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 2,000 gold — enough for your first plot, a market stall and a checkout, which is the whole chain you need before anyone can pay you, with room to plant more.
Walk near an empty patch of farmland and a black plate with a price fades in. Stand on it, hold still, and gold starts flowing out of your wallet into the plot.
The payment accelerates — it trickles for the first second and pours after about four, so a big price still lands quickly. You can pay in instalments: walk away whenever you like and what you've already paid is saved. Come back and finish later.
The plate is white while idle, green while you're paying, and red if you've run out of gold.
Your farmer digs the plot, then 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 “3/20 cards” instead of a price. You unlock new produce by collecting cards, not by reaching a level — 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.
Crops in your crate are worth nothing. Gold only arrives when a customer pays at a checkout, so you need two things in the market:
A stall for the product you're growing — each stall sells exactly one thing — and an open checkout lane. Both are bought with the same stand-still plates.
Without an open till, no customers spawn at all. The shop refuses people it can't take money from, so an empty market usually means you haven't opened a lane.
Carry the right product to its stall and walk into it. Items flow from your crate onto the shelves automatically — no dwell needed here. What you see on the shelf is the stock.
Customers arrive with real shopping lists, fill a trolley, and queue at the till. When they pay, the gold is yours.
A customer who reaches an empty shelf waits 60 seconds. Restock in time and they carry on happily. Let them run out of patience and they storm off — you keep the gold for whatever's already in their trolley, but you lose the rest of the sale and shop happiness drops.
Happiness does exactly two things, and both are about crowd size: how many customers can be in your shop at once (3 up to 15) and how fast they arrive (one every 9 seconds down to one every 3.5). Keeping shelves stocked is how your shop grows busier.
Prices flex a little with stock: a nearly-empty shelf earns about 5% more, a full one about 15% less. It's deliberately gentle — running dry is never more profitable than staying stocked.
Every crop, tree and animal is unlocked by completing its card set, not by reaching a level. Levelling up is simply how you get most of your cards.
Cards come from levelling up (3 per level), daily rewards, finishing mini events, completing orders, and the card trader, who offers six cards for gold each day. Every fifth level gives Points instead — spend one on any card you're short of.
Once a set is complete you stop receiving its cards entirely, so the pool automatically narrows onto what you still need.
Buy a pen plot, stand on it to pick a species, and your farmer builds the pen over about ten seconds. Discovering a species gives you a free breeding pair.
Animals need feeding, and every animal eats wheat — carry some to the trough and walk in, and it fills automatically. A fed adult produces two 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.
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 carry goods to the stalls — choosing whichever job matters most at that moment.
You can hire up to five. The first costs 5,000 gold, and they get more expensive from there. 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.
A friend's card trader stocks a different daily set from yours. Touring farms is the fastest way to find a card you're missing.
Every crop, tree, animal and decoration is reachable with gold and cards. Diamonds buy extra helpers and extra checkouts — hands and tills, not content.
Next
Orders, boosters, mini events, friends and night raids all open up as you grow. They're all optional — the farm runs fine without any of them.