Playing video games can have many positive impacts for kids. Hand to eye coordination, problem solving, decision making, reading are but a few of the skills that benefit from a healthy dose of gaming. My Fantastic Ranch is an easy to play management simulation game that you can play with younger kids as an introduction to games.
Fantastical Ranching
Developed by Piece of Cake Studios, a team based in Paris, the game is available on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.
Played here on PS5 the game has a 1.17GB install size.
Gameplay
My Fantastic Ranch is set in a fantastical world you design and develop a ranch where you adopt Unicorns and Dragons, train and care for them. To advance your ranch you can offer lessons for paying students to earn some cash to spend on upgrades. The game will pop up some little target achievements to aim for with little rewards for completing these tasks.
As you grow your offerings and gain a reputation you level up to gain access to new buildings, arenas and decorative items. The buildings you have can also be upgraded to open increased capacity and abilities. Managing student and creature happiness your are striving for perfection and will eventually unlock the option to send teams to compete in tournaments.
You can also run festivals for the kingdom where you try to impress the Royal Family with your exploits. It all evokes some Theme Park nostalgia.
Graphics & Audio
The visuals here are not going to set the world alight but are very appealing to the target audience. There’s great variety in the creatures which give a Pokemon collecting feel to the game.
The ranch is a hive of activity with staff, students and creatures all animated as they go about their tasks around the ranch. The default view is an isometric style perspective. Using the right thumbstick you can zoom right into any part of the ranch and watch the activities up close.
The audio adds to the relaxed feel of the game and fades nicely into the background as you play.
I did hit a bug where characters and creatures got frozen mid task in an arena rendering that arena unusable. On exiting the game and returning to the save file I hit a crash where I could no longer access this save. Hopefully the team can patch this issue.
Longevity
The game has 2 distinct modes – Normal and Dreamer. Normal offers the standard basic story mode whereas Dreamer is a free reign mode which has no story or restrictions. It’s ideal for kids to explore by themselves and test their skills without limits.
The tournaments give the added challenge of trying to train some top class talent that can take home the big prizes. There’s also 25 trophies to earn in this one with 9 bronze, 8 silver, 7 Gold and a platinum.
Final Thoughts
My Fantastic Ranch delivers a simple but polished gameplay experience. Its slow pace makes it perfect to play alongside younger kids while also having some challenge for older kids.
The vibrant presentation will appeal to youngsters and lets face it, what kid doesn’t like Unicorns or Dragons. My kids (4 and 6 yrs) really enjoyed playing this with me and seeing the ranch grow, buzz with activity and they loved the variation in the creatures available to adopt.
I’m delighted to award this game the Thumb Culture Silver Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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