Stardew Valley competitor set to launch this week, and it looks delightful

Do you want a Stardew Valley competitor that plays as an almost idle RPG while you work? If you said yes, you’re in luck.

Rusty’s Retirement is an idle farming game that sits in a bar at the bottom of your screen allowing you to work away on boring spreadsheets all while your farm thrives in pixel beauty.

Stardew Valley is the leader of cutesy farming sims and for good reason.

It’s quite an ingenious little game. With Rusty living out his retirement on his farm, he will act out on jobs you set up for him as your day progresses. You could be on a Teams call with your boss and Rusty will be weeding a new plot of land.

Perhaps you’ve got a presentation to work on, and Rusty will be there alongside you, hard at work. He can even utilise a cute little army of robots to help him with tasks.

With a focus mode that allows you to control just how much of the farm you see and how quickly your crops grow, this seems like a perfect idle game that you can occasionally check on throughout your busy work day.

It’s worth noting that Rusty’s Retirement also runs on MacBook, so there’s no worrying about compatibility for your work laptop.

I know I’ll be grabbing this as soon as it launches. The graphics are gorgeous and very reminiscent of Stardew Valley, while the tasks seem simple enough to check on every once in a while.

From what we’ve seen on the Steam page, there is a full market system to sell your crops, as well as biofuel to be created to power your robot helpers, so there will be some depth beyond simple tasks.

Rusty’s Retirement launches 26 April and will keep your work days feeling a bit more colourful and entertaining.