My Australian Farm Review - Screenshot 1 of 1

Ahh, life on the farm. The sweet taste of buffalo milk, sheep and crocodiles playing together... OK, perhaps My Australian Farm isn't the most realistic agricultural simulator, but at least it makes for a decent money-management time-waster.

This, along with My Farm, My Exotic Farm and the upcoming My Asian Farm, all coexist in the 2009 retail release My Farm Around the World, now divided up into themed downloadable slices. That means that this is just a palette swap of its predecessors, but on the upside, it adds the charm of trading stock with your friends' farms in any of the game's iterations.

You can say g'day here to emus, opossums, kangaroos, crocodiles, sheep and buffalo, but beyond that the setting is as drab as its exotic counterpart and the storyline is basically nonexistent, unlike the dead relative-centred iterations. Finally, Uncle Bob's soul can rest.

There's nothing more complex here than buying the correct food and medicine for each animal and keeping in mind that different animals have slightly unique needs, like the temperamental crocodile. Some animals are for fattening up and selling at a higher price; others produce goods to sell at market. Knowing your livestock is crucial to success, then.

A few bonuses pop up along the way to keep things interesting, you'll have to invest in a few special purchases to keep your herd from fleeing and the game circulates between night and day. You must also keep your farm and animals clean, the latter of which is still plagued by the problem of shaded artwork making dirtiness slightly more difficult to detect. It's a small problem, though, and overall the game looks decent, though you'll want to mute the cacophony that quickly accumulates when enough livestock is present.

Conclusion

My Australian Farm, like its predecessors, is a serviceable if somewhat flawed money management game. You won't want to throw your DS on the barbie, nor will you come flying back to it like a boomerang.