Cattle Country: Two in-game years later and I’m thoroughly obsessed

A little while ago, I was honored enough to play Cattle Country ahead of its release. This American Frontier life sim earned an impressive 9.5 out of 10 from me, but my gameplay didn’t just stop with the review. I’m now 70 hours and 2 in-game years deep, and I’ve discovered features I didn’t know existed while writing the review. 

Not only have I given 70 hours of my life to this wholesome slice-of-life farming sim, but I’ve also constructed a handy dandy spreadsheet filled with information, similar to a Wiki. It’s got links and everything, and it’s the single pinned item on the Cattle Country Discord server. I’m proud ot that spreadsheet, it’s being used by players daily, and I think it serves to prove how deeply I dived into the game. 

So, with an additional 50 or so hours under my belt, how does my current experience measure up against my original review?

Features upon features

As with most life sims, there are a lot of features to discover in Cattle Country. There’s the town hall, which works as the museum, multiple delivery options to unlock through opening up the railroad to neighboring towns, not to mention all of the heart events and the things they end up unlocking. When I wrote my review, I didn’t know that these things existed. That information is barely available online now, and it certainly wasn’t available before the full release. Hence the spreadsheet. 

So, I’ve spent most of my 70 hours stumbling from one unknown to the next, sharing information as I found it through the Discord server and receiving help from others who figured things out before I did. Between us and some helpful guides from the devs on Steam, we’ve managed to figure out most things, although some things are still a little confusing.

Mushrooms, for instance, are a far bigger problem than they probably have any right to be, particularly Lion’s Mane, Chicken of the Woods, and Oyster Mushrooms. The requirements for heart events are not entirely clear to those who haven’t managed to trigger them, and trying to find NPCs was a nightmare, at least initially.  

Where there are bugs, there are fixes

I’m willing to admit that as I poured hours of my life into Cattle Country, I did encounter a fair few bugs. Nothing game-breaking or overly problematic, but still mildly irritating in a variety of different ways. Trying to grow friendships with NPCs was a nightmare to begin with, but that was caused by a bug that required double the usual effort to get that first heart. It was impossible to make Glass because the Furnace wouldn’t accept it as a resource, although many recipes and quests needed Glass to complete. 

That’s just a couple, and although they were problematic, the good news is that they’ve been fixed, alongside many others. Castle Pixel has been busy rectifying problems that were there when the game initially released, and it’s now running smoother than ever. 

Now, I’m going to come clean: There are a couple of ‘bugs’ that were fixed in the first couple of patches that I’m now mourning for. Most importantly, the Wine Rack glitch. The Wine Rack is supposed to increase the quality of any Wine placed into it, which is a lovely feature to have. However, there was a bug initially that caused all the Wine placed into a Wine Rack to be duplicated. Considering that made frown grown crops sell for between 600 and 800 Gold, and you’d get a duplicate bottle every day, that was one hell of a way to hoard Gold. 

Sadly, that bug was ‘fixed’. I miss it. 

Another one was Chocolate Bars. When I initially unlocked the recipe through Caleb’s three-heart event, I was stunned to find that it needed absolutely no ingredients to make, sold for 200 Gold per bar, and offered a speed boost. Of course, I immediately stocked up on the sweet treat, because I’m nothing if not an opportunist, and I still have a hefty pile to give me the zoomies. 

This bug has also been fixed. Can’t say I blame the devs for fixing it, but that doesn’t mean I’m not sad to lose my free speed-increasing candy. 

I’ve fallen in love with the Frontier

I can’t say I’ve developed a deep and spiritual connection to the Frontier at the turn of the century thanks to Cattle Country, but I have fallen in love with the characters and setting put forth by Castle Pixel. Between the doting, grandmotherly figure that is Pattie, the wildly eccentric mayor Archibald with his love for morning walks, and the strangely relatable tale that emerges between Caleb and Abigail, there are a lot of things to fall in love with about the cast of characters I’ve met. 

But, alongside the characters, the setting is also weirdly alluring. There’s a lot less sand than I would have imagined for a ranching sim set in the American Midwest, offering more lush green landscape than you may expect. The only sand around is down at the beach, and there isn’t a tumbleweed in sight. It’s pretty and immersive, despite the pixel art style, and the ambient sounds of birds and footsteps only add to that. 

It’s safe to say that I stand by my original review and, if anything, I’ve come to love Cattle Country more with every hour that I’ve played.