Papercat Farms by BalimaarTheBassFish
Welcome to Papercat Farms!
Papercat Farms is a pawsitively delightful farming game where you play as Leo, a cat who’s traded his claws for crops! Instead of chasing the local mice around, Leo’s decided to turnip a new leaf and partner with them to create the best farm in town—purrfect for both cats and mice alike.
In this tail of unlikely friendship, Leo and his tiny companions have struck a mice deal: he grows tasty veggies, and they bring him top-quality seeds and lend a paw in expanding his barn. No need to worry about any cat-astrophic chases! With the mouse workforce on your side, you’ll be able to squeak out more space for all your bumper crops in no time.
From planting your first seed to harvesting a bountiful farm, Papercat Farms is all about growing together. As you grow your farm, you’ll unlock purr-suasive new upgrades and squeak-tacular mouse services that will help you create a farm that’s udderly meow-velous!
Who knew a feline and a few mice could work so well together? Join Leo and his rodent buddies, and show that even the fiercest feline can be a fur-midable farmer.
While we do have a web build, for the best experience we recommend using the build suited to your OS.
Game Features
- Wheat can be planted in summer and autumn, berries can be planted in spring and winter, catmint can be planted in spring and summer! Tip from the devs: The game starts in spring, we advise not buying wheat as your first seeds!
- Grow up to 3 crop types - wheat, berries and catmint
- Seasonal changes (some crops can't be planted in certain seasons, crop prices change from season to season, crop yields)
- Upgradeable hoe and watering can
- Upgradeable skills at using tools to decrease cooldown
- Don't be out of food for more than 5 days - you're a farmer! Grow that food!
- Harvest crops whenever you like
Game Controls
- Movement via arrow keys or WSAD
- Space to move to Next Day
- E to enter the Store when Leo is close
- Click on toolbar to select seeds/tools or use number keys 1-6
- Left/Right click to interact with the ground (planting, watering, harvesting)
- Enter to farm on the tile Leo is standing on
- Zoom in/zoom out with mouse wheel or + and - keys
Words from the Dev Team
Bizzybee - Art, Music and SFX
Meow meow, mow meow. Meowmeow, meow. (I had a lot of fun messing around with the graphics and sound. I think everything ended up super cute! I was definitely a bit silly with everything, I found the laid back approach this time really improved my overall experience.)
Balimaar - Programmer
I’m so glad our team decided to go for a farming game—talk about stepping out of my comfort zone and into uncharted territory! I’ve tackled some tricky projects before, but Papercat Farms was a whole new challenge. Day 2, in particular, felt like I was trapped in a whirlwind of bugs and broken code. No matter what I tried to fix, something else would go haywire, and I could practically feel the clock ticking away! 🕒
I started to worry that I wasn’t pulling my weight, but I managed to make some progress before my awesome teammate, fgeva, swooped in to lend a hand. That support was a lifesaver! After powering through Day 2, Day 3 was a breeze in comparison—I got a good night’s sleep and woke up ready to tackle the final tasks. It's amazing what a little rest can do, right?
All in all, I couldn’t be more proud of what we’ve created. It’s been a real rollercoaster, but seeing Papercat Farms come to life is so rewarding. We’ve pushed ourselves, overcome some serious hurdles, and made something truly special. I hope you all enjoy it as much as we enjoyed making it!
Fgeva - Programmer
Given that we took turns working on this and we didn't have a real plan when we started other than "It's a farming game!", I think we ended up with something surprisingly consistent, not in the least of course thanks to Biz who made some excellent art and music. This was a fun one!
Ratings
| Overall | 611th | 3.481⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 643th | 3.278⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 882th | 2.833⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 940th | 2.963⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 531th | 3.685⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 435th | 3.346⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 407th | 3.278⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 355th | 3.741⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 17🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
I starved to death my first playthrough (didn't realize that eating food was automatic, and I needed to keep unsold food in the barn).
The second playthrough, I realized how efficient it was to upgrade the tools. Made absolute bank off of all the wheat, and was able to last through the first year and upgrade everything to max after that.
Overall, it was a pretty chill farming game, and I enjoyed it. Great work!
Can I ask please what had you farm basically only wheat? was it a case of "lets do this" or something else?
Did seasonal pricing changes have an effect on any decisions you made?
It seemed like the Catmint was the best bang for your buck, but I didn't have enough money to be able to plant it all.
Also, I forgot to mention this, but I really loved the art style. The hand-drawn look was really nice. I actually played most of the game zoomed in because I wanted to see all the details. Really well done!
While Catmint is the most valuable crop overall, other crops can be just as profitable during their ideal seasons (each crop has a specific season and we even defined an ideal day for each one).
@david-york Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it! I totally agree that the mechanics weren’t super clear at first—something we’ll definitely improve in future LDs—but I’m happy to hear that it was still intuitive enough to figure out through a bit of trial and error. And I’m thrilled you liked the art style - our Biz is more talented than she realises! We tried to pack as much depth as we could into the game, so it’s awesome to hear you felt that. 😊 Thanks again for the great feedback!
