Live Your Most Cozy Farm Dreams With ‘Agricola’
In Agricola, you can live a peaceful life on a farm with your family. Just make sure you can actually feed everyone come harvest time.
We all love a game that mimics a simple, far-from-civilization farm life. Whether it’s Animal Crossing, Catan, or something in between, many of us have sunk more hours than we’d probably like to admit into this exact game trope. And Argricola may be one of the best examples of this game style on the market right now.
| Quick Guide | |
|---|---|
| Mechanics | resource management, worker placement |
| Players | 1 – 4 players, age 12 and up |
| Playing Time | 90 minutes on average |
| Similar Games | A Feast for Odin, Caverna: The Forgotten Caves |
| Publisher | Z-Man Games |
Agricola Overview
Agricola is a game of you, the simple proud seventeenth century spouse, and your family making it work. Players sow, plow their fields, build stables and buy animals to fill the stables with, collect wood, feed their families, and try to expand your farm. The goal is to make the best strategic choices and finish the game with the best farm. Which is measured, of course, in points.
You’ll have to think a little more out of the box—and a little more realistically in Aagricola than some other games. Your farmer may want to add some kids to the family. But you’ll have to take feeding and raising kids into consideration. Plus, there aren’t enough hours in the day for your turn to include everything you may want to do. You’ll have to have priorities.
The constant tension and consideration of this game will keep players engaged and interested. And with physical markers for fences, farms, meeples and sheep meeples, players will always have a physical guide for exactly what’s going on on their farm. And sometimes, it’s just nice to feel like you’ve made a physical, tactile thing.
How To Play Agricola
At the start of the game, each player has their farming couple and the couple’s two-room hut. In each round, players take turns placing their family members in various action spaces in order to collect resources, improve their farm, and grow their household.
Agricola takes place over the course of fourteen rounds with harvest occurring after rounds four, seven, nine, eleven, thirteen, and fourteen. At each of these harvests, crops are grown, people are fed, and animals reproduce.
At the end of the game, players tally up their points. Fenced stables, clay, stone, and people in play are all worth points. There are also ways to get points for minor improvements as marked on cards, as well as some cards providing bonus points. But players can take penalties for not being able to feed all of their people throughout the various harvests.
Should I Buy This Game?
Have you ever sat down and thought, “I love these peaceful farming sims, but what if somebody could add a ton of tension and competitiveness?” or “Catan is fun, but what if I also had to worry about whether my family was starving or not?” Then Agricola is the game for you. Honestly, if you like that genre of game without the weird hypotheticals I proposed, you’ll probably love it. The gameplay and style is different enough that you’ll have an entirely different experience. But you’ll still get that fun farmy vibe you already love. It’s fun, it’s engaging, and it’s very easy to get caught up in the little meeple lives of your farmer and their family.
