I’ve never been into simulator games. The only one I ever played was Goat Simulator and you can barely count that as a true sim. After watching my friend on Twitch play Power Wash Simulator, the calmness of it all had me intrigued. So when ‘Lawn Mowing Simulator’ developed by Skyhook Games crossed paths with MKAU, I begged to get my hands on it first since I love gardening and wanted something relaxing to veg out to in these trying times. Now, while it was relaxing it wasn’t without its proverbial bugs in the garden.

There is no real plot to Lawn Mowing Simulator but the concept is simple. Your aim is to be a lawn mowing mogul. Starting your career as a small-time business owner with only yourself, your job is to mow people’s lawns without disgruntling the owner. As you grow with fame through the use of advertising and your top-notch skills, you can expand your empire with a fleet of different mowers and employees with a range of skill levels.

Managing your income in Career Mode is an essential part of this game. Depending on how well of a job you have done on someone’s yard, orchard or property depends on how much cash you bring in. This is important as you need to manage this to pay for wages, machine maintenance, fuel and even to increase the number of mowers in your fleet.

Pull in enough money and you can even buy and upgrade new compounds where you base your business out off. I would have liked to see a bigger variety of terrain; not everyone has these pristine yards in real life, they weren’t very challenging. The employees also lacked so much personality, it would have just been nice for them to have maybe a few lines of dialogue to make you really want to pick them as part of your company.

Each contract starts with a mini-type game as your character scouts the yard for any hidden items that could potentially be run over. Anything from poop to valuables. This eventually loses its charm and it was tempting to skip it and mow right over those bad boys. The mower itself is incredibly easy to run thank god, with a turning of the key and a rev on the D-pad and off you go. Lowering the blade to engage with the grass is but a press of a button and again adjusting the height of the cut is up and down on the D-Pad.

Now, Lawn Mowing Sim has 3 modes; Career Mode, Challenge Mode, and Free Mode. I have already mostly outlined Career Mode and this is probably where you will spend most of your time developing your lawn mowing business. Challenge Mode is where you can compete against the clock, fuel consumption, and stripe quality to smash challenges at varying levels of difficulty. Free Mode is mowing at your own leisurely pace with no restraints and no one breathing down your neck. It is very relaxing.

The graphics are not too bad, I dunno if I just expected too much watching our boss play Microsoft’s Flight Sim, and I was happy, just not blown away by them. There was certainly nice lighting bouncing around the areas and when it rained it added a nice atmospheric change.

The gardens were pretty to look at but once again there just wasn’t enough variety, all the grass looked the same from yard to yard, and even the flowerbeds began to be full of the same plants and flowers. Other than the drone of your mower, the background is very ambient and serene.

Generally, the experience was an enjoyable and placid little garden romp, but that was soon soiled by small glitches that pulled me out of my relaxing entrepreneurship. After playing around 10 hours in Career mode, after one particular contract, the mission froze on the completion stat screen. Whatever I did – quit out, restart, smash the accept button, even uninstall and reinstall, I could not get off that screen in that career.

Also, loading into some contracts, once the blades were engaged at the set height, it would not show up the fresh grass meaning I couldn’t gauge how much grass I had cut. The cut length would also be missing from the contract, leaving you in the dark about what you needed to be done.

Despite these problems, I had a really pleasant experience with my first real simulator. Something as simple as mowing grass had me occupied for hours just mindlessly driving a mower back and forth just vegging out to the hum of the motor. Maintaining my own business and motor was a satisfaction I didn’t think I’d experience and while there were some niggling issues that would lurch me back to reality with rage, overall it was quite a solid ride.

Written by: Stacey