Sunflower Land is a pixelated farming metaverse where every edible you farm and crop doesn’t end up in your tummy, but on the blockchain. In this (almost) free-to-play farming simulation game, you try to maximize resources and limited space in a journey to expand your farming empire. Players gather resources, prepare their own food, take care of farm animals, craft useful items, and of course farm their own crops.
To add more dimension to the game, farmers can trade all these in-game resources with other Sunflower Land farmers. Supply and demand is carefully balanced with prices of items varying depending on scarcity.
Open Source Web3 Game
Sunflower Land comes from Sydney based web3 gaming studio Thought Farm. Their mission is not only to make crypto games more easily accessible, but also making them community driven. Sunflower Land is an open source crypto game and can be expanded on by everyone around the world through Github. There’s over 70 contributors already, making this metaverse styled crypto game more decentralized than others.
Fun fact: Back in January 2022 the game was originally named Sunflower Farmers and gained viral attention by breaking Layer-2 chain Polygon for an entire week. (This won’t happen anymore with Polygon 2.0 and Supernets, but let’s not get in to that right now.) It all started with 3 friends working on the simulation game as a side gig, but quickly got out of hand by the positive response in the web3 community.
The team is of course passionate about blockchain technology and how it’s revolutionizing the gaming industry. Developers are constantly exploring various ways to expand on what has already been build, which includes blockchain elements. Community driven content, or user generated content (UGC), is a mechanism where player’s creativity is unleashed. Similar to how Deadrop is working on tools to unlock limited possibilities, Sunflower Land is looking for ways to allow direct community contributions too. Whether it is coding, designing, or even shifting the game’s narrative, lore, and events.
How to Play Sunflower Land
Starting July 17th 2023 the entry cost to playing this farm simulation game has slightly changed. To get started new farmers need to mint a farm where the gas price is not covered by the game. Since the game is developed on Polygon, a small amount of MATIC needs to be available in an ERC20 wallet, bridged to the Polygon network. After minting your land and Bumpkin the fun of farming begins! A Bumpkin is a gift for minting your land, it serves as your profile picture while simultaneously being a fun collectible NFT character. Basically it’s your whole personality from there on, and the character needs your guidance to build a successful farm ready for expansion.
Bumpkins, Sunflower Land characters
Your Bumpkin goes where you go every crop and expansion on the way. Any in-game progress is attached to your Bumpkin too. Experience, skills, achievements, you name it. All updated in real-time too, as you discover new clothing items, rare items to take along on your farming endeavors, and leveling up. In web3 terms we call this a dynamic NFT, as it changes appearance instead of always looking exactly the same as the day you minted the Bumpkin.
If a player would like to attain access to more web3 features later on during the game, a ‘Gold Pass’ is required. This unlocks additional blockchain elements including withdrawing of your NFT collectibles, trading, and minting rare items. Having your own Web3 wallet such as Metamask is beneficial in many ways. It empowers you to truly own your NFTs and tokens. Not just in Sunflower Lands, but in every single game we cover on The Web3 Game. By owning your digital collectibles and cryptocurrencies, you’re free to transfer them in and out of the game whenever you want.
And you should want this too, because the game developers connected the game with their own native crypto token ‘The Sunflower Land Token’ (SFL). It’s an ERC20 token on the Polygon blockchain. The only way to obtain this in-game utility token is by either purchasing it on an exchange such as Quickswap, or by actually playing the game and earn it with your time. While earning SFL during your farming journey, you can spend your hard earned currency. There’s seeds, tools, expansions, buildings, animals, and a whole lot more to acquire.
Farming Crops, Fruit, and Mushrooms
Now let’s get into the fun parts, actually being a farmer! Farming crops is crucial in this game, and oh boy is there a lot to farm. Which is great, because successfully harvested crops earn you SFL. To grow crops you purchase seeds from the shop. There’s sunflowers, potatos, pumpkins, carrots, cabbage, beetroot, cauliflower, parsnip, eggplant, corn, weat, radish, and kale. Depending on the crop it takes anywhere between 1 hour up to 36 hours to grow. That’s a whole lot quicker than the crops in your backyard!
There’s fruit too, and they replenish multiple times after planting your seeds. Did it stop replenishing? Then you’ll need an axe to clear the fruit tree or bush. There’s blueberries, oranges, and apples.
Mushrooms are even trickier than fruit. They sort of have their own will and randomly appear in different locations on your farm. Make sure to gather them for free so they can be used in recipes, quests, and crafting items.
Be a chef, too.
Better get your hands on a fire pit, kitchen, bakery, deli, or smoothie shack. Because farmers need to cook, too. Harvested crops are enough to make a nice meal in Sunflower Land. You start with a fire pit and can craft larger buildings while making progress in the game. After clicking on your fire pit, or other cooking building, you can choose from a variety of recipes. If you have harvested all the ingredients and collected enough XP it’s time to prepare.
Tools and resources
Most tools are created at the workbench. Tools like axes are used to collect various resources in the simulation game. The axe enables you to cut down trees by clicking on it. Once the tree is taken down it will provide you with wood. Which in turn can again be used to craft other tools. And those tools in turn provide additional resources beyond just wood. And… Well, you probably guessed it. Those additional resources come with their own benefits too, such as land expansion! Make sure to collect wood, stone, iron, and gold to grow your farming business into a thriving and healthy economy.
Expanding your successful farming business
After reaching a certain level in the game, and after gathering plenty of resources, you’re farm can expand into a bigger enterprise. That’s pretty much the whole point in this GameFi farming simulation, to rinse and repeat in order to grow and expand. If you’re in the game this deep, it’s time to navigate your way around the official documentation.
Seasons in Sunflower Land
Sunflower Land changes with the seasons, which is every three months. Farmers can explore and discover new items to craft, mutated animals, seasonal decorations, and special events. This keeps the gameplay interesting throughout the years and makes it less repetitive. The depth and variety encourages players to stay engaged in Sunflower Land and collect all year round. Limited edition items can be earned, unlocking enhanced farming abilities. By completing new released challenges and quests, farmers can also earn Seasonal Tickets, completely free bonus items in the game. Once you own a Seasonal Ticket, there’s plenty of rare items available to choose from. Your tickets do however come with limited supply, so choose carefully if you go for an extremely rare item or something more in the middle.
Witches Eve
Sunflower Land recently announced Witches Eve, the next season starting on August 1st.
This season is packed with corn mazes and mysterious quests. If you’re into mysteries and magic, now is the time to start farming. Head on over to the Pumpkin Plaza where the Witch is awaiting you. Each week a new maze is introduced, packed with rewards, but also traps and NPCs getting in your way. Once you do complete a maze there’s a prize awaiting in the form of a ‘Crow Feather’. These Crow Feathers are the currency of this season to craft rare collectibles, fashionable wearables, and unrevealed decorations.
