Review: Rusty’s Retirement Offers a Calming and Simplistic Respite

Being a working adult is difficult. We have very little time to enjoy things that bring us joy or take significant time for leisurely pursuits. This isn’t some surprising concept to any of you out there reading this review. Despite all of the stress that comes from work, the hope is that all of this will be worth it when we can all (in theory) retire from our decades-long careers and settle into more relaxing tasks. Some people may want to travel, others will probably spend time discovering new hobbies like knitting or gardening. Retirement is still many years out for me, though, but I have found some calm and comfort in experiencing Rusty’s Retirement in the midst of completing my grueling work tasks.

Mister Morris Games, the indie developer behind Haiku, the Robot, has created a unique idle farming simulator game that allows players to play this game at the bottom or side of their screen while working on other things. In fact, I had Rusty’s Retirement running while I wrote this review because it’s just so cozy and rewarding to watch it operate. The game’s titular character,  Rusty, is an adorable robot with a walking stick who seems to only want to do one thing that I can observe: grow vegetables, convert it to Biofuel, and earn Spare Parts so he can build homes so his friends can join him on his little farm.

The mechanics are straightforward enough from here. Players can plant seeds on crop plots, starting with wheat, radishes, and cabbage. Each crop takes a specific amount of time to grow after being watered, and once fully grown, can be picked to obtain Spare Parts. The vegetables can then be converted into Biofuel on a converter, and that Biofuel can be converted into Spare Parts. As more vegetables are grown and harvested, more vegetables will begin to unlock in order to generate more Biofuel and Spare Parts. Crops cost money to plant, though, so converting Biofuel into Spare Parts is important early on in order to plant more crops. Sometimes giant versions of crops will spawn, and they can be repeatedly clicked on by the player to gain multiples of that vegetable. It’s a simple cycle that will see players amass plenty of Biofuel and Spare Parts in order to unlock Rusty’s friend’s homes, purchase decorations for the farm, and beyond.

Once Rusty’s friends are unlocked and their homes are built, they can contribute to various aspect of the farm. For example, Haiku from Mister Morris Games’ previous game has joined Rusty in his retirement and can assist with building new homes, plots, and other machines. A gentlemanly robot named Pinion can show players their farm’s statistics which includes how much Biofuel is being generated from the currently planted crops. Other friends will unlock beekeeping to generate additional Biofuel, farm animals for fertilizer, and a repair robot who will upgrade helper robots that can plant, water, and pick vegetables for better efficiency on the farm.

Eventually players will also be able to unlock different types of farms like a swampy terrain, a sandy desert, a forest with cherry blossoms, and a desert oasis. Each new farm has its own kind of enhancements and restrictions that can make designing a farm more difficult or make it harder to grow vegetables. 

While there is little else to do in the game but watch these little robots spend hours growing and harvesting vegetables to seemingly no end, there is something addicting about watching the farm grow and seeing the number of Biofuel and Spare Parts go up. There were some stretches of time where I would just sit and watch all of the robots work when I should have been doing my own work. Of course, as an idle game, there is also very little input I needed to make while playing except when new crops needed to be planted, bee hives needed checking, vegetables and berries needed unlocking, or when I needed to upgrade the helper robots. As the length of time gets longer for vegetables to grow and all of the helper robots become more efficient, the game becomes even more self-sustaining for the player.

What really adds to the charm of this game is the pixelated graphics and really chill, ambient music. Everything on the farm is colorful, distinct, and full of character. Sometimes the robots will float about and idle themselves, taking a break from their endless task of harvesting crops. Rusty and his friends also idle, and even take breaks on benches that can be placed around the farm. The homes have smoke coming up from the chimneys, and the sear on Rusty’s home and main crop storehouse can spin and generate Spare Parts if spun five times in a row. Little bees and butterflies flitter about the map, and leaves fall from the sky periodically to give the sense that somewhere there is a giant tree just swaying in the wind. All of these little details help add to the calming nature of Rusty’s Retirement.

For such a simplistic game, there were a few issues here and there I noticed. Having played Rusty’s Retirement on my MacBook Air, my first time booting the game left me with a black screen with just the game visible. I was confused initially as the game was very clearly advertised as an idle game that allows players to do other things on their computer while having the game open. Once I read the Help section of the game, I found out it was a known problem with the Mac version of the game and all I needed to do was reboot the game again. I haven’t experienced the issue since, thankfully. Another minor issue is that sometimes robots would pick crops and almost instantaneously one of the helper robots would be placing that crop onto the Biofuel converter despite that crop had yet to actually be placed into the storage room of the farm. It’s clear this happens because the game has already counted that crop as being harvested, therefore even though visually it has not been stored, it is counted by the game as being usable for the Biofuel converter. Also, as a down side to this game, there is no way to view all of the available farming space without zooming out, but the game is near unplayable once zoomed out. 

While idle simulator games are not a new concept, I believe the presentation of Rusty’s Retirement is rather novel and beyond adorable. It doesn’t try to make players babysit the farm, and allows them to interact with it at their own pace. Also, having a game sequestered to the side or bottom of one’s desktop screen allows players to really go about their day in Zoom meetings or working on important documents while Rusty and his friends go about their own day, enjoying their retirement and do what they seem to love at their own leisure. As somebody who has been too busy recently to really dedicate myself to any one game, Rusty’s Retirement has been the perfect game to just chill with and give myself a bit of a mental reset when certain work tasks became too overwhelming to focus on. Maybe many of us aren’t at retirement age yet, but there is something cathartic about helping Rusty with fulfilling his retirement dream. Anybody looking for a calming, simplistic experience that doesn’t require too much of their attention should definitely check this game out. 

Rusty’s Retirement is available now on Steam for PCs and Macs.