Little People Farm

A friend's son, barely three years old at the time, could spend whole afternoons with some children's games. With Little People Farm from 1992 by Manley and Associates, he lasted about as long as it took him to identify the sheep and lose interest. That alone wouldn't necessarily be a verdict — but in this case, a two-year-old and I independently agreed.

Little People Farm is an educational title for the youngest players, focused on a farm setting. The target audience is preschool-age children, and everything reflects that — colorful graphics, simple interactions, no complex objective. The idea is to explore the farm, click on animals, maybe learn something. Genre-wise it's somewhere between an interactive book and a toy — it's not really a game.

The controls are simple to the point where simplicity stops being a virtue. You click, something happens, you click again. The colorful graphics deliver on their promise — the screens are vibrant, for 1992 on DOS fairly friendly to children's eyes. The problem is depth, or rather its complete absence. There are precious few interactions, the responses are predictable, and after a few minutes there's nothing left to discover. Even a curious child has no reason to come back.

Nineties educational games for kids varied in quality — alongside genuinely successful titles, there was a sea of software created so parents would feel they were buying something "developmental." Little People Farm feels exactly like that. The graphics do their job, but there's not much substance behind them. Today it's aged exactly as expected: the little that was here isn't enough even now.

If you have a two-year-old at home who's never seen a computer and you need to keep them occupied for five minutes, maybe it'll do. Older children — and of course anyone looking even for a hint of nostalgia — will find nothing in Little People Farm worth bookmarking.