Doloc Town is A Great Twist on the Farming Genre - Preview

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Doloc Town has been enjoying a solid launch since its Early Access release earlier this month, and I feel like we have a pretty great farming sim on our hands.

What makes Doloc Town truly stand out is its unique blend of features. It's not just another farming sim, it's a sidescroller set in a post-apocalyptic world. This fresh approach to a familiar genre took me by surprise, and if you are bored with the current crop of farming games on the market, Doloc Town is worth a look. To make things even better, it is looking like a great Steam Deck title.

Making a farming/crafting sim that stands out is hard these days. It seems we have more of them than grains of sand, though it’s easy to see why it is such a popular type of game. Doloc Town’s Early Access release is pretty well polished, containing a full story already, with the main gameplay loop complete. I’ve also found it relatively stable, and it is a lightweight game that will run well on old hardware. For instance, I tested it on my integrated chip GPD Win 2 handheld, and it ran buttery smooth at sixty frames per second. That was a pleasant surprise, and for $15, Doloc Town punches above its weight class.

Despite being a sidescroller, the usual farming mechanics you are used to seeing are all here. You’re expected to farm crops and gather resources, get to know the inhabitants of the derelict town, and gradually explore the world.

One of my biggest pet peeves about the genre is the limited saves, such as having to go to sleep to save. Doloc Town allows you to use a bed or any chair whenever you need to save progress, and you are given plenty of stamina to manage the growing laundry list of tasks.

I got a good sense of pacing through what I’ve played so far, and mechanically, Doloc Town holds up great. While the characters and dialogue might not be up to the same standards as something like Fields of Mistria, I’m finding them fairly well written so far, too.

The setting is something I especially loved. While we have the usual farming with old tools, we also have modern and future technologies on full display, including delivery and combat drones. There are a ton of blueprints and research options available to grow your budding farming empire, and it all ties together. Combat is necessary to expand, and the enemies hit surprisingly hard, but you get access to a combat drone when you join the Guild, which helps with the tough difficulty curve. The visual design in Doloc Town is striking with a lot of attention to detail, and it might be the nicest-looking pixel farming sim on the market today.

Doloc Town has been rated as "Playable" on the Steam Deck, and I would agree with that rating. The game runs very nicely despite a slim set of graphical options. Full controller support is available out of the box. While the game is already fairly efficient on battery life without TDP tweaks, it scales well even on a 4W TDP while maintaining a relatively steady 60FPS. It did drop a bit during combat against several blobs, so you might want to increase the TDP limit in those situations. Getting over 8 hours of battery life was impressive.

This isn’t a full review, but I can see why Doloc Town is getting the attention it is. There is much to like; the developers have planned their next significant steps with an active roadmap. If you’re in the mood for a good farming sim, Doloc Town might be this year’s sleeper hit.

Doloc Town is available on Steam for $15, and the developers seem to be interacting with the community a lot about things they'd like in the game in the future, which is great to see.

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