Cozy Caravan Proves There’s More To Farm Sims Than Farming

Summary

• Cozy Caravan focuses on community over farming.
• Currency is earned by spreading joy and kindness.
• The emphasis on interacting with neighbors sets Cozy Caravan apart from other farming sims.

Most cozy games and farming sims put farming front and center – it’s a staple of the genre. But not every cozy game needs farming, and Cozy Caravan demonstrates that by focusing on the other aspects of community in a farming sim, like helping your neighbors with daily tasks.

From Billy the goat who can’t stop climbing too high, to little Jimothy the treasure hunter, the focus shifts from farming to engaging with the community to foster fondness for the merchants guild… which translates to profits.

Visiting Super Nintendo World Was The Greatest Day Of My Life

Even a random stranger being mad at you can't ruin Super Nintendo World's Mario Kart ride.

In a typical farming sim, you could spend hours planning out which crops are the most profitable, the best times to plant them, and how to increase the quality of your harvest. Cozy Caravan does away with all of that. As part of the Merchant’s Guild, you don’t do any of that intellectual labor yourself. Instead, your only job is to harvest the crops for the farmers and take your cut.

The best part of farming sims is often not the farming itself, but the community that surrounds the farm. In Fae Farm, it’s the mystical world of the Fae. In Stardew Valley, it’s all the nuanced secrets the villagers keep. In Dreamlight Valley, it’s the heroes and villains living in harmony while you rule them all. Yet each of these titles has a reliance on farming to complete in-game objectives, and missing a season can cost you hours of gameplay while you wait for the perfect growing conditions to come around again.

In Dreamlight Valley, seasonal events revolve around the real-world calendar, so you may end up waiting months to complete holiday objectives.

I felt out of place at first with no seeds to buy, no land to cultivate, and no livestock to care for, but quickly overcame that unease after petting the giant bumblebee, Rigby, who pulls my caravan from town to town. Cozy Caravan removes the concept of plotting your own farm and instead focuses on building community to get what you need to thrive.

Each area is renowned for unique crops, like apples or potatoes, and you can harvest as many as you like. I stuffed apples into my backpack until I couldn’t carry anymore and loaded them into the caravan to bring to market. Rather than sell my goods at the end of each day, I could only open shop on weekends. That gave me plenty of time to hustle around the map each week to gather everything I could get my little hooves on so that the market would be profitable.

Currency in Cozy Caravan is earned by being kind and spreading joy to the community. Since there are only two days in which you can make a profit, I spent most of the week helping people with side quests and waving at my neighbors as I passed through each town. These small gestures increase the happiness gauge and endear your neighbors to you.

It’s possible to get by financially only by waving at people every day.

I’ll admit, I abandoned my work as a Merchant Guild Rookie to help locate lost little frogs. They climbed aboard the caravan and traveled with me as I hoped to reunite them all. I’m still missing a few, but it’s funny to see half a dozen frogs camped out with me at the end of each day.

On my journey, I stopped at my favorite little pub to get some milk. Cherry Sundae, the pink cow, hired me on the spot to work as a waitress, which opened my eyes to the world of Cozy Caravan further.

Too many farming sims fixate on the idea of harvesting crops to better the community, but miss out on the essential part of caring for your neighbors. Without a love for the people you work with, what’s the point of doing all that manual labor anyway?

Coral Island does a great job focusing on the community aspect, but overall fixates on farming as the main means of success.

There are still mechanics that rely on gathering crops, like items that will produce more joy when sold during the week, but there’s no rush to make them. Cooking during the day takes time away from collecting resources, but your neighbors are far happier to purchase fully-cooked meals instead of raw ingredients. There aren’t any consequences if you want to forget all reason and just sell potatoes out of the back of your caravan at sunset. Someone will buy them and make room for a restock.

Traveling in the same caravan day in and day out with Bubba, a relatively silent frog companion (unrelated to the little frogs you can collect – don’t ask) fosters a friendship unlike any other in the game. I checked in with Bubba every night before bed even if not much happened during our travels, and I gave Rigby a quick cuddle as well.

Cozy Caravan feels more like an extended camping trip as opposed to a farming sim, which is good. An overreliance on farming in farming sims can destroy what makes these games so magical in the first place. A farming sim and cozy game is more than just cute graphics, laid-back stakes, and heart-events – it’s all about the interactions between you and the community in-game.

The time I spent in Skyrim as a merchant traveling on foot to each Orc Stronghold to sell alto wine and wheels of cheese feels validated by Cozy Caravan. I can finally live life as an adorable merchant in a thriving community without the fear of dragon attacks, taxes, or a civil war. I also don’t need to worry about a romance that consumes my every waking moment and drives the gameplay forward. Instead, I’m a simple creature that just wants to follow her mercantile dreams, and Cozy Caravan enables that.

There Is Never A Good Reason For Single-Player Games To Have Season Passes

Star Wars Outlaws has no business charging over a hundred dollars for Ultimate and Gold editions.