In the kerfuffle that was last week's Wii U UK release date announcements, it's hardly surprising that a bunch of smaller titles got overlooked, with the show being stolen by the mega companies of Nintendo (Mario), Activision (Skylanders) and Ubisoft (Just Dance). Only now the smoke has cleared do the other games start creeping out of the woodwork, and like finding a needle in a haystack, Funky Barn is one such game. As the name suggests, Funky Barn is a farming simulator - but one that's a little bit different to the long-running Harvest Moon series. Less focused on romancing your neighbours and more about making money, you'll be putting your management skills to the test, harvesting crops and collecting produce. We're promised all the usual suspects you see on a farm, but also a host of "not-so-usual farm animals", each of which has it's own personality and can be customised with all manner of accessories - perhaps an ostrich in a top hat or a chicken with a rainbow afro, but with no specifics announced we can only really speculate.
Perhaps a futuristic milking machine, or perhaps a natural disaster - we're not really sure what part aliens play in Funky Barn.
What we do know is that you'll be able to litter your farm with all manner of crazy contraptions for extracting produce from your livestock - whether it's dropping a confused looking sheep into a shearing machine to produce wool or hurling an unsuspecting cow into the milking machine. When you're not plucking dozy chickens up out of the river, you'll also have to contend with natural disasters and pestilence to, all of which threaten to destroy your livelihood. Much like on a normal farm in the UK, then.
Pretty open-ended, Funky Barn offers you a choice of three increasingly challenging farm lands to build on, and lets you focus on the aspects of farming you like the best - whether you want to focus on growing strawberries or raising a farm full of chickens. But if you fancy something a bit more objective-orientated, you can put your farming skills to the test by taking over an out-of-control, failing farm and try to bring it back from the brink within the time limit.
With its tongue thoroughly in its cheek, and a hefty amount of cute animals, Funky Barn should be hitting the Wii U before the year is out, and with the console launching late this November, there's not long to wait now - so stay tuned as we're sure more funky details will appear before then.
