Cattle Country Review

Over the years, I’ve played a lot of cozy farming sims, and I’ve now got something of a checklist of criteria that I think they should meet if they want to succeed. The really good ones meet those criteria, but very few ever truly exceed them. Cattle Country is one farming sim that manages to do just that. 

At first glance, Cattle Country seems like it doesn’t stand out too much from the crowd of options for farm sim fans. The pixel art style and similar gameplay loop seem directly inspired by its predecessors, but this Frontier-themed sim offers something truly special: Heaps of personality and an undeniable amount of heart. 

Cattle Country feels alive

Cattle Country Review

9.5Superb

PlatformPC

Release DateMay 27, 2025

DeveloperCastle Pixel

PublisherPlaytonic Friends

It’s the year of our lord 1891, and your character has set off on the trail to a new town, ready to take on the challenge of building a ranch and integrating with the local folks. Not only do you name your character, but also the town and the ranch, injecting a little bit of your personality into the world that you’re destined to immerse yourself in. For me, Janey Jim lives on Raccoon Ranch on the outskirts of Jackson. Yes, I have been watching The Last of Us. 

As soon as you’re able to move around on the ranch, you’re pretty much left to your own devices to figure things out and take stock of things. This ability to ignore any tutorials is one of my criteria, and Cattle Country ticks that box, allowing you to go off in your own direction and see where the day takes you without holding your hand too much. 

You can explore, forage, and get to know your new neighbors; the world is your oyster. There are a lot of new people to meet, and every single one of them has a unique personality, while also playing a distinct role within the town. There’s Abigail the Butcher, who is happy to buy your farm animals, Carl the Banker, Jim the Mailman, and Caleb, whose occupation is mysteriously described as “unknown”. That’s to name but a few of the 22 different characters who inhabit the town.

You won’t have to wait long for your first festival with the entire town, either. On Spring 7, you’re thrust into the Hoedown and asked to dance with a villager of your choosing. I chose to dance with Sheriff Tom, and then stumbled through an unexpected DDR-style rhythm game with less grace than a bow-legged goose trying to line dance, but you know what? I had fun, and the entire festival just felt good in a way that’s difficult to pinpoint. 

Janey’s got a gun

While happily ignoring the tutorial quests, I stumbled across Sheriff Tom on the outskirts of town practising his shooting skills. He introduced himself, told me that he was in charge of making sure people stayed within the law around town, and then immediately thrust a gun and 100 bullets into my inventory. Needless to say, I was a little shocked. I’m a stranger to this man, and he just told me to stay out of trouble before providing me with a loaded pistol. I’m getting mixed messages here, Tom.  

Still, I can’t say I wasn’t grateful, and his questionable trust in me at this point is likely why I chose him as my Hoedown partner a little later, but I digress…

One thing I can say for certain is that you’re going to end up needing that gun. Bandits roam these ‘ere parts, and they will leap from trees and shoot at you. You’ll need to complete a shooting mini-game — think moving targets at a fair — to survive, lest you end up transported to the clinic in town and having to pay for the privilege of being shot. 

Although with that said, I couldn’t help but be grateful the first time this happened and I failed the mini-game, because I was horrifically lost at that point. The bandits did me something of a favor by knocking me out, not that I’ll ever tell them that. 

It’s easy to lose yourself in Cattle Country

I mean that both figuratively and literally. The map is massive, and you’ll find yourself stumbling across locations and then struggling to find them again, at least until you get your bearings. Some of the locations will be familiar, such as a Summit that exists for reasons I’ve yet to discover, but there are also some surprises along the way. 

No matter where you are on the map, you can interact with everything. No tree is safe if you need wood, and forageables litter the map, so you’ll never be short of resources. There are even birds that occasionally show up and attack you, and while they can be a little annoying, they make excellent target practice. Long story short: If you can see it, you can touch it, and if you touch it, you’ll get some resources. 

As far as I can tell, and I’ve been playing for around 10 hours by this point, there isn’t really a pressing need to upgrade your tools. Your initial stone tools are capable of breaking through any obstacle, which I’m sure comes as a relief to my fellow cozy gamers out there. Your Stone Pickaxe can break through rocks containing Copper, Iron, Tin, and other metals that can be used in crafting. 

