Inside the weirdly calming world of farming and truck simulators

Harvesting takes me an hour. That's an hour in which I drive at little more than walking pace from one end of a field to the other and back again 20 or 30 times. It's not the most fun I've had in a video game, but then I do need the money. Farming Simulator 17, released on 25 October, is the latest game in a series made by Giants Software in Schlieren, Switzerland. Players start out with little land and few machines and must plant, tend and harvest crops – or raise livestock – to earn money to buy more land and more machines.