A year ago, I broke one of my rules for games: I bought one in early access. That game was the cozy co-op Farm Together 2, the sequel to indie studio’s Milestone Studios’ Farm Together. It was worth it; I have 456 hours in this game since then and still don’t feel as if I’m done. That’s largely owing to the fact that Milkstone has been pumping updates consistently since then – 90 of them over the course of the past year.

I bring all this up because Farm Together 2 surprise-launched out of early access over this past weekend. Maybe surprise isn’t quite the right word, as the original roadmap from last year set the 1.0 launch for this spring, but it definitely didn’t get much preamble in Discord, to the point that many players were indeed shocked when Milkstone brought up the abrupt launch and pushed out a launch trailer. (Some of the reviews seem a little stunned, too.)

Now, if you were waiting for the ridable horses, keep waiting; they aren’t in yet. You know I had to check because I really wanted to make a “Milkstone promised me a pony” joke. But we did get pretty much everything else on the roadmap along the way, including new crops, animals, trees, deco, farmhands, events, quests, buildings, shops, town customization, pets, co-op rewards, cheevos, and trains. What we don’t really have yet is the breadth of DLC houses and decor that the OG game had, and this launch is just for PC (console is being worked on now). Either way, it’s totally playable as it is, whether or not you’re going to be a weirdo who’s going to put 456 hours into it, but we’re betting it’ll be even better in another year.

The new trailer does a pretty good job of showing some of the new additions, including the trains and mines.

MOP’s Chris and I did try out the game together a year ago, though of course it’s had 90+ updates since. Still, it shows off the way co-op works fairly well!