Aperture Desk Job
LQ: 8.8
Recommended Age: 8+
Skills Used: Focus, Working Memory, Reading
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is a combination of a traditional farming simulation game mixed with a side-scrolling fighting game. In the game, the main character Sakuna is a goddess who accidentally lets humans into the immortal realm. As punishment for this and her snobbish attitude, she is banished along with the trespassing humans to the Isle of Demons. There, Sakuna and her new found family need to till the land, grow their own food, and fight off the islands many demons. Sakuna, being the goddess with more power, needs to be the one to go out and hunt for meat and forage for items. Because she is also the goddess of rice, it is necessary that she participates in the growing and harvesting of this most important crop. As the story progresses, Sakuna and the mortals will venture to other parts of the island, finding more items and more intense demons.
Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin is rated T for Teen for some violence and alcohol references. It is available on Nintendo Switch, Steam, and Playstation 4
Time Management: Developing a systematic approach for setting and achieving goals.
Each day in the game has a limited amount of time assigned to it, meaning that the player needs to plan out what they are going to try and accomplish with their time. Occasionally this means factoring in the time for a portion of the rice growing process, which can be quite time consuming. Other times, the player needs to look at how late it is and decide whether they want to return home or stay out and continue fighting. Enemies become much stronger at night, meaning that the player needs to take this into consideration when deciding how much time they want to spend away from home.
Focus: Getting started and then maintaining attention and effort to tasks.
In order to gain the highest yield of rice for the season, the player needs to use their focusing skills. The game asks the player to go through each part of the rice growing process each season. This includes creating fertilizer, tilling the soil, pulling weeds, harvesting, hulling, and processing the rice. The player could assign some of these tasks to other members of the family but they will never be as good as when Sakuna herself does the tasks. This means that the player needs to use their focusing skills to pay attention to what is needed in each process and do the job as efficiently as possible.
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