Lightyear Frontier review – Stardew Valley with robots

Lightyear Frontier – a cosy future (Frame Break) The latest cosy farming game forgoes the usual twee fantasy world for a giant mech on an alien world. Like mobile games featuring cats, cosy games currently seem to be staging a takeover, their numbers increasing at an alarming rate. Not that all of them are bad, but their tendency towards forced whimsy and tweeness often makes them mildly emetic, their milquetoast subject matters matched by dull mechanics and an absence of real challenge. It’s an ecosystem where every Stardew Valley is accompanied by dozens of lacklustre Graveyard Keeper 2 style disappointments. While Lightyear Frontier is another cosy farming simulator, it subverts the genre in a couple of interesting ways. First, it gives it a sci-fi twist, placing your agricultural exploits on an uninhabited alien world. Secondly, rather than using a tractor, your key piece of farming equipment is a mech that lets you stomp around its Eden-like wilderness smashing trees into usable timber, breaking rocks, mining minerals, and using its hose attachment to irrigate large chunks of your plantation. Your job is to use the mech to help various foundering human space colonies avoid starvation by growing crops that you then fire at their distant worlds using a trans-planetary resource cannon. It’s an amusing conceit, although actually using it, you may as well just be dropping your produce into a postbox for all the difference the cannon makes. Still, it gives your exploits a little shape, which is handy when Lightyear Frontier’s sandbox is otherwise distinctly lacking in pointed motivation. Setting up your homestead in a spot that gives reasonable access to trees, shrubbery, and mineral deposits, you set about building a base and setting up your farm. That involves tilling the soil, planting seeds, watering them, then coming back to do a harvest a day or so later. It’s a process that not only helps your fellow human colonists avoid starvation but also begins feeding fresh ingredients into your inventory, for use building the game’s increasingly complex production machinery. While there are no specific survival mechanics, your character needing neither food nor sleep to keep going, you do have to maintain and refuel your mech, adding new tools and repairing or replacing arms, legs, and modules as they get worn out or damaged during everyday operation. You soon discover there are naturally occurring barrels you can smash that act as free petrol but mending your mech at least requires crafting repair kits and targeting them at whatever limb or unit has suffered harm. Want GTA 6 news? Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for the latest GTA 6 news, reviews of new games you should play and exclusive analysis of the biggest stories of the week. Exploring its large map, full of colourful alien flora and threat-free fauna, you stumble across new resources and traces of an ancient civilisation, the Tall. You also notice different animals come out at night, none of which are a hazard to you, although some can damage your mech. The world’s variety and hand-crafted landscape make it pleasing to explore, even if you can’t help wishing there was a little more to actually do in its lo-fi alien splendour. Farm work’s plant/water/harvest cycle remains constant throughout the game’s play time, although you do eventually automate much of it after unlocking the relevant machinery. That’s useful, but it’s fair to say that even once automated, you’re still required to perform numerous menial support tasks, none of which feel as though they couldn’t also have been made automatic. It means there are very rarely breakthrough moments that bring significant change. The Planet Crafter had you slowly terraforming a landscape, your efforts reflected not only in progress across its massive tech trees, but also in the blue skies, grass, and foliage that completely transform what was a barren, lifeless rock when you first crash landed. Satisfactory almost does the reverse, seeing you turn its beautiful countryside into a huge set of complex manufacturing and energy plants, bending its natural resources to the hilariously cynical whims of the FICSIT corporation. Subnautica’s crafting, exploration, and base building were challenged by limited oxygen, hostile wildlife, and its own tale of capitalist greed. In Lightyear Frontier, you farm… and that’s pretty much it. That process is initially infused with discovery, each new mineral or seed variety spawning fresh products, and hunts for complimentary ingredients as you expand your technology, but it does quickly become routine. Base building is also hampered by a lack of decorative flair, and the finickiness of getting panels to align properly, an issue exacerbated when using a controller. The planet’s colourful landscape, the processes involved in farming, and exploration work as intended – as does your steady progress adding technology to your operation, so you can fulfil some of the more obscure requests from those impoverished interplanetary colonies. However, the lack of danger, pressure or survival needs, and the simplicity of its automation leave you wishing for a more urgent sense of purpose. Lightyear Frontier review summary In Short: A sci-fi farming and crafting game that substitutes tractors for a customisable mech, but whose engaging crop growing and colourful setting are undermined by a lack of danger and time pressure. Pros: Decent sized environment with plenty to explore. Colourful alien plants and animals, and the sci-fi setting helps avoid the smugness of many cosy games. Cons: The tight farming gameplay loop doesn’t evolve in interesting enough ways. The absence of environmental threat robs motivation and the automation feels too basic Score: 6/10 Formats: Xbox Series X/S (reviewed) and PCPrice: £23.49Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing and Frame BreakDeveloper: Frame BreakRelease Date: 4th November 2026Age Rating: 7 Many hands make light work (Frame Break) Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter. To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here. 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