Cattle Country: A Wild West Farming Sim with Guns, Romance & Rodeos!

YEEHAW! A new cozy farming sim hits the indie scene!

Love them or hate them, life sims are everywhere, and the popularity of the genre is showing no signs of slowing down.  While the Stardew Valleys and Animal Crossings of the world are certainly not going anywhere anytime soon, these types of cozy titles are beginning to branch out to new territories in both place and time.  From crafting in space to camping on a haunted island, the genre has been there and back again at this point, so where (and when) do we go from here?

A farming sim doesn’t have to do much to be effective: it needs an original idea and a good gameplay loop, and the latter can even make up for the former in a pinch.  Does Castle Pixel’s Cattle Country do what it takes to stand out from the herd or is it best left in the dust? Well, I spent three hours with this title so you don’t have to, so let’s break it down. 

From the moment you BOOT up Cattle Country, you can already tell where this freshly picked journey is headed. That’s right, we’re going to the rootin’, tootin’ wild west! While I certainly don't mind the idea of cowboys in my cornfields, Cattle Country aims to deliver more than just your standard farming sim fare. That’s right, signing up for this journey will require hunting and fishing, mining and crafting, and even some old-fashioned shootouts and romancing if you wish to make a name for yourself in this new settlement.

My first attempt at a hoedown

You’ll kick things off by creating a character from some rather adorable pixel-art presets with basic options for hair and skin color as well as clothing. After naming your character, town, and farm, you’re given a quick rundown of the lay of the land and how things work in these here parts. Existing tasks are reviewed in your journal from the menu screen, where you’ll also find a map of the town and your inventory.

On the top left-hand side of your screen, you’ll find your character’s energy bar, which can be drained by over-exerting yourself in the fields or mines.  Much like real life, you can replenish this bar by eating or resting.  Also not too dissimilar from real life, there is a day/night cycle in Cattle Country, which means that staying out too late can land you in the hospital, and a stay there is not cheap.  Expensive healthcare and constant over-exertion? I’m really starting to see why they call this a life sim now. 

The farming, fishing, and crafting elements are fairly standard to the genre, with crops that require you to water them each day and harvest at the right time, and an inventory that fills up entirely too quickly. You won’t find much here that sets Cattle Country apart from the myriad of other farming sims that have been released in the last few decades. The same goes for the romance and the raising of livestock. This title does try some fun odds and ends, like a hoedown that requires a little rhythm minigame and the mining, where you can dig deep to find buried treasures of all kinds, but I think the most unusual aspect of this title is the “wild west element.”

Been there done that before.

Cattle Country features outlaws and bandits, which you can take down using your trusty pistol via QuickTime minigames. If you’re not a fan of violence in your cozy games, you can toggle off enemies from the options menu to carry on with your fishing and farming without the headaches. As the game progresses, there are also rodeos, wild game to track, and a lot more of thematically appropriate western tasks. However, I was never able to see a lot of what Cattle Country has in store for me. Why, you may ask? Well, because the game halted my progress with a game-breaking glitch a few hours in. Each time I would complete the festival on the 7th day of Spring, the game would crash. I tried rebooting Steam, restarting the computer, and even installing and playing on my Steam Deck, and there was no avoiding this crash. I’m certain this issue is one that will be addressed quickly, but it was certainly a momentum killer. On the bright side, apart from the crash, the game runs beautifully on Steam Deck, so I can see this eventually being a great cozy title to take on the go.

The cow goes moo moo moo

Apart from this game-breaking crash, the controls and menus are also quite clunky, particularly the inventory system. With your inventory constantly filling up and the folks around town continuously giving you additional items to hold, you’re often forced to drop items on the fly, which is a multi-step process for some reason. I also ran into some issues while playing with a controller where some of the actions would just stop functioning entirely and could only be completed via mouse and keyboard. For example, when trying to complete the first fishing task, I was no longer able to use the action button on the controller to cast my line after successfully catching 19 fish that same way, despite still being able to control the character herself. This was only resolved by restarting the game, losing a day of fishing progress.

To be clear, I don’t think Cattle Country is shaping up to be a bad game, just a generic one, and that’s after some much-needed patches for functionality. Once these patches are in place, the clunky controls and more generic gameplay elements can be overlooked for some good, old-fashioned farming, fishing, and outlaw shooting. If you’re a fan of both Stardew Valley and Red Dead Redemption and you don't mind allowing the dust to settle on this title for a bit, I think you’ll certainly find something here to enjoy. As for my save file? Well, partner, I think the tumbleweeds will be rolling in any day now.