Mini Farm
Mini Farm doesn't hold your hand in-game, so here's everything you need for your first hour. It takes about four minutes to read and you'll never need it again.
The only rule that matters
Almost every action in the game is the same gesture: move onto the thing, then hold still for one second. That buys land, harvests crops, collects eggs, starts fishing, empties your crate and pays for everything. If something isn't happening, you're probably still drifting on the joystick — let go completely.
Touch anywhere on the left of the screen and a joystick appears under your thumb — it's dynamic, so there's no fixed spot to find. Drag to walk.
The farm is walked, not tapped. There's no tap-to-move and no interact button anywhere in the game.
You start with 5,000 gold — enough for your first plot and your first checkout lane, which is the whole chain you need before anyone can pay you, with room to plant more.
Open the Shop and buy a plot from the Build tab. It then floats above your farm as a ghost you drop onto the grid — drag it wherever you like, tap Rotate to turn it 90°, and Place once the footprint glows green.
Changed your mind? Long-press a crop bed or pen to pick it up again and move, rotate or remove it — growing crops carry over. Greenhouses stay put. Your farm's layout is yours to arrange.
Once a grow plot is placed, your farmer digs it and the planting menu opens by itself — no button. Pick a crop and they sow it.
Planting is free. The land is the cost; the seeds never are. Each plot holds eight plants, and each one grows on its own timer.
Locked crops show the level they open at instead of a price. New produce arrives as you level up — see step 8.
When plants are ripe, walk onto the bed and hold still. After a second the crops start popping into your crate, one every fraction of a second, until the bed is clear or your crate is full.
Any movement stops it instantly and you have to hold still for a full second again. This is the single most common thing new players get wrong.
Your starting crate holds 8 items. When it's full, harvesting simply stops — no warning, nothing more goes in. Your farmer visibly carries the crate, so what you're holding is on screen the whole time.
A full crate is worth nothing on its own. Carry it to the stockpile — the stack of wooden pallets in the middle of your farm — and hold still to unload. Everything you grow, collect and catch is pooled here, up to 80 of each product — so spreading what you grow beats flooding it with one thing.
You can gather more than crops, too: stand still at a pond and your line casts itself. When one bites, a timing bar appears — tap to stop the needle. Land it in the gold band and every fish that trip is perfect; miss the bar entirely and the trip ends.
The Stock board shows how much of each product is sitting in your stockpile, so you can see at a glance what's running low.
Gold only arrives when a customer pays, and customers pay at a checkout lane. Open your first from its price plate out in the world: walk onto the plate, hold still, and gold flows out — the rate accelerates the longer you stand, you can leave and finish paying later, and the plate turns green while you're paying, red if you run out of gold. (Helpers are hired from the same plates.)
A cashier mans each lane and rings up walk-in shoppers, filling their shopping lists straight from your stockpile. Your first lane costs 1,000 gold; keep the stockpile fed and the gold keeps coming.
Until at least one lane is open, no customers arrive — an empty shop usually just means you haven't opened a lane yet.
The till isn't your only customer. Every so often a drive-thru order car pulls up with a shopping list — carry those items out to it from your stockpile and you're paid premium gold plus XP, noticeably more than the same goods earn at the checkout.
It's the second half of selling: keep the checkout lanes busy with walk-in shoppers, and clear the drive-thru orders as they arrive for the bigger payouts.
Running low on stock? The free Restock booster — watch a short ad — fills your lowest-stock product back to its cap, handy when a lane is about to run dry.
Every crop, tree and animal opens at a level, and the ladder is steady — something new roughly every two levels. You begin with wheat; carrot follows at 3, corn at 5, and your first chicken at 7.
XP comes from everything you do — harvesting, selling, fishing, feeding, hiring, and clearing mini events. There is no way to buy a level.
Each level also pays gold and 20 diamonds, so climbing is worth it even on the levels that unlock nothing new.
Buy a pen from the Shop and drop it on your grid, then pick a species — your farmer builds the pen over about five seconds. Each pen holds one species up to a fixed size, so buy more pens to raise more.
Animals need feeding, and every animal eats wheat — carry some to the trough and walk in, and it fills automatically. A fed adult produces four items per cycle, and a product icon appears above its head when it's ready. Collect it the usual way: stand in the pen, hold still.
Keep a male and a female together and, once a day, they may produce a baby that grows into another producer. A travelling vendor stops by now and then, selling a single animal of the sex you need to finish a pair.
A hungry animal shows the feed crop above its head instead and stops producing entirely until the trough is refilled.
Helpers do everything you do — harvest, collect produce, fish, refill troughs and haul goods to the stockpile — choosing whichever job matters most at that moment.
You can hire up to five. The first two are bought with gold (2,000 then 5,000); the last three cost diamonds (2,000, 5,000 and 10,000). They keep working the whole time you're playing.
Helpers also defend your farm: when a raider visits, your helpers and your dog become patrolling guards.
Worth knowing early
Crops ripen and animals finish their batches with the app shut. But nobody shops while you're gone — come back to a full farm, then sell it.
Ripe crops wait indefinitely. There is no spoiling, no dying, no punishment for going to bed.
Showers speed every crop up while they last, with no downside at all. A heavy storm is genuinely worth being online for.
The Reseed button lets you replant a bed as anything else in its category at no cost. Only the growing time restarts.
While a bed is growing, a watering sign sometimes appears. Tap it and the whole batch comes up perfect, worth 50% more. Petting an animal mid-cycle does the same — and a helper can never do either, so every perfect item is yours.
Every crop, tree and animal is unlocked by levelling, and most decorations cost gold. Diamonds buy convenience and cosmetics — extra helpers, extra checkout lanes, boosters and premium decorations — never a shortcut up the levels everyone climbs.
Next
Boosters, mini events, friends, leaderboards and raids all open up as you grow. They're all optional — the farm runs fine without any of them.