How to play Loopy Farm

Farming is a slog. It takes a lot of time and requires honest work — exactly what your brain needs in this quick, cheap dopamine era full of distractions.

So let us show you how to build a successful farming empire, step by step. This is everything a new farmer needs: machines, money, upgrades, planning, automation and patience.

The loop — core of your progress

Growing crops is not an easy task, and humans have spent centuries improving the process. Luckily, today there are machines that can help us, and they basically work in a loop. A harvester, a tractor and a trailer are all it takes to create a successful farming loop. How?

Before you start: tap a machine to select it, then drive it with the joystick on a phone or WASD on a computer. On a computer, E selects the machine you are standing next to and Q automates it.

Drive the tractor over an empty field to sow the seeds. Watch the crops grow. Once the seeds are fully grown into crops, the Hay Day starts! Take the harvester for that crop and start the harvest. Once the harvester is full, you can empty it at the silo, or into the trailer to save the time.

Does it sound like a lot of work? Yes, because it is. Doing these things manually might feel rewarding, but your farm won't progress nearly as fast.

Automated Loop

So how to progress? Here comes the automation. All of your machines can be automated.

To create a working loop, you need to drive both the tractor and the harvester over the same field and automate them. Automating the tractor and the harvester creates a basic loop, but it is not very efficient.

The last missing puzzle to make an efficient loop is the trailer. Once you automate the trailer, the efficiency of the production grows significantly, so keep that in mind.

You can check the rate and efficiency of production on the Farm Stats screen.

Selling: two very different markets

The Global Exchange

The Global Exchange is always open, and the prices change every four hours. Keep an eye on the news and sell your crops at the right time, when the prices surge.

The Local Market

Contracts ask for a set amount of one crop and pay a fixed reward, with a limited number available each day. They're steadier than the Exchange, and from the middle tiers they also pay Parts, which is what makes them worth the trip.

Money, Parts and Gems

• Money buys machines, fields, and the early upgrade levels. It comes from selling crops and finishing tasks.
• Parts buy the later upgrade levels — the ones money can't touch. They come from contracts, daily tasks and seasons, and they're the real bottleneck on a maturing farm.
• Gems unlock a handful of premium machines and a few conveniences.

The silo

The silo starts at 150 units and upgrades to 1,000,000 across 20 levels.

Here's the thing though: automated machines don't stop when the silo is full. They keep working even when there is no room to store more crops. When a machine arrives at the silo and it is full, the crops overflow and they are lost. It is the most common way a new farm quietly wastes an afternoon of work. So keep an eye on your silo and sell before you walk away, so the idle production can continue.

What happens while you're away

Automated machines keep working after you close the game, for up to 2 hours. When you come back, the Welcome Back screen shows what they earned.

The cap is not usually what limits you — the silo is. If your fleet fills the silo in twenty minutes, the other 100 minutes earn nothing, which is why upgrading the silo before a long break is worth more than another machine.

How much those hours pay comes down to four things:

• A field needs both. One automated harvester and one automated tractor on the same field, or that field earns nothing while you are away.
• The tractor sets the crop, and has to keep up. If its power or its level is below the harvester's, the field is penalised for the mismatch — a strong harvester pulled by a weak tractor earns less than both of them could.
• Trailers multiply it. Enough trailer capacity assigned to that crop can roughly triple what the same harvester brings in. Trailers don't need to sit on the field; they just need to be automated and set to the crop.
• The crop and the field both count. Every crop earns at its own rate, because every crop grows at its own speed, and the larger fields carry a bonus for some of them. Put the same machines on soy in a small starter field and on soy in one of the big late fields, and the big field pays noticeably more: on a small plot a slow crop spends most of its time growing while the harvester waits, and a big field keeps that harvester working. Fast crops are at home on the small fields; the slow ones want space.

Eras and the farmhouse

Machines belong to four eras, and each opens when the farmhouse is big enough:

• Homestead — humble beginnings, from house level 1
• Industrial — rise of machines, from house level 2
• Modern — high efficiency, from house level 5
• Futuristic — next-gen tech, from house level 8

The farmhouse runs to level 10, and each level also hands you another field to work. Every machine in the game, with its price, speed, cargo and upgrade levels, is listed on the machine catalogue.

Tasks, the VIP truck and seasons

• Big tasks guide the early farm and pay well for things you were going to do anyway.
• Daily tasks ask you to sell a particular crop or upgrade machines, and pay money, Parts, and one gem task a day.
• The VIP truck parks by the farmhouse from time to time and pays double a normal task reward, up to 4 times per cycle.
• Seasons run monthly with a milestone track. Playing normally fills it; the Season Pass adds a premium track and an exclusive gilded machine.

Five things worth knowing early

1. Sign in. A guest farm lives only in that one browser. Signing in saves it to the cloud and lets you play it on your phone and your computer.
2. Don't leave a full silo. Overflow is simply lost.
3. Match the harvester to the crop. Each crop needs its own.
4. Watch the headlines. A ±40% swing is real money.
5. Remember! To create an efficient automation loop you need one tractor and one harvester per field, plus automated trailers waiting nearby. A complete loop outproduces a scattered fleet.

Free in your browser. No download, no account needed to start.

Play Loopy Farm