Perhaps it's just the nature of the games industry, or even growing older, but we can't help pining for the games of yesterday, and the long-lost genres we used to love as kids. As everything seemingly makes the transition to becoming a shooter, certain genres seem to be being all but forgotten - with the exception of Telltale, the point-and-click genre has all but disappeared, platform games only exist only on Nintendo consoles, while management games like Theme Park, Zoo Tycoon and Startopia have ground to a halt like a broken down rollercoaster - or made the move to Facebook. Amongst the seas of first person shooters and realistic racers, it's a nice change to find a game from a much-missed genre - and Funky Barn is one such game.
While 'Farming simulator' isn't exactly the most exciting sounding genre, conjuring up images of combine harvesters, threshing machines and an awful lot of hard work, Funky Barn is a game that doesn't take itself too seriously, and instead follows more in the footsteps of Zoo Tycoon, or even Farmville (just without the dodgy micro-transactions). Taking over a barren patch of land, it's up to you to manage your own little farm, raising animals and selling off the produce they make - but with no ticket prices and guests to manage, and no crops to grow or clingy villagers to befriend, it's just you, a field, and a bunch of animals who're looking for a good home. And while looking after a few sheep, a couple of cows and a handful of chickens doesn't sound like too much of an undertaking, in Funky Barn, it's in keeping all the proverbial plates spinning that the challenge lies.
The game begins when a lone chicken is unceremoniously plonked in the middle of your field. Picking up the Wii U Gamepad, we immediately moved in to stroke him, but no sooner had we poked the controller's touch screen that the innocent looking chick was demanding food, water and an entire forest's worth of oak trees to keep him happy, before wandering off towards a nearby stream. Sensing danger, we acted quickly, and rushed to build some fences around him, before he got too attached to being free range. Letting you use either the Gamepad's Touch Screen, or a combination of the analogue stick and buttons, the controls in Funky Barn were rather easy to pick up. Using the Touch Screen to flick through menus, purchase items, and lay them out, the use of the Touch Screen makes whizzing around your farm, and keeping an eye on things that much easier - although it does get a tad confusing from time to time.
Next, we had to bring in the bare necessities for Terence the Chicken - a food and water trough, a little shelter from the elements and a couple of trees to pretty the place up. Each animal has their own wants and desires, with a handy thought bubble letting you know what your animals are missing - whether it's a shelter, a food refill, or simply some trees to keep them company. Before long, it was time for the stork to do his rounds again, and the space of half an hour, we'd amassed a whole herd of chickens complaining there's no room in the coop, and the food's running out, as we struggled to keep up with the masses of eggs that were beginning to litter the pen.
There's not nearly enough oak trees there...
And that's just the one animal - before long you'll unlock sheep, cows and more unusual fare like buffaloes and alpacas, leaving you buried under produce of all shapes and sizes. But luckily, funky farmers have all sorts of cool gadgets up their sleeves to make their lives that little bit easier. Going back to the chickens, after you've amassed enough money, you can buy an egg harvesting contraption that patrols the perimeter of the hen pen, sucking up any eggs it comes across and automatically converting them to money for you. Meanwhile, your sheep can be picked up by a giant animatronic hand and dumped into the shearing machine for a de-fuzzing without you having to lift a finger. Most contraptions and buildings can be upgraded too, to make it more efficient, whether it's increasing the capacity of a humble water trough, making your chicken coop larger or speeding up the sheep shearing process. Funky Barn also has an interesting seasons system, whereby some animals produce more at different times of year - like the chickens lay the most eggs in the spring, while the winter tends to be a bit of a lull for most animals and autumn time is the most profitable when it comes to harvesting fruit.
Money makes the world go round, and the world of Funky Barn is no exception. Everything you buy or build will cost you some hard earned coins, but counts towards your farm's overall level - to increase your level, you simply need to purchase enough stuff to fill up the progress bar, and you'll be rewarded with a new animal and larger shop inventories. Should you ever find yourself short of cash, you can always consider helping out a fellow farmer in need by way of the game's regular challenges. Every so often, a message will pop up, where a neighbouring farmer may ask for a hand, requesting a couple of eggs or half a dozen wool bales - and will usually reward you with cold, hard cash.
Up to this point things had been going rather well - we'd got the hang of the controls (a combination of buttons and Touch Screen seem to work the best) and were starting to amass some money. Initially, Houdini the sheep kept escaping from his pen and making a break for it, but once we'd worked out you couldn't rely on the natural cliffs, lakes and ditches to properly fence your animals in we'd put an end to his tricks. So now it was time to pass the fledgling farm along, seeing as I'd been hogging the game for a while now, but the next player was introduced to one of the game's more devious additions - natural disasters. Within seconds of them touching the Gamepad, the sky darkened, the winds picked up, and a tornado decided to make its way through my farm, destroying the top portion of the chicken coop, and scattering my poor chickens all over the farm. Typical.
While we left our time with the game with a smile on our face, we do still have one or two concerns about the finished product. Firstly, having only played the game for an hour or so, we're a bit concerned about how much longevity the game will have. Once you've built your farm, and got everything running, will there be much need for you to keep playing? And how hard will it be to get your farm to be self-sustaining? That being said, from past experience, we do tend to find that we spend the bulk of our time in the more free-form 'sandbox' modes with these sort of games, building up the most efficient and profitable farm/zoo/theme park possible, and then shuffling things around. Or as happens more often than not, placing far too many things at the start and attempting to manage our way out of the ridiculous debt we've managed to accumulate before giving up and restarting, only to make the same mistakes all over again. Thankfully, though, Funky Barn is far less management-y, and has no way to go into the red, or really get a game over. As a more minor point, we were also a bit disappointed with the animal customisation options, seeing as you only seemed to be able to paint chickens shades of black, brown and white - when they said we could customise our animals, we were hoping for a florescent pink chicken with an afro, a purple sheep in a top hat, or even the ability to doodle on the side of our various creatures - but perhaps we were expecting a bit much...
You can also name your animals and stroke them on the GamePad's Touch Screen to make them happier.
All in all, Funky Barn looks like a pretty solid entry for the Wii U - from a genre which has been sorely lacking in recent years, at least, in a less "serious business" form than Farming Simulator. The game's set to be hitting stores on the 30th of November alongside Nintendo's Wii U console, and will weigh in at a pretty reasonable £30-ish - a bargain when you consider New Super Mario Bros. U is £45 to £50 in many places.
