Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth Review
No social system, no town, no avatar. Just your mouse and a farm to min-max.
Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth. Credit: Zabbo Games / Thermite Games
Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth from Zabbo Games and Thermite Games strips away much of what you’d expect from farming sims descended from Stardew Valley and delivers something refreshingly focused. This is farming distilled to pure strategy without the frills. You don’t walk around your crops or a town; you don’t date or befriend the locals because there’s no social system. This game is just you and your cursor, working to maximize your income to make rising rent payments on time.
Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth. Credit: Zabbo Games / Thermite Games
You view your procedurally generated land and its expansions and use your mouse to interact; there’s no player avatar. You pick your tools or items from a familiar inventory system or buildings from a menu, and click on the pixel art tiles of your farmland to use them. Instead of managing relationships or narrative beats, you're focused entirely on optimization and resource management. This is a game about pure, efficient farming. The mouse-based interface handles everything smoothly, though I would have liked controller support.
Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth. Credit: Zabbo Games / Thermite Games
The character classes significantly alter gameplay in meaningful ways, forcing you to consider new strategies to make enough money to survive. Each class offers multiple choices for perks, creating even more variety. Then, random chance within the run itself mixes things up even more, with the typical choice of three random upgrades on level up that you see in roguelites. The game is full of systems that add substantial replayability and keep the strategic elements fresh.
Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth. Credit: Zabbo Games / Thermite Games
One of my favorite things about Another Farming Roguelike is that there’s no pressure from a day/night cycle. Only an energy meter limits your daily activities, which removes the stress of a ticking clock while maintaining meaningful constraints. While rent mode forces you to meet a cash target at the end of a week, the game includes a free mode without rent for those of us who just want to build out a farm—even less pressure, if that’s what you’re looking for.
The graphics are pleasantly cozy, with crisp pixel art that does a great job with legibility; bright colors and detailed tilesets make for a clean and readable world and UI. The game isn’t trying to reinvent the farming sim aesthetic seen in a lot of games since Harvest Moon on the SNES, but it stands on its own and is one of the best-looking.
Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth. Credit: Zabbo Games / Thermite Games
The game can be genuinely difficult, especially with some of the challenge mode runs with highly specific goals and hurdles, so there’s a lot of content for players to chip away at. With dozens of buildings and hundreds of items, I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of this game. Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth is much deeper than what I initially expected.
Another Farming Roguelike: Rebirth is available now on Steam.
Overall Score: 7/10
Played on: Steam Deck
