Fantasy Farming: Orange Season vs Shelter
Fantasy Farming: Orange Season
Fantasy Farming: Orange Season is a relaxing farming game and is an amazing new addition to the growing popularity of farming games like Stardew Valley and other similar games, such as My Time at Portia. Grow various crops and earn tons of money, go out foraging and sell what you get, and build relationships with a colorful cast of characters in town by helping them with tasks, giving them gifts, and simply talking to them every day.Being essentially a farming simulation game, you can expect to spend most of your playtime planting, watering, and harvesting a variety of crops. The game starts you off with a handful of them, but as you progress, more crops are unlocked and you’ll then be able to buy their respective seeds at the store at a price. Some seeds even require specific conditions to grow.
Considering there that crops take some time to grow and mature, you’ll likely be spending most of the remainder of your time trying to earn cash by foraging. Foraging here means picking up stuff that is dropped on the ground like sticks, fruits, flowers, etc. Once you can go into the mines and start mining for stuff, you can harvest a variety of valuable ores and stones as well.
You’ll also want to head over to the town as soon as you can. Here, you’ll be able to interact with a variety of characters, some of which have quirky personalities. You’ll need to help them with their requests from time to time and you’ll get something nice in return. You can also gift them presents and depending on what they personally like, they may or may not appreciate said gift.
Fantasy Farming: Orange Season has a gameplay that’s somewhat similar to another indie farm game, My Time at Portia, albeit with cute pixel graphics similar to Stardew Valley. And if you love that game, you’ll definitely love this one. The grind here is real though, so if you find grinding for materials on MMOs to be fun and relaxing, you might be able to enjoy playing this game.
Shelter
Shelter is truly a one-of-a-kind game where you'll get to play as a mother badger who's taking care of her newly-born cubs. Developed by Might and Delight, the game puts you on an exciting yet heartwarming adventure as you travel about with your cubs in tow in hopes of finding the perfect shelter to raise them. In your journey, you and your family will encounter lots of danger and it is up to you - the mama badger - to protect your cubs from harm, whether it is a raging forest fire or a bird of prey.Besides adventure, the game also comes with a second game mode called Nurture. It's a lot like a Tamagochi game where you'll need to head into the game every day (at least once) to give your cubs the stuff they need to survive and also to forge closer bonds with them.
This is one of the breakout indie games of 2013 but it's not the sort of game that will get old with age, so if you love games where you'll get to play as an animal and you enjoy a good story-adventure, then Shelter is your best bet!