Farming Simulation titles have explored almost every corner of history, but it’s not often we get taken back to the dawn of civilisation itself. “Ancient Farm”, developed by A2 Softworks and published by Ultimate Games S.A., PlayWay S.A., and Ultimate Publishing, sets its sights on ancient Egypt. The game asks players to slow down a little and embrace the grind, but does that steady climb make for a satisfying experience, or does it struggle to keep its momentum?

Ancient Farm is built around a hands-on farming experience; it asks you to transform an empty piece of land into fertile fields by ploughing, planting, watering, and fertilising crops through clearly visible stages. A massive factor in the game is timing. If you leave your crops for too long, they will start rotting away, which means you miss the yield from the harvest.

There is a wide range of crops to manage, alongside fruit trees that require your patience but provide repeat harvests, and some cool riverside plants such as papyrus and sugar cane, which made me think a little more about planning on the farm.

That being said, I did become sick of watering the plants every six minutes. I felt like I was constantly down at the river, filling up on water and making water jugs as they kept breaking from overuse. I did like the implementation of livestock farming with cows, pigs, hens, sheep, and oxen, which was an experience.

I did like that you needed to craft the tools, you didn’t just go and purchase them, so you needed to gather resources to create things like hoes, pickaxes, axes, and scythes, and with the merchants would allow you to purchase blueprints from them so you could construct the more technical buildings like barns, workshops, kitchens, and eventually temples.

In practice, the gameplay often feels overly generic and held back by some missing systems and immersion-breaking choices. You’re placed in the middle of a largely empty desert with no other people beyond the merchants who arrive by boat and stand motionless, and wildlife is limited to what you have on the farm and the occasional birds overhead or static flocks across the river, which makes the world feel overly lifeless.

Economic frustration crept in quickly, as selling large quantities of crops like barley can tank prices for an overly long period. This became annoying when I needed funds for other things. There was no quick-sell function, so if you were selling 230 units of wheat, you had to click the mouse 230 times, which turned into a mini-game where I saw how quickly I could hit the button.

There is no need to eat, drink, or sleep, so there was little pressure or consequence, allowing you to run around endlessly without restriction. While the foundations are there for a robust farming management system, the lack of meaningful gameplay prevents Ancient Farm from fully capitalising on its ambitious feature set.

I liked that the control scheme was simple and easy to understand at first, with tool selection and interactions mapped in a way that was familiar to anyone who has played a sandbox or farming game. The usable bar behaves a little like “Minecraft”, changing items in your quick use based on the number keys, which makes switching between them intuitive; however, you cannot use the mouse wheel, which should have been a big feature.

I felt some noticeable delays between input and action, which made tasks like watering crops or filling water jugs feel sluggish and frustrating. Combined with the constant manual work required for basic farming. While functional, the input responsiveness and lack of quality-of-life shortcuts make the controls feel unpolished.

I was a big fan of the more stylised yet grounded art style in this game; there were plenty of warm, earthy tones that suited the game down to the ground, given its Egyptian setting. The environments are super simple, but they’re functional, which gradually filled out as my farm grew, giving you a sense of progression in the game from the barren land you start with.

While the visuals successfully support the calm, methodical nature of the experience, they rarely go much beyond the quiet satisfaction, which started to feel static over time.

The absence of natural disasters such as sandstorms, droughts, or dust storms feels like a missed opportunity to add tension and variety to the title. I was really upset about the lack of day-night cycles in the game; it made the world feel less alive and super repetitive. While the presentation fits the experience overall, these omissions hold it back from feeling truly immersive as a farming simulation.

The sound design is minimal, leaving the world feeling surprisingly quiet and empty. Aside from faint noises when harvesting crops or filling water jugs, there’s very little to bring the environment to life, making the desert setting feel static and lifeless. The highlight is the old-school music, which has a nostalgic, “Age of Empires” style vibe that’s fun at first and makes you want to jam out while farming. However, the tracks quickly became repetitive over the sessions, and with almost no ambient sounds to complement the visuals, the audio rarely enhanced the immersion.

Ancient Farm offers a solid foundation for a hands-on farming simulation set in ancient Egypt, with satisfying progression loops, a variety of crops and livestock, and a charmingly styled setting. Its focus on manual farming, crafting tools, and building your settlement from scratch gives you a strong sense of accomplishment as you watch your farm slowly come to life. The old school music adds a nostalgic touch, and the clear growth stages of crops make the management aspect engaging.

However, the game is held back by missed opportunities and design flaws. The world feels empty and lifeless, with almost no NPCs, wildlife, and events, and the lack of night cycles makes it feel generic. I would love to see some well-needed polish added to this game to make it a time-killer masterpiece.

Written by: Hayden Nelson