Rusty’s Retirement satisfyingly defies its ‘idle game’ nature

The nefarious promise of automation.

May 13, 2024

For those unfamiliar, an idle game might sound like a fool’s errand: the player sets the game moving and then walks away from it, letting the game play itself. The joy in a good idle game lies, somewhat paradoxically, in the balance between idle and active – a game, however much it does on its own, needs to be played.

This means the game must do two things: engage and automate, and both aspects need to be equally satisfying.

Rusty's Retirement satisfyingly defies its 'idle game' nature — Build him a bench. He’s tired.

In Rusty’s Retirement, you manage a farm alongside a tired old robot. It starts out slow – Rusty walks with a bit of a hobble, necessitating a walking stick. The game also starts out small: with one small patch of tilled ground and three types of seeds, Rusty begins what seems to be a sort of hobby garden.

Rusty’s starting crops are wheat (which matures and can be harvested every minute and ten seconds), radishes (two minutes), and cabbage (two minutes thirty). You plant the seeds and Rusty waters and harvests the crops. Every time he’s got one of each crop, he hobbles it over to a strange device next to his house, lays them out, and the crops are converted to biofuel – Rusty’s a robot, after all; he doesn’t need to eat his veggies.

At this stage of Rusty’s Retirement, nothing quite feels idle. Wheat only yields a crop once before replanting, which means the player has to check in on Rusty once a minute to maximize profits — because from the jump the game dangles the prizes (and prices) of automation. There are, of course, further patches of plantable land, but there are also robots: bots to relieve Rusty from the burden of watering, bots to relieve him from planting. A bot that flies crops over to the converter, automating the rate of return.

You need these bots. You want them.

Further, there are strange little characters sitting at the bottom of your shop menu, promising the ability to buy ‘Haiku’, ‘Pinion’, and ‘Splunk.’ They’re expensive and the game only gives you a sliver of information about them, but your curiosity knows no bounds (and Rusty’s probably lonely in his retirement; doesn’t he need friends?)

If you’ve ever played a farming sim, the mechanics of Rusty’s garden should be familiar: new seeds are unlocked, promising better crop yield and diversity. But in Rusty’s Retirement, newer crops mean further automation: crops take longer to grow and produce more with fewer plantings. Along with your adorable little watering bots, the game is slowly weening you from your constant vigil. It is, in effect, asserting its ability to idle.

Rusty’s Retirement, casually docked at the bottom of your screen as you go about your work, begins to feel idyllic, the sort of retirement anyone could aspire to. Then, not realizing that your spreadsheet isn’t your active window, you hit the down arrow. The game zooms out.

Rusty’s garden is huge.

Through it’s expansiveness, Rusty’s Retirement achieves compulsive heights. Clearing out the west pasture, you build Slate’s Barn, and now you’re raising cattle and pigs that produce fertilizer. You build Echo’s Workshop, and now you can make your harvest bots move faster and pick more cucumbers. There is promise that you might, eventually, manage to steamline this farm to maximum efficiency and so you keep alt-tabbing back to the game. Your work suffers, but your farming excels. Then, as you clear the final field in preparation to perfect your farm, a new map unlocks.

And this one has streams. It’s time to begin anew.

Indeed, if the game can be said to have any failings, those failings lie in the player’s own self control. Insidiously designed to live, active, just below your daily tasks, Rusty’s Retirement all but dares you to leave it alone.

Rusty’s does everything well. The farming takes the compulsory aspects of Stardew Valley and old Harvest Moon farming mechanics and tightens them up. Upgrades are exciting to unlock, and there’s just enough challenge to balance and management that the game feels involved. It both engages and automates in very exciting and satisfying ways.

At $6.99 on Steam, Rusty’s Retirement is an almost absurd steal. With a game that affordable, the only question is whether your can afford the loss to your personal productivity.