of Farmer Frank. When this happens, the player can either set Frank on the plot of land to collect his resources, or use their own fingers to simulate picking up the items. After collecting a set number of each resource, the player wins the game.

What do children learn when they play Farm Story?

Farm Story focuses on fun and learning. The game teaches players about responsibility, the production cycle, and team work.

Playing the game by yourself is fun, but if you want to make a really big farm, you will need your friends to help you look after crops and animals. Its great fun to watch your cows, sheep, oranges, and apples grow, and great fun to learn about agricultural resources.

What are kids saying?

Different users take away different things from Farm Story. Everyone has a style of play that is slightly different and the game accommodates for that.

Children in the 6-8 age group found that the numerical goals provided by the game’s resource gathering helped them know what they needed to do.

Eight year olds were the oldest users we encountered in the project, and we found that they were most attracted to the game because of its humorous graphics and interactions. Older children liked to fill up he screen quickly, lose some fields, and then restart the game. They enjoyed the fast-paced gameplay.

Children in the 4-6 age group liked a more free-form gameplay style and enjoyed, the colors, animations, and sounds of the game.

Our youngest user was a four-year-old girl who loved her some sheep. Our youngest users took the game a little slower, they liked discovering what each item did before moving on. They would become fixated with one crop or animal and spend lots of time interacting with the game world through that one particular item.

How did we come up with the farming concept?

Farming games are popular right now. Facebook is full of social farming games, and for good reason. Most Internet users live in urban areas. Urbanization has grouped large sectors of the population in cities, far from the agricultural centers of production.

Both adults and children enjoy roleplaying as the farmer because it allows them to experience a world that is both familiar (on paper) and foreign (in practice). Not to mention that sheep and cows are really cool.

Once we had agreed on the farming concept, we decided to try and teach the children about the environment as well. We wanted to let kids know that their actions can have severe effects on the environment. After some user tests, we decided to scrap the environmental side of the game. In trying to attract a wider audience, we had to make sure that both our young and old users would be able to interact with the game in a way that made sense. At the end of the day, we decided to focus more on the implicit learning, and fun farming mechanics.