If I had a nickel for every cozy farm sim I played this month with a Paper Mario visual design that begins with getting washed up after a shipwreck I’d have two nickels. One was Echoes of the Plum Grove, and this one is Snacko, the ridiculously cute cat-themed farm sim. Snacko turned up at the Wholesome Snack show today (how appropriate) and announced that it’s launching into early access today. Surprise!

I got the chance to play a bit of Snacko ahead of time and it is as super cute as it looks. After washing up on the exact island me and my cat bestie Mikan were planning to move to anyhow, I find myself caretaker of an unused farm plot and owner of some free turnip seeds. It’s always turnips, because you don’t mess with the opening tropes of a farm sim around here. In this farm sim though, the nearby town has been almost entirely abandoned as a dangerous miasma creeped in when people turned away from the local goddess. 

Because of that, things start a bit slow in Snacko. There aren’t townsfolk to immediately run off and introduce myself to and the path to some of my important crafting recipes seems a bit steep. I’m encouraged to send out a wanted ad in the post for a grocer, but I need to build the store for them to move into and for the life of me I can’t find a good source of clay. 

So my first spring has been sluggish thus far, but looking ahead at what else Snacko has in store for me I’m quite excited. There’s quite a bit of decor and tools to build, including a tiny little car. There are several biomes like a desert and snowy area to unlock as I progress the plot and clear more miasma. To attract each resident I send out a help wanted ad listing job and temperament—easy going, quirky, sassy, and others—which is a cute detail that seems to impact their dialogue. I’ve not unlocked farm animals yet either, but I’m down to care for cows and chickens even if I am a cat.

Over on its store page, Snacko’s pair of developer spouses say that they’re planning for it to be in early access for about a year. “The full version of Snacko will flesh out a lot of the existing content and systems in the game, and have better UI/UX support, especially for controllers,” Bluecurse Studios says. “We plan on adding more craftables, making the mines more compelling, expanding on post-bonding (marriage) life, giving the nature sprite more powers and progression to help out, letting the player expand and customize their house, and a host of other improvements and balance tweaks… not to mention lots and lots of bug fixing.”

In particular I’m looking forward to better controller support as I’m quite partial to gamepads for my farm sims.

Snacko is out now on Steam for $24.99 / £16.75.