Didn't expect to see a farming game on the jam as I feel like it requires a lot, but you got the main mechanic done, and it works great. I think with some polishing and additions it could become a neat little farming game ^v^
I totally hear you on the meowing! It’s adorable at first, but I can see how it could get a bit much after a while. I’ll definitely look into balancing the audio to make it more enjoyable long-term. Purring kitties are the best, though, right? 🐱💖
I’m really happy to hear that the core mechanic worked well for you. I was a bit nervous about tackling a farming game in the jam for exactly that reason—it can be a lot to take on! But hearing your feedback gives me so much motivation. I’m definitely planning on continuing work on this, and I’d love to know what kind of polishing or additions you’d like to see! Any suggestions you have will help me make it the best cozy farming experience it can be.
@zoupeiyan Thank you so much! I’m glad you enjoyed it, and we really appreciate the 4.5/5!
We're so happy you enjoyed the game, and we really appreciate you playing!
@balimaarthebassfish maybe for now we can edit the description to make that more prominent?
I don't think this counts as a game-breaking bug that would allow a full bugfix release. We can of course make a post-jam release that addresses this, but that still leaves people who prefer playing the original out (I'll admit I tend to be one of those) so I think a description update is pretty much necessary
It's a very chilled out experience that I can get into. :smile:
@bangkerpow Thank you so much for the love! We’re so happy to hear you liked the art style and found the game chill to play. We totally get what you mean about wanting a faster planting method – that’s a fantastic idea! 🌾 We’ve been thinking about ways to streamline the process, and an upgrade for Leo to plant in a 3x3 pattern like the hoe upgrade would definitely be a fun and useful addition - what do you think? Thanks again for playing and sharing your thoughts!
It's a nice game, well played!
@pierre-marie We’re glad the chill atmosphere came through—it’s awesome to hear that the laid-back feel resonated with you!! Thanks for playing!
My reasoning for no 3x3 planting was that it is the one farming action that uses resources (the seeds), so I felt that I couldn't add an upgrade there without also having a mechanism to still plant 1x1 and I didn't want the extra UI complexity (and time spent on building that complexity). In hindsight I'm not sure that that reasoning wa correct. And then, to make things worse, I somehow forgot that even if that reasoning would be valid, it does not apply at all to *speed* upgrades...
Sorry about that!
The thing that stopped me from playing more was that even though I can speed up nearly all the stages of farming, I can't speed up planting. And planting all that seed, slowly, one by one... is a bit tedious :smile: I think it would be okay if you would add that as a post jam addition. Other than this, cool game, nice job! :)
In any case, I enjoyed my experience playing you're game!
The art and music set a cute and comfy vibe.
The only thing I missed was, as I said above, a way to spread the seeds in a larger area, and perhaps other purchase options that reach towards an end game. (If there *is* a victory condition, I didn't farm for long enough.)
Nice work!
@judith-hantisse I agree, more UI feedback would be really nice to have, as well as some tutorial-like features like pointing out where the store is. We went back and forth a bit on the exact location of the store and eventually decided to have it on the opposite side of the barn to differentiate it (even though the barn building itself doesn't do anything on the map). Thanks for playing!
@martingonn Thanks for playing, glad you liked it!
@flaterectomy There's no victory condition. When we were brainstorming at the start we did consider having something like how much you achieved after some set time has elapsed or how long it took you to earn a specific amount, but later on we kind of forgot about that entirely. And yes, I regret not having sowing upgrades more with every comment I read :) Thanks for playing!
Loved the audio, gave me a good chuckle hearing the cat meowing in the background, fit very nicely with the theme.
Overall the game felt well put together and the upgrade system was pretty nice to use.
Planting seeds was the one thing I was disappointing I couldn't upgrade, but the other upgrades made up for that.
I didn't really understand the hunger systems, I read some comments and people say you can die from it? Feels a bit unnecessary. Maybe replacing that with something like feeding a town for more points or something?
Art style works well for what you were going for. Maybe a few extra animations would be nice.
Overall great job.
I'll take responsibility for that one. The hunger mechanic was my doing and was implemented because I felt the game was a little too straight forward and easy.
Our usual music artist was pulling double duty this time around with doing the graphics as well, wed have loved to put in more animations but the time crunch was real :)
Thank you so much for your time and your feedback!
The hunger wasn't quite obvious, although it told you food is low, I initially assumed you could make food from wheat or something, but apparently not.
Its simple and effective. Nice game!
As my fellow programmer fgeva said, the whole question about upgrading planting caused some hesitation as we saw that there were cases where people might want to only plant a single square for a moment and then switch to the 3x3 upgrade (and vice versa). It was a a choice we made to not do this but we could have probably implemented a skill upgrade like with the sickle and decrease the cooldown between plantings at higher levels.
Anyway, it was a nice paper world experience :) I'd use some automatization drones for seeding or watering because I'm too lazy to do it all by myself. But that's what proper farmers do, I guess :)
@jiri-hysek Drones will be in the sequel :) The eating mechanic is a bit rough and not explained very well (which is in part because it is a bit rough and messy...) so that's on us. Thanks for playing!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8xlDpyVWJo