A Relaxing Farming Simulator VR Game - Across The Valley

A lot of VR experiences are really intense, and that’s okay. Though sometimes you might want something a little more relaxing, something that, while virtual, still reminds you of where we came from, of the earth and the animals and plants. Well if you want to live the fantasy of a serene farmer in VR then here’s a great relaxing farming simulator VR game.

It’s called Across the Valley and it has everything you’d expect from a farming simulator VR game while also being easy to learn, very pleasing to look at, and really makes you feel like a farmer with a daily routine to take care of the plants and animals. Across the Valley is available on Steam VR for PCVR and PSVR2.

Farming Simulator VR Beginnings

You start Across The Valley with a huge farm. Literally too huge, a ton of animals, a large amount of land with plants in all different phases of growth. It’s definitely not the beginning that you would expect from a VR farming simulator. It’s all a bit overwhelming to be honest, and you’ll spend the day trying to figure out how things work as you try to tend to the massive amount of crops that beg for your attention.

What you’ll likely notice first is the main quirk of Across The Valley, there is no slide movement. There isn’t even free teleporting movement. You can only teleport to set points outside or in any building. In a landscape of modern VR games that have come to encourage greater and greater freedom of movement, this makes Across The Valley an outlier.

Trying to think like the creators of this game over at FusionPlay, I can’t help but think that the programmers and designers were happy to hear this decision. There’s no need to circle the farm in with invisible walls or mountains. No need to implement and test collision on every square inch of the farm. With all player interaction constrained to small areas there is no need to worry about anything outside of these areas. This probably saved the developers quite a few headaches and a lot of work.

Luckily the player doesn’t suffer from this nearly as much as you might think. Even when you’re used to freely sliding and teleporting around the environment as you please, Across The Valley doesn’t make you miss these things once you realize how the movement works. You activate the teleport by holding a button or joystick, and then point your controller at the thing you want to teleport to and let go. Every seasoned VR gamer is familiar with this, and it’s easy to do.

You still have plenty of opportunities to look at the beautiful farm, and everything you would want to teleport to is highlighted once you hit the teleport input, so it’s not confusing, and you never have to guess where you can and cannot teleport.

Prompts will appear to tell you about the various tools, plants, and animals you come into contact with on your farm. They’re helpful, and not too much fumbling with the controls is needed. Though in a few cases you might wonder how to do basic things like plant seeds, you won’t easily get stuck and confused as to how to do something after a little bit of playing around. We all know basically how plants work, and that basic knowledge is all Across the Valley really requires. Even if you do get stuck there are even more in depth tutorials to come.

You’ll notice as you mess around on the huge farm that the sky starts getting darker. It becomes harder to see what you’re doing as you’re getting used to the controls. Luckily this doesn’t last for long, and all of a sudden you find yourself inside your house next to your bed.

A bird appears and tells you that you were dreaming! Your farm is just beginning, and you’ve only got a single piece of farmable land, but one day you might have that huge farm that you dreamed of.

This is a very fascinating way to frame the beginning of Across The Valley. Having a small taste of what a thriving farm feels like lets you know early on what is possible, and what your goals are. It’s also a little bit of a relief. Having so much VR Farm to deal with so early on was a bit overwhelming. Luckily now you have plenty of time to come to grips with the basics.

Starting Your VR Farm (For Real This Time)

The bird will tell you to go to the Task Board, and what you’ll quickly find is that the Task Board dictates what you do in this game. Your first task is simply to clear your only plot of land and plant some wheat.

The tutorials kick in full swing here, and it is pretty easy to understand, especially with your prior dreaming experience, how to actually perform the tasks that the board gives you. The tutorials in Across The Valley are great, and the whole game functions as a sort of tutorial. Whenever you unlock something new the task that you get to interact with that new thing will always outline exactly how to care for it be they a wheat patch or a cow.

Doing tasks unlocks more things that you can buy for your farm like more plots of land for planting and more animals. Speaking of animals, you get your first one after planting your first crop of wheat, a chicken.

You receive another task to water and feed your new chick, and also give them a little love with some petting. All animals aren’t bought full grown. You’ll need to invest some more time and resources into caring for them before they grow up and start producing products for you to sell. After caring for your chick, your last task for your first day is to go to sleep.

Time passes in each day, and each time you go to sleep animals grow larger, animal feed and water is depleted, and plants grow and require additional care.

The Rhythms of this VR Farming Simulator

The downside of these tutorials being done through tasks is that you are fairly railroaded in what you can do, which at first is no problem. You’ve hardly got many options after all. Still, this will persist, and you cannot ignore tasks. You have to do them in order to unlock more plots of farmable land and animals. The only way to progress is to do tasks.

So you can plant whatever you like and spend as many days as you like nurturing what animals you have and that’s fine. There’s no penalty for taking your time, which is good, but you will eventually have to do the Tasks to uncover all of what Across The Valley has to offer. In a way this is good. For a relaxing VR Farming Simulator, you might want to have the decision making be as minimal as possible. The task system achieves this by telling you exactly what to grow and what to do.

On the other hand if you were excited to make decisions as a VR Farmer in Across The Valley, the only real decision you make is what crops to plant. Crops have a variety of uses as animal feed, and take different times to grow and grow at different rates. So there is some minor decision making there. Generally though, you couldn’t mess up so badly that you fail the game. Across The Valley is a relaxing game, and that means there really is no way to fail it.

When playing it I slept for about 5 days in a row, and while my crops were all gone and needed to be replanted, all of the animals were completely fine without care. They even grew in the meantime. So you can’t mess up so badly that you lose everything you’ve gained. Whether that is a good thing or not is up to you. This reveals that Across The Valley, as you might have guessed from the look of the game, isn’t a serious VR Farming Simulator. It’s a fantasy of idyllic life in the country, and as far as fantasies go this is one that can drag you in.

You’ll settle into the rhythm of the game. Get up, check your task, and care for the plants by weeding or watering or whatever they need done to them. Maybe you’ll have a harvest and then have to reseed the earth. Then you care for your animals. Water them, pet them, feed them, and maybe shovel some manure. Chickens produce an egg a day, and sometimes you’ll shear the sheep or milk the cow.

Then eventually you go to bed and do it again. Across The Valley builds rhythms on top of rhythms. You grow a checklist in your mind of what needs doing every day, and you go and do it. Over time you complete tasks and your checklist grows.

That’s what Across The Valley really is. It’s not a complicated game. It’s not a true simulator of VR Farming or a VR Farm. It is compelling though, and if you’re looking to turn your mind off and immerse yourself in the basic routines of an idyllic farm in immersive Virtual Reality, then Across The Valley delivers.