Pure Farming 2018 Preview

Pure Farming 2018 is developer Ice Flames’ new IP that was built using the Unity engine and published by Techland. I recently made the trek to San Francisco to take the game for a spin and got see what free DLC lay in store for those that preorder it. I also got a peek of the many things you can cultivate all over the globe.

In the Beginning

For those that are new to the farming simulator genre, Pure Farming 2018 has a story component that acts as a tutorial to get you going in the right direction. The story will have you inheriting your grandfather’s Montana farm, which is deep in debt and needs someone to come in and get their hands dirty. Players will have to raise crops and livestock to earn enough cash to keep the farm out of the hands of the bank.

Montana is just one of the four regions available at launch (five if you get the preorder bonus). Each region has its own variety of farming and livestock available to you, and each is based on real world scenarios. the other regions include Italy, Columbia, and Japan. For those preordering, the Germany region will be your first DLC pack and will be available at launch for free.

Colombian Controversy

While Italy has their vineyards and olive groves and Japan has their cherry orchards and wasabi fields, Columbia jumps into the mix with coffee plantations and industrial hemp fields. If you are unfamiliar with hemp, it is a member of the cannabis family and is classified as a Schedule I drug making it illegal to grow in the US. Hemp itself holds very little THC so smoking it, like its cousin marijuana, will do little for you. Hemp seems to get a bad rap here in the states, but its uses are many and according to the Colombia History of the World, the oldest relic of human industry is a scrap of hemp fabric dating back to approximately 8,000 BC. I wish my jeans would last that long.

Mod Support

The game has several modes to keep you busy. On top of the story mode and challenge mode, Pure Farming also supports modding. While PC players can jump right into fresh and new mods, console players will have to wait until the developers sort through them as they pick the ones they deem worthy enough to share. The build I was shown was on a PC, but I didn’t get to see the actual modding tools. Wheel support is already confirmed for the PC as well, and the developer is hoping to have wheel support for consoles in the future.

For you hardcore farm simulators, there’s a sandbox style of farming where you can build your farming empire from scratch, all the way up to a global conglomerate. Buying land and farming equipment, all of which are fully licensed and created using CAD models that had to be approved by the companies themselves, you should have enough work to keep your hands from being idle for some time to come.