Check out the artwork from a new computer game by German software designers Pegasus Spiele.

Of course, “the smartest farmer harvests the biggest potatoes”:

The fresh country air, romantic sunsets, a picnic on a meadow – many people are fascinated by life in the country. A feeling of home is in the air. However, there is more to the life of a farmer than just the genial country life – it also requires many hours of hard work to bring in a rich harvest.

In the 19th century, the USA bought vast tracts of land west of the Mississippi. This farmland with its square and clearly partitioned fields was ideal for the settlers from the east, who soon turned this region into America’s Heartlands.

Players take on the roles of these settlers, developing their lands and building farms. Each cultivated field yields victory points; however, players need to decide round by round whether they actually want to collect these victory points. They might also forego these points and save up for a farm instead, which might yield even more victory points. Bonus tiles offer further options for strategic play.

Games like this have been around almost as long as personal computers have: The Oregon Trail was a classic in the 1970s, which inspired the educational Yukon Trail in 1993; and the more serious The Settlers was developed in 1993, and has been redeveloped right up to 2010 with The Settlers 7: Path to a Kingdom.

In addition to this I have recently been informed of the online virtual world called Second Life, in which players can escape their old life and start afresh in places abounding with new social and economic opportunities; and just like the classic settler fantasia, there are no natives.