Mining done differently

There’s a pretty generic standard to the Mines in cozy games. You enter the Mines, there are floors with enemies on them and various nodes, and you work your way around until you find the ladder that takes you down to the next floor. That’s what I was expecting when I stumbled into the Mines in Cattle Country, but I’m happy to admit that I was wrong. 

When you enter the Mines in Cattle Country, you’re faced with a dense grid of mineable nodes. Each horizontal line of this grid counts as a level, and you need to work your way down with your trusty pickaxe. However, you can’t get back up a level without a Mine Ladder, so you need to make sure you have a hefty number of them crafted before you go spelunking. 

On the plus side, if you do make this mistake, you can use your whistle to give up and willingly pass out. You’ll be transferred to the Clinic in town, and it’ll cost you, but at least you won’t be stuck in the Mines with your Frontier adventure cut short through your own forgetfulness or lack of preparation. Any progress you made is automatically saved when you leave the Mines, so you’ll eventually have a maze of shafts and ladders to explore whenever you need resources. 

I will say that the Mines can feel a little claustrophobic. They’re very dark, with only the area immediately around you illuminated while you’re down there, and it can become a little disorienting if you’re down there for extended periods. Once you’re used to the new Mining mechanic, though, it should get easier, and you don’t really need to head down here at all, as there are endless resources above ground that can tide you over if you don’t want to go down into the dark. 

Fishing and friendship feel refreshingly simple

You know how it goes in most cozy farming sims that offer a friendship mechanic: You give gifts to people, initially with no idea what they like, and hope for the best. Cattle Country does it differently. How? By telling you exactly what each villager likes and dislikes right from the start, so there’s absolutely zero guesswork involved. That’s a refreshing difference from other games, among the many that Cattle Country offers. 

The fishing game is a joy to behold, too, and I’m notorious for my general distaste toward them in any cozy game I’ve ever played, so that’s a bold claim. After you’ve obtained your rod, you simply cast it out near a fish’s shadow, wait for it to bite, and click. The mini-game involves needing to click within the green section of a slider, and voila, you’ve caught a fish. Simple, easy, and accessible for all. Beautiful. 

Sound design like ASMR

We’ve all grown very used to games that feature obnoxiously loud sound effects, designed to invoke a sense of pseudo-adrenaline and keep us awake. Cozy games often tend to veer towards more calming sounds, but Cattle Country does this particularly well. There is not a single sound that doesn’t tickle the part of the brain that makes you relax, even the gunshots just sound… Nice? Which isn’t a sentence I ever thought I’d realistically write, but here we are. 

Hitting rocks with your pickaxe or trees with your axe sounds like raindrops on a pane of glass, running through the long grass almost sounds like white noise, and this is all accompanied by remarkably soothing banjo music and the sound of birdsong. It all works together to create a soothing ASMR soundscape that never grows tiring, and this is from someone who regularly turns the master volume of all games down to around 20. With Cattle Country, it’s right the way up there as high as it can go. 

Settings are limited but worthwhile

There are no keybinding options in Cattle Country, or any option to change the details such as UI size or brightness, but adding them doesn’t feel like something that needs to happen. The basic mouse and keyboard controls feel comfortable, even for my old arthritic hands, and playing on a controller feels smooth as well. 

The only downside to using a controller is when it comes to directionals, because controller input struggles with diagonals when doing activities like planting, watering, fishing, or shooting. But outside of that, it’s fine, and I had zero issues navigating the world with either a controller or keyboard. 

Within the settings, you can make things even cozier by turning off enemies in both the overworld and the Mines, although it hardly feels necessary. You can also choose between full screen and windowed modes, with the windowed mode being resizable at your whim, which is a nice touch if you only have one screen and spend a lot of time multitasking.

A cozy gem that’s worth putting hours into

Honestly, heading into Cattle Country, I had no idea what a gem I would discover. It has everything that’s loved about the farming sim genre, and then heaps of personality, historical references, and interestingly executed features on top. It feels like something entirely new while also managing to feel familiar in all the right ways. It hits all the right notes (unlike me during the Hoedown), and I’ve already sunk almost 10 hours into it while writing this review. 

I know that I’m going to put hundreds more into it, as well. There’s an addictive quality to the gameplay loop that I’ve not found often, despite being renowned for my love of cozy games at this point. I want to see where the story is yet to take me, I want to get to know the villagers, and I want to win a fight against some Bandits, just once, please.