Papaya Farm

Summary

Have you ever worked or dreamed of working on a farm?

With Papaya Farm you are given the opportunity to manage your own farm to earn a living – all from the comfort of your lovely smartphone.

This review was written by Paulina Gegenheimer - a high school student and avid Android fan. 

In Papaya Farm you are in charge of taking care of your farm, which at the beginning of the game is nothing more than an empty field. As you start playing the field has been sown with just a few seeds and there's still a lot of work to be done. From the main menu, you can access a pretty thorough set of instructions about how to play the game.

When you first fire up the game, you'll get guided through the game with a detailed introduction. Every step of the way is illustrated in a separate popup window.

The great thing is that every feature and tool is illustrated by a self-explanatory icon so that you always know which buttons does what. Following every explanation, you are given a special task to complete using the information you've just learned. There's prize money and points for every completed task and you move on to the next one.

One of the most important tasks as a farmer is to plant different crops and make the grow with the help of fertilizer. Once they carrots have ripened, for example, it's time to collect the crop and either sell them for cash or store them for later use.

But be extremely careful! Your plants could get overrun by worms or weeds and ruin your entire crop. That's why it's important to get rid of them as soon as possible. And don't forget: plants need time to grow. In the game, it will take a couple of hours for them to become ripe for collection.

I really like the fact that the time actually changes during gameplay. While you're playing the time of day changes from night to day and the game comes with an internal sped up clock. The whole experience is made all the more real by the fact that you have to purchase everything in a special store (except for your own tools).

You farm's storage is made up of fruits, tools and other objects. You can access the storage at any point in the game. All your new tools are displayed here as well.

Bottom Line:

All in all, I think Papaya Farm is a really well done. There's always room to grow and progress by buying new stuff and planting new crops.

With the detailed instructions, it's super easy to figure out how Papaya Farm works.

The screen is really well laid out. Here are all the icons in an overview:

At the bottom of the screen:

Hand:

With the hand button you can collect all your crops by pressing the button and then tapping the crops that need to be picked.

Worm:

Tap this button when your plants come under attack from parasites.

Hoe:

Same as the Worm buttons, but can only be used to fight weeds

Bag of Seeds:

Here you'll find all the seeds that you've bought in the store. Select a specific crop and tap the screen to start planting.

Shovel:

Use the shovel to prepare the field for more planting after the crops have been collected.

Top of the Screen:

Friends:

Here you can interact and communicate with other players. In fact, you get extra points for watering your friends plants.

Storage:

All your tools and crops are stored here.

Shop:

You buy new tools, seeds and other utensils here.

As I already mentioned, all of the icons tell you exactly how Papaya Farm works.

When you first start up the game you have to wait a very long time staring at the loading screen. That's definitely a drawback about this game, but nothing too major. Unfortunately, I wasn't too convinced about the app's stability either since it took a while to open up the shop and storage from time to time. Papaya Farm is still lots of fun in any case!

Papaya Farm can be downloaded for free from the AndroidPIT App Center.