I love a good farming sim, especially when it’s familiar enough to be comfortable and yet unique enough to feel new. Cropia fits that bill for me!
The Visuals of the Cropia Demo
I love the graphics in this game! The entire world has the look of claymation, and it’s quite large as well. In the demo alone, I interacted with my farm as well as 2 other farms.
There’s also an area that I’m going to call the seaside market because it looks like it has vendor stands and shops. I also learned I can swim. I learned that after I mistakenly walked off a dock in the seaside market!
I was able to view (but not enter) the big city, a mine and something referred to as the “Unknown Building”, which apparently contains ruins in it. I’ll get to interact with those areas in the finished game.
The soundtrack of Cropia is quiet and yet peppy at the same time; it’s a happy tune, and the game is open-world 3D style. There are objectives I need to complete to proceed, but they can be done in any order I want, and I can take as long as I want to finish them. No stress here!
The inside of my home is equally cool and created with the same claymation style. I have storage in there as well as a bed where I can sleep and save the game at the same time. In addition, there’s a manual save that I can use any time I want.
The Gameplay of Cropia
The gameplay is familiar and yet unique at the same time!! As usual, I was given a farm and was encouraged to fix it up. I was told that Jake used to own the farm, but he retired. But he’s always around to guide me if I ask for it.
In some farm games, I really have to race to complete my jobs before bedtime. In the case of Cropia, an in-game day lasts a long time! I think a day is between 30 and 40 minutes in real time, which is a lot of time to do what needs to be done. Something to note, though, is that in-game time passed for me while moving things around in inventory as well as reading quests in the logbook. The only time that it definitely stops is when I pull up the menu.
I need a lot of handholding when I begin a game, but not with this one!! Everything was clearly explained and simple enough that I understood completely. Of course, my first task is to clear the farm so I can plant on it. I needed a sickle and was given a list of items I needed to collect to make one. Jake told me I also needed to order a machine to craft my items, so I placed an order for it. What’s fun is that it was delivered by drone! Ha. The other items I needed for the game so far, like seeds and animals, were purchased from townspeople.
As in many other farm sims, I was encouraged to get to know the other villagers – their likes and dislikes as well as their backstory. Each villager had 5 blank hearts, and the more I get to know them and help them out, the more hearts will be colored in.
In the Cropia demo, all the things I needed to accomplish were shown on my screen. When I have completed all my tasks, there’s even a flashing sign telling me who I should speak to next. I believe that feature will carry over to the completed game.
As I cleared my farm of weeds, some of the weeds would give me items such as worms, herbs or ginger. That was a fun thing. In addition, the weeds on my farm respawn overnight, giving me many opportunities to collect the items they provide. And I can also collect items in other areas besides my farm, too, but I can only use the sickle on my own property.
The game provides quite a bit of storage, so it’s easy for me to hoard items. The mechanism to move items from my bag to my storage is a bit unusual, and it took me a minute to get used to it. I wonder if that will change a bit as the game nears completion. I did find the UI text to be a bit small and hope that it improves as time goes on. But in general, I really liked this game!
Cropia has 6 save slots, which is great! I can play the game over and over, doing things differently each time. That gives me lots of replay value. There’s also a screen in my journal which shows me my daily statistics, as well as a map and a quest screen. I played on a PC with a controller and everything worked perfectly.
But Wait – There is More
For some unknown reason, I am given 10 free loaves of bread every day! It is sitting on my kitchen table in the morning. I’m not sure what I am supposed to do with it, but I gave some to villagers on my final demo day. As expected, some of them liked it and some did not!! I look forward to learning what the developers have in mind for those loaves of bread.
Did I mention that I have a cat in Cropia? Well, I do, and the devs have said on Steam that the final game will include the option to have a dog instead. How cool!
After I completed all the objectives in the demo, I got a screen saying the demo had concluded, but I was free to continue to explore the world, talk to villagers and do chores. I did that for another 15-20 minutes and discovered some new areas that I had not found before.
Also, in my conversations with the NPCs, I learned that I will be able to produce honey and goat milk as well as learn to fish and mine. An NPC mentioned an orchard. I wonder if I’ll be able to pick fruit? It seems like the final game will have a city, a beach market area, farms, mines and a forest. According to the Cropia Steam page, the city will have a gym, barber shop, pawn shop and vehicle store. There’s a lot to this game!
As far as I can tell, I do not have a significant energy meter to keep track of, and I don’t need to eat. There is an energy bar on the top right of the screen, but it never gets very low for some reason. I like that!!
Final Thoughts
I really liked Cropia, which was developed by Cropstone Studio. It’s currently available on Steam as an Early Access game. The devs expect the game to be completed by mid-2026. The demo shows great promise. It’s a game with a familiar theme but lots of exciting new elements. I especially loved the graphic style. I hope you try out the demo. If you like farming sims in general, I think you’ll like this one!
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