Lawn Mowing Simulator Coming to Xbox’s Front Yard Next Month

If you own an Xbox Series X / S, it might be time to consider purchasing an expansion SSD, just to make sure you have room. Because Lawn mowing simulator comes out next month. The backyard cutting simulation you’ve been dreaming of is finally with us on August 10th.

The entire write-biased video game simulation market went far beyond parody many years ago, even before Goat simulator tied a bow above the entire parade. But