Pocket Harvest

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 60 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income, and Epic Astro Story established a Simulation style akin to games like Sim City, where you’re building out a town or settlement.

Pocket Harvest originally released on mobile devices in 2013, then saw a port to Nintendo Switch in 2020, then to PlayStation 4 in 2021, PC in 2023, and Xbox One in 2024. And of the above templates, this game mainly finds itself in the third of the above game types, where you’re plotting out your growing farm, though there are elements of the second game type too, as a part of your income will come from visitors to your farm.

While I think the game’s elements that treat your farm like a tourist attraction are an odd choice that’s ill-suited to the topic matter, aside from this Pocket Harvest is actually a pretty decent Management Simulation, though it does things in Kairosoft’s usual eccentric manner. Don’t expect something like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon here, as you won’t be harvesting crops yourself, and in fact you won’t even have direct control over your hired workers, who will automatically tend to crops as they see fit. This can lead to frustrating situations where you may want to focus on one crop that’s in demand or needed to complete a quest in the game, but your workers ignore it in favor of other crops, or situations where two workers whose housing is right next to a crop ignore that to head for each others’ crops, wasting time walking.

Yet as long as you can take a step back and not micromanage so much, you’ll find that this game does provide players with a lot of good choices to manage and grow your farm. You can use greenhouses to ensure that seasonal crops remain productive year-round, work on improving the crops themselves to make them more productive or higher in quality, improve your workers to be more effective at harvesting or improving resources, improve facilities to be more profitable or more attractive to visitors, expand outward to new areas to grow the size of your farm, research new technologies, spend money on ad campaigns… despite Kairosoft’s typical simplicity, there’s some nice depth and variety here.

Also, I found myself surprised at how little of Kairosoft’s usual frustrations presented themselves here. Apart from the lack of an explanation how to attract more workers, this game’s mechanics are pretty accessible and I didn’t feel like anything significant was under-explained. And while it would have been nice to have access to more information, or to be able to individually direct workers to work on a specific task, overall I felt pretty pleased with the gameplay here.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals, paired with repetitive chiptune music and sound effects. Apart from the forgettable synthesized music, everything about this presentation is really endearing, though by this point we’ve seen more or less the same thing in numerous other Kairosoft games.

In the end, I still don’t think anyone is likely to be blown away by Pocket Harvest. I use a template for my Kairosoft game reviews for a reason, because Kairosoft games themselves often seem like they’re constructed from a template. However, Pocket Harvest is definitely one of the better takes on that template I’ve seen, lacking many of the frustrations of Kairosoft’s other games, while retaining the developer’s usual charm and providing players with a good amount of options. And if you’re looking for a farming Management Simulation game on Nintendo Switch that’s not a Stardew Valley-style “Farming RPG”, Pocket Harvest is a solid, if somewhat simple, take on the genre that’s well worth checking out.

tl;dr – Pocket Harvest is a Management Simulation where players manage a farm. This game is fairly simple and accessible, while still offering a good amount of depth and options for expanding your farming operation, without many of Kairosoft’s usual frustrations. And while I don’t think this game is in any way going to revolutionize the genre, I still think it’s an enjoyable take on the genre that’s well worth a look.

Grade: B

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