Barn Finders

by Aethyna May 23, 2023 | 1 Votes | 28 Played | 0 Reviews

10 rate

Genres:

Simulation , Hidden Object

Graphics:

Labels:

Collectathon , Exploration , Shop Design , Crafting , Aliens , Management

Platforms:

Publishers:

PlayWay S.A. It's finally time to learn the family trade! Travel to various abandoned places, bid for them if needed, and scour every inch of them to find any valuables that you can sell at your pawnshop. Haggle with your customers to maximize your profits, grow your business, and customize and upgrade your shop so you can sell even more stuff! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Barn Finders features a unique blend of hidden objects, in the form of exploring abandoned places for hidden antiquities, and pawnshop simulation. In this game, your oldest uncle, Uncle Billy, decided that it’s finally time to pass on the family trade to you. Travel to various abandoned places in rural Ameryka, bid for them if needed, and scour every inch of them to find any valuables that you can sell at your pawnshop, though some of them may require a bit of processing before you can do so. Haggle with your customers to maximize your profits, grow your business, and customize and upgrade your shop so you can sell more stuff!

Plotline

It’s finally time to learn the family trade! But don’t worry, your good old Uncle Billy is here to help you. Travel the vast expanse of rural Ameryka (not to be confused with America, despite some similarities) to find and bid on auctions to gain access to various closed-off properties that you can then scour for any valuables to sell at your pawnshop.

As you explore Ameryka, you’ll also get to interact with various colorful characters and learn more about this alternate version of America.

Gameplay

Before you start, you’ll need to first create your profile. There are several portraits, all of which match well with the game’s theme, for you to choose from, and you get to set any name you’d like. Once you’re done, it’s time to start barn-findin’!

Barn Finders features a fairly repetitive albeit oddly relaxing first-person simulator-styled gameplay where the entire gameplay loop involves having you venture out into various locations in rural Ameryka just so you can scour every inch of the place for valuables that you can then transport back to your pawnshop to sell.

Every new location that you unlock in this game comes from your dusty old PC. A customer, who usually pays very well, will email you with a specific request and a location where you can find said item. The location will then be unlocked in your Barn Hub app, allowing you to travel to said place, once you’ve purchased the necessary fuel to do so, where the real work begins!

Some of the places you’ll head to is immediately available to you right from the start. So what this means is that you can just head into the place and start looking for stuff to bring back to your pawnshop. However, in some situations, the place in question is still up for auction and you’ll need to outbid everyone who’s there to win the auction and gain access to the location. For auctions, you’ll definitely need to make sure you bring enough cash to outbid everyone.

Getting into the place can also be tricky sometimes. Besides the more obvious route, there are areas that are blocked by obstacles, some of which can be easily smashed into pieces using your handy axe, which you’ll need to buy from the M.I.K.K.O. kiosk first, or by a standard lock that requires you to find a key. Keys are typically small and they can literally be placed anywhere, from being hung absurdly high (above your head, so make sure to look up) on a wall or hidden underneath a carpet, so it often takes you more time to find it.

At one point, you’ll be able to afford a lockpick, which will allow you to pick the locks of certain doors or containers… note the keyword here: “certain”. For others, you will still need to find the correct keys to open them, despite having a perfectly useable lockpick on hand. Lockpicks, along with your axe, shovel, and other useful tools like the GPS-like treasure-hunting device and a practical headlamp for super dark places (or you could just cheese it by increasing the Gamma level via the graphical settings of the game) can all be purchased via the aforementioned kiosk... as long as you’ve got the cash, of course.

Besides smashing obstacles, the axe is also super useful in breaking various junk items that you may find scattered around the place. When broken, these junk items will sometimes drop important materials, namely wood, thread, and what looks like a mix of plastic and spring (for brevity, let’s just call them “metals”). You’ll need quite a bit of these once you have your Repair Station built and set up at your pawnshop. They will allow you to repair any broken antiquities you may find. Note that you can increase the efficiency of your tools by upgrading them via the kiosk as well.

