That game where you farm with your mech finally has a release date
Lightyear Frontier does have a less nebulous release date—early access, mind you.
Something like two and a half years after I first saw the concept and thought "that looks neat" we're finally gonna get it. We're finally gonna get a game where you use a mech to plow a field grow and plant some seeds and water them and then harvest a big weird alien fruit.
Videogames, hell yeah.
Following a new trailer earlier his week, Lightyear Frontier developers Frame Break have announced that it'll release into Early Access in March 2024. First teased quite some time ago, it's a game about homesteading on an alien world with mechs and up to four players, cooperatively. It's very exciting, because frankly, that's a very exciting idea.
The new trailer has the very geared up farmers of the frontier stomping about in their mechs, tossing treats to birds, and otherwise doing farming tasks—and farming game tasks—as you'd expect them to. A mech buzzsaws down a tree while another stomps about plowing a field and a third whacks rocks with a comedically oversized pickaxe. We see some mechs moving about a farm garden, one blasting crops with a huge hose, another using some kind of huge suction gun to harvest.
A theme throughout the trailer is also that there are cute little alien birds flapping around on this planet, and I hope I get to have a pet alien bird for myself. Or at least feed the alien birds some snacks.
And through all of this I think to myself: Wow, my garden would be a lot larger if I had a giant gardening mech.
Get on it, tech industry.
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You can find Lightyear Frontier on its official website and on Steam.
Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.