A Bountiful Harvest: The Joys of Lightyear Frontier

Ever since my first foray into the world of farming games with Concerned Ape’s Stardew Valley, I have constantly been looking for another farming game to plant hours upon hours into

Whilst a lot of other enjoyers of the calm, ‘slice of life’ style video games had their fill with Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and so forth, Stardew Valley was my first experience. The enjoyment of starting from scratch, and building for yourself your own plot of land, seeing that money counter go up and down, unlocking expansions and new crops and farm life. Nothing has come close to that feeling of progression for me since.

That was, until I booted up Frame Break’s intergalactic ranching experience, Lightyear Frontier.

The somewhat sub-genre of ‘player crashes into an unknown world and must build’ is nothing new. Unknown World’s Subnautica could be considered the ‘magnum opus’ of the lot, but many others have joined the fray since then. Coffee Stain Studio’s Satisfactory, Miju Games’s Planet Crafter. The list goes on, and each experience offers the player something unique. Satisfactory focuses upon the creation of factories and assembly lines numbering thousands of miles. Planet Crafter has the player craft technology to slowly bring a barren wasteland into a golden age of green and flowing rivers.

Compared to this, Lightyear Frontier dials back the more intense building you find in the games mentioned above, and replaces the miles and miles of conveyor belts and O2 converters, for far out stretches of wheat, rabbages, polyberrys, and so forth. Building exists, however comes in the form of a mix of progression, and aesthetics. Seed converters produce seedlings for planting, grinders grind rock into sand, furnaces melt down the ores you can collect into usable ingots

Above: An image of one of the main crops you can find, Polyberry

You will soon come to realise however that the aesthetic part of the building experience does become somewhat mandatory. Whilst you can build a bed to sleep on your first day, you cannot sleep just anywhere, and a house or shoddy shack is required to pass the time. I enjoy this inclusion. Whilst at first I felt annoyed at the concept, wanting a more easier way of passing the day like say Minecraft’s bed system, you soon get pulled into house creation, with angled roofing, beams, walls and windows. Your idea of just a ‘quick shack’ soon turns into a vanity competition to create the best house on the planet.

I have spoken long enough without mentioning the big gameplay difference that Lightyear Frontier provides to the faming-verse of gaming, and since it's plastered on the promotional image for the game in all storefronts, you can imagine what I am about to talk about.

Yes. You do all your farming, ore collection and expeditionary exploration, in a mech. A mech.

Above: The Mech in question

Whilst on day one you may plant, water and harvest your crops on foot, as the game progresses, you will soon only ever leave the comfort of your mech to rest. A hunkering piece of metal that John Deere himself would blush at, it starts with some basic equipment that you can also craft yourself. The spike saw for example, will help with the excavation of ores, ancient materials, and swatting away pesky enemies as you traverse. The hose provides a much easier mode of watering as fields expand. Both the seed and sprout shooter make planting crops and decorative plants a breeze, and the resource vacuum makes sure not a crumb of wood, stone or wheat is left out of your inventory.

What's great about this, a part from the obvious ‘its a goddamn mech’, is that the progression is tied to the mech upgrades. Early on, you will create a Delivery Cannon, and soon realise that your mission is to disperse crops amongst the cosmos, sending packages to differing planets, for more Power. Power is what your mech runs on, a system of points that are used up when a piece of equipment, or a new leg is created. Within this, are modifications, such as fuel consumption, speed, spike saw damage, and my all time favourite, the seed shooter lock on, allowing you to plant multiple seeds at a time.

As the game progresses, and you unlock more land by upgrading your farm centre, power management becomes critical. I found myself switching between many modifications and mech forms dependant on what I wanted to do. A day of only planting? I'd bring out the plough form, allowing you to create fields with the mech, and modify this with speed and size, allowing a row of five to be created with each run through. For mining, I would make sure my spike saw had increased damage, put all my inventory upgrades on, then hit the road in the Trailblazer form, a car allowing easy and fast traversal.

Aboce: The Trailblazer

It's so easy to become enamoured by this game, from its grassy plains, snow peaks and desert, to the creation of hundreds of tiles wide fields filled to the brim with produce. Seeing it all expand before you, knowing the work you put into your own ranch paid off, is immensely satisfying.

Lightyear Frontier still isn't in its 1.0 version yet, but as it stands, it is a fantastic addition to the world of farming games. With an excellent farming system, progression which makes the player feel accomplished, and small story tidbits (of which I have kept hidden for a reason, go play the game!), all come together to form a relaxing, positive time consuming harvest, and that's not to mention the other parts of the game I have left out, as I do not wish to spoil the experience! The game is available on PC and Xbox, as well as Xbox Games Pass, so give it a try, I know I'm just itching to jump back in.

You can read more via Frame Break's website here!