A solo developer is making a Steam game where players take on the role of a farmer who must single-handedly separate wheat from chaff 10,000,000 times. Steam seems to have found a new subgenre of viral games that task players with organizing huge quantities of items. But this new title aims to take the formula to extremes.
Tidying up a messy inventory is often seen as one of the not-so-popular aspects of most farming simulation games. Many of them even come with built-in mechanics to automatically sort things or at least make the process easier. But one upcoming indie game is seemingly capitalizing on that exact aspect, requiring players to organize an unbelievable number of items for a brief rush of dopamine.
It Could Take Years to Beat This Steam Game
A solo developer who goes by SaturaDev on Twitter recently posted a short snippet of “Wheat from the Chaff,” an interesting indie Steam game that’s about sorting ten million wheat grains. The painstakingly slow process involves scooping up small amounts of wheat, bringing them to a table, and then manually separating the wheat from the chaff one by one. In the teaser trailer, the player manages to separate six wheat grains from the chaff in about 30 seconds. If an average player’s speed remains the same as what’s shown in the video, it could take over five years to beat the game, and that’s assuming someone treated it like a 9-to-5 job.
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SaturaDev has teased the possibility of adding tools to the game that could potentially speed up the process. For instance, they shared an image of a winnower, saying, “[Going to] add it and add [many] more other mechanics.” Still, sorting millions of grains could be the worst nightmare for cozy farming sim fans, turning what should be a relaxing experience into an incredibly time-consuming test of patience.
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Image via SaturaDev -
Image via SaturaDev -
Image via SaturaDev
There is currently no release window for Wheat from the Chaff, and the game doesn’t even have a Steam page at the time of writing. That said, after its trailer blew up online, the developer promised to cancel all their other projects and focus on Wheat from the Chaff to release it as soon as possible. It will be interesting to see if fans of organizing games will take on the challenge once it’s released.
Interestingly, Wheat from the Chaff is not the first indie game to capture players’ attention with a borderline impossible challenge. Another indie developer who goes by NasNakarus on Twitter recently showed a similar game where players need to find a needle in a haystack containing five million pieces. In recent years, cozy games like Librarian: Tidy Up the Arcane Library! have proven that there is indeed interest in titles focused on sorting thousands of items. But some of these upcoming projects seem so challenging and time-consuming that one cannot help but wonder if anyone will actually attempt to play them.
Wheat from the Chaff is still in development, and many of its fundamental mechanics could change in the future. This post is based on the first teaser trailer shared by developer SaturaDev and their early comments about the gameplay.
