Tractor Fields

Tractor Fields is a top-down driving game about doing a job neatly. Your red tractor tows an implement on a swinging hinge, a plough on some fields, a seed drill or a harvester on others, and every tile it passes over is worked as you go: stubble turns into brown furrows, bare soil into rows of green shoots and golden wheat into short stubble. A field is finished at 100 percent coverage, and the tank only holds so much diesel.

The skill is in the headland. Turn too tight at the end of a row and the implement cuts the corner and leaves a strip behind; swing too wide and you burn fuel for nothing. The forty fields grow as you go, with hedges and gates between paddocks, trees, ponds and a scarecrow to steer around, a muddy patch that slows the tractor to a crawl and, later on, a slow cow herd that stands in your lane until it wanders off through a gate. Cows are never hit: the tractor simply stops in front of them and waits. Missed tiles start to glow when you are close to done, a minimap shows what is left, and a fuel can or two is tucked into the corners.

Every field has three stars: full coverage, fuel left in the tank and a finish under par time, and a bump into a hedge or a tree costs one of them. Nothing chases you, so it plays at a relaxed pace, and the early fields are quick, a minute or two each. Your stars and high score for every field are saved in your browser, and a daily field, the same one all day, gives you one more go. Arrow keys or WASD on a keyboard, with real steering that turns the other way in reverse; on a phone or tablet the steering buttons sit bottom left and forward and reverse bottom right. P pauses, M mutes.