Alisa's Farm

A cozy farm and town builder I started for my wife.

She wanted a farm game without the nagging. So there are no ads and no in-app purchases. No energy meters, no daily streaks, no timers that punish you for having a job. Come back after a week away and your farm is exactly as you left it, plus whatever your farmhand got done. His name is Frank. He has a cottage now, and if you end up with more money than sense you can buy him a tractor.

Three months on, the whole family plays it and the pets in it are ours. Skully, Zoe and Ollie are our parrots. They visit the orchard, say their names when you tap them, and if you build them an aviary they move in for good. Heidi is our miniature schnauzer. She lives at the farmhouse, has opinions, and puts herself to bed when the lights go off.

A hundred levels from the first wheat field to a town with your name on the charter. The valley ends at a signpost with four roads, an orchard, a river, a mountain and a coast, and you choose the order you walk them. Along the way the town the neighbors kept promising gets built by your hands, and everyone who moved in signs the charter.

Every animal is named and nearly every one comes in varieties. Keep black Angus if you don't want the usual dairy cows. Keep a Belted Galloway, who has a white stripe round her middle that nobody has explained. Silkie hens are more pompom than poultry. Put two pens next to each other and the fence between them comes down; the animals get the run of the whole field and find their own barns again at dusk.

Nearly every building has a door. Go inside and the animals are done by hand: shear the sheep with a swipe, pull down under a cow to fill the pail. The rooms are yours to furnish, and the dogs get a house of their own. Lay a river through the farm and the ducks, the heron and, some days, a very friendly alligator find it. Frank will need a bridge.

Things show up because of what you built and never ask for anything: frogs on the pond, a hedgehog in the hedge of an evening, an owl in the tree after dark, deer on the open land, and a moose if there's room.

When you'd rather waste an afternoon properly, there's a tin can range where every gun handles differently, constellations to trace after dark, stones to skip off the jetty, and Frank will whittle your animals in pine. There's a secret shelf with more than twenty question marks on it.

The day rolls by in fifteen minutes, sunrise to lamplit windows. The seasons turn as you play. The decorations follow the real calendar, so October has pumpkins and December has a tree. When the whole place looks right, take a photo and send it to somebody.

Your farm backs itself up to your own iCloud and nothing leaves your phone. It will never send you a notification. It can't even ask you for a rating, because that code isn't in it.