Unlike the frantic to-and-fro running about between the burning house and the pickup truck where you’ll heap all your “salvage” into that’s prominent in funny firefighting-slash-theft-simulator, Embr, Barn Finders made it a lot more convenient for you to transport the valuables you find while exploring an area to your pickup – you can mark it for transport and Uncle Billy will do all the heavy lifting for you! Some items can also be rather cleverly concealed behind other items or in secret compartments, so make sure to keep your eyes peeled!

This, however, isn’t the case once you’re back home at your pawnshop. Here, you’ll need to manually carry each item from the storage area to either the various stations you may have set up to “process” the valuables you find to make them worthy for sale, such as by cleaning, repairing, and in some cases, assembling various components together into a single, more valuable item, or to the pawnshop itself where you’ll then have to arrange the items on your various differently-sized displays. For some players, this aspect of the game can get a bit tedious after a while.

Once your pawnshop is stocked up and ready for the day, you can just open your store and customers will periodically “materialize” near their object of interest. You can then initiate the selling process by either choosing the haggle (you can usually do this multiple times) or just selling the item at the offered price directly. Of course, if you want to maximize your earnings, which you really should, especially at the start of the game where money can be a bit short and you need plenty of funds to win auctions, you should always try to haggle your way to a better offer. Haggling plays out via a mini-game in Barn Finders. A colored meter will appear with a fast-moving indicator on it. The goal here is to try to land the indicator on the rightmost end of the meter, where you can find the greenest segments. If you do it right, you can easily increase your earnings by a significant amount, particularly if the item you’re trying to sell is of high value.

However, do take note that some customers can be a bit more stubborn than others and it’s completely alright to decline the sale of an item to any customer who isn’t offering the kind of amount you’re looking for. But as always, make sure to find a balance between maximizing profits and actually making any profit (by selling anything). From time to time, some customers may turn into sellers, approaching the booth erected just outside of your pawnshop to sell you something they no longer need. Similarly, you can haggle with them to try and get the item at the best possible price.

In addition to the main gameplay loop, there are also various fun stuff you can do in your downtime. You see, sometimes, you may come across new floor tiles or wallpapers at the locations you’re salvaging that you can then use to customize your store. You can also spend some of your hard-earned cash to upgrade the various displays you have, be it shelves or wall mounts. However, just make sure you have plenty of cash left over in case the next location you head to requires some hefty bidding.

There’s even a basketball court (well, a half-court) just outside your shop where you can try your hand at scoring as many times as you can within a time limit… or you could just throw a couple of hoops just to get a respite from the humdrum of running your pawnshop before getting back into the business.

As a bonus, every location you’ve visited can be revisited and there will always be new “loot” to scavenge. Plus, if you’re an achievement hunter, each location also contains a secret Golden (toilet) Roll. Some of them can be rather easy to spot, like those that are placed on rooftops, but getting to them often requires some creative thinking.

Graphics/ Sound

The graphics in Barn Finders are intentionally (and artistically) made to look rather old-school, without compromising on the visual quality. This is to match the game’s rustic 90s theme and setting. The characters in the game also speak gibberish, which I assume is the local Ameryka-n language, though you can understand them perfectly well thanks to the dialogue boxes that pop up.

Conclusion

Barn Finders is an entertaining, tongue-in-cheek pawnshop simulator that has a fun, albeit repetitive, gameplay loop involving finding various “hidden objects”, restoring them if needed, and then selling the items at your pawnshop for some cold hard cash. If you love simulator-style games and enjoy the idea of looking for valuables in creepy, abandoned locations and selling them for profit, then Barn Finders is a game you simply must play!

New Article Added: Travel To an Exotic Island and Participate in Epic Bid Wars in Barn Finders' Bid Wars DLC!

by Aethyna May 24, 2023

Try your hand at bidding at the Bid Wars Theme Park that's operated entirely by M.I.K.K.O. in Barn Finders' latest DLC, Bid Wars!

Travel To an Exotic Island and Participate in Epic Bid Wars in Barn Finders' Bid Wars DLC! preview image

by Aethyna May 23, 2023

It's finally time to learn the family trade! Travel to various abandoned places, bid for them if needed, and scour every inch of them to find any valuables that you can sell at your pawnshop. Haggle with your customers to maximize your profits, grow your business, and customize and upgrade your shop so you can sell even more stuff!