The Nintendo Switch is full of management and simulation games with licenses such as Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon or Story of Season. If you are still not satisfied with these licenses, I suggest you look at Bit Orchard: Animal Valley. We will see if this title is able to compete with the mastodons mentioned above…
Goodbye city, hello countryside
In Bit Orchard, we play a little guy who is fed up with the city and decides to leave everything to go live in the countryside. This is the simplistic pitch of the game. In short, we land in the countryside in a small house where our goal will be to plant, harvest and sell apples. This is the main goal of the game. Accompanied by this, a list of objectives to fulfill, such as plant x apple tree, sell x apples, become friends with a rabbit, or even catch a frog for example. Once a list of objectives is completed, a new one arrives and so on. This gives a little more interest to the game.
The game is broken down into days, a day lasts just over two minutes. During the day, we have to plant new apple trees, water the trees, remove weeds, sell our harvest or carry out our quests. When the day is over, we will go straight back to our bed. The next day, new apples will have sprouted and our apple trees will grow day by day. We will still have to wait several days for our trees to grow tall.
By collecting enough weeds we will be able to obtain a scarecrow to scare away the crows that prowl around our fruits.
By the way, speaking of fruit, we can harvest apples, big apples or even golden apples. Each having a different value. Selling them makes us money. This money allows us to buy apple trees, sprinklers, improve your home or even develop your little cocoon.
As quests are completed, we will unlock new areas. Still, we quickly go around the game and we can quickly get tired of it.
A nice tribute to the GameBoy era
What gives Bit Orchard: Animal Valley its charm is undoubtedly its retro style. The game offers a 2D style paying homage to the GameBoy and the least we can say is that it’s successful. Fans will be delighted.
On the soundtrack side, it is rather pleasant and the title offers different tracks which makes it possible to avoid getting bored. The change takes place in our room.
The gameplay is very simple, like the games of the GameBoy era, which makes the game very accessible despite the fact that it is only in English. For once, you don’t have to have a high level of English to play it, simple notions are enough.
Conclusion
MOST
- A retro style that pays homage to the GameBoy
- A pleasant soundtrack
- Very simple handling
- A quest system
THE LESSERS
- We always do the same things
- A little expensive