New farming simulation sticks to your desktop's taskbar

“That was a mistake. Now I can't get anything done. 10 out of 10,” comments a player in the Rusty's Retirement community section.

It is one of over 1,000 user reviews within just two days of release, the overwhelming majority of which are positive.

And at the same time it is an allusion to the biggest feature of the game: The farming sim doesn't start in full screen, but sticks to the bottom (or side) of your screen while you do other things.

Well, or no longer done, as the quote proves! And this is what it looks like:

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A farming sim directly on the desktop: This is how the Steam hit Rusty's Retirement works

No pressure, no hassle

Rusty's Retirement appeared almost unnoticed on Steam on April 26th, but quickly became popular with its unique concept built up a considerable fan base: With over 14,000 active players at the same time, the small 7 euro game has worked its way close to the top 100 most played Steam titles worldwide – and the trend is rising.

The principle is simple: You grow plants, water and care for the arable land and finally harvest the harvest. This generates gold and biofuel, which are needed for farm expansions and hard-working robot workers.

Rusty's Retirement deliberately doesn't rely on time pressure or highly complex management, but rather sees itself as an idle clicker that you can easily take your eyes off of for a few hours.

»A blessing for my lack of concentration«

Since the game only takes up part of the screen, you can easily do other things like type emails.

The Steam page says: “Zoom in or out for a less distracting view, or alternatively turn on focus mode, which slows down crop production.”

The minimalist style ensures that your PC still has enough juice for other tasks: Rusty's Retirement only requires an Intel i3 processor, 4 GB of RAM and 256 MB of hard drive space.

This is what players on Steam say about it:

• The perfect game when you have too many monitors with not much happening on them. – RileyX
• It's a cute little game that you can really play casually. – Seedi
• It's a blessing for my lack of concentration! Planting a few tomatoes quickly helps enormously to bring the task back into focus. – Pirek

Distraction, relaxation, deceleration: In times when many games often create a lot of FOMO pressure through hard grinds, battle passes or limited events, a small game can perhaps have more of an impact than you think. What do you think of the concept of desktop farming? Feel free to write us your opinion in the comments!