Considering the family-friendly nature of any traditional Nintendo system, and the vast size of the gaming audience these days, there’s nothing wrong with making games for all ages, especially on the Switch. That said, even more casual gamers still like to play games that are interesting and inventive. Lowering the bar to make an experience accessible shouldn’t necessarily mean eliminating it entirely. For me that’s where Cirrus Business runs into some trouble.

The gameplay is relatively simple, and works effectively as a very watered-down and oversimplified farming sim of sorts, though only in some areas. You’ll play as a little cloud, who is trying to help out his community to grow a variety of magical crops in the hopes of thwarting a bunch of slobsters who are trying to overrun the area. For the most part this will involve clearing small areas, planting seeds, keeping them watered, cultivating the crops, and then working with other fellow citizens on a number of tasks that will help in a variety of ways to expand the area and clean up the environment.

The problem is that in terms of actual gameplay this is all quite dull, even when compared to your typical farming sim where some degree of repetition simply comes with the territory. Your tasks simply don’t vary enough, you’ll do far too much going back and forth to resupply yourself or talk yet again to the same people to trade, and the pretty sad attacks from the slobsters are nothing to get excited about, all adding up to a pretty ho-hum time. Another weird issue is what then feels like an overly-complicated interface for managing and upgrading crops, feeling like effort was expended buried in a menu rather than on engaging play.

While perhaps the game’s message and greater story could be considered to have some redeeming value, placing an emphasis on working together as a community, the core game experience simply isn’t enough to sustain interest. There’s something to be said for positive messages and encouragement to seek to help others, but when that really feels like the greatest feature in your game, something has gone wrong somewhere in the process. Even with a low-budget price this struggles to make a case for being worthwhile.