Game: The Seed: Unit 7 Genre: Simulation, Adventure System: Nintendo Switch (Also on PS4 & PS5) Developer | Publisher: Nerd Games, eastasiasoft | eastasiasoft Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 7+ Price: US $2.99 | UK £2.69 | EU € 2,99 Release Date: October 18th, 2024
A review code was used, with many thanks to eastasiasoft.
The Seed: Unit 7 is a mini farming game, with the aim to clear a rather large debt in a dystopian society. I’ve played a few mini-farming games over the past year (Dreamland Farm and Farm Land, to name a couple), so how will The Seed: Unit 7 compare? Will I earn my freedom and escape from Unit 7?
Why The Seed: Unit 7?
The game starts with an explanation as to why you are at The Seed: Unit 7; apparently, you have not repaid your debt of $200,000 by the due date. So, to avoid jail, you can enter The Seed program and farm your way to freedom. I thought it was going to be a million dollars, so $200K seemed like a bargain!
A representative of the Global Revitalization Council gives you a brief tour of the facilities, explaining where things are rather than how to use them. Then, with a laugh (which I definitely embellished when I was reading it), he leaves you.
There aren’t any instructions on how to farm, but supplied with an axe, pickaxe, hoe and watering can, it doesn’t take long to work out what you need to do. Using the axe and pickaxe, you can clear the rocks and trees (I didn’t find any use for the wood and stone other than selling it). You will need to head to the automated vending machines to buy crops (no freebies in this game). However, you are given $1000 to start with and depending on which crops you select, you should be able to start farming a good number.
The vending machines also allow you to upgrade your inventory slots and face mask and buy a barn, hay and fishing rod. Once you have built a barn, you can purchase animals: cows, goats and hens.
Inside the biodome, you have an energy bar, which slowly decreases with each activity. You can sleep inside your house to regain your strength, but you lose 11 hours. If you run out of energy, it’s game over, although you seem to just start the day again, so it’s not as dystopian as it could have been!
Aspects of Farming in The Seed: Unit 7
Farming is straightforward, but the controls are a bit clunky. From the inventory, select the hoe, use it on each square of the earth or grass, then unselect. Then, from the inventory, select the crop and sow it onto each ploughed soil square. Finally, from the inventory, select the watering can and use it on each crop. Each action is a separate press of a button. You can get into a flow, but it is a bit awkward.
Once you’ve acquired enough money, you can buy a barn and stock it with animals. The animals need to be fed each day with hay (purchased from the vending machines) and will produce 1 or 2 milk and around 2 to 5 eggs each day. Once you’ve selected the bucket, you can milk all the animals. However, each piece of hay needs to be selected individually whilst standing next to the trough.
If you venture out of the biodome, you need to monitor your oxygen levels, as well as your energy. There are more trees, logs and rocks to cut down and break up, but at times, the thickness of the toxic gas makes it difficult to see. Especially annoying, as you have to press to pick up each piece of wood or stone, or else they disappear. If you explore the area, you will find bridges which can be repaired for a price, opening up more land to forage.
For quite a reasonable price, you can purchase a fishing rod. Fishing can only be done in the toxic wasteland, so not only do you have to watch your energy and your oxygen, but you also have to watch the bar on the fishing game. Although easy in concept (the bar moves across the gauge), it does so at different rates; sometimes slowly and easy to press when in the zone, other times so quick it’s a lucky guess. If the bar is outside the zone, then the fish starts to escape and quite often will be lost.
The Economy in The Seed: Unit 7
In my first attempt at playing The Seed: Unit 7, I went all out, repairing bridges, fishing, and raising animals. However, after 85+ in-game days, I’d only paid off $20K of the debt. The cost of buying the barn and animals and repairing the bridges just didn’t pay off for me.
So I started again, and this time focused on just arable farming. I cleared the trees and rocks in the biodome and nearby in the wasteland, but I decided I would become a corn grower. I had fields of corn, all at different stages of growth, so I didn’t harvest too much on any one day. My days were spent just watering and sleeping, with harvesting and replanting a column each day. And on day 100, I cleared my debt!
Gameplay
The controls are straightforward, but as mentioned, they are cumbersome. I didn’t encounter any issues with The Seed: Unit 7, although I found the font, with a mark in the centre of the zero, difficult to read on the small screen. There is no touchscreen functionality.
The Seed: Unit 7 relies on manual saves. This means that after I completed the game, it reverted to my last save, which was 17 in-game days earlier. There is no option to start a new game other than deleting your save data via the Switch settings.
There are no options, so there is no way to alter the volume, and before long, the music (although pleasant enough in short doses) gets annoying. There is also no character selection.
In-game time passes quickly; an hour is 10 real-time seconds. So, it took around 3.5 hours to gain my freedom. You can carry on playing once you’ve paid off the debt.
Conclusion
The Seed: Unit 7 didn’t grow on me the same as other mini-farming games. Although there is diversity in activity, with livestock farming, fishing and exploration, the cost of these made it uneconomical to help reach the end goal quickly. However, I enjoyed the challenge of finding a way to escape The Seed: Unit 7.
Final Verdict: I Like it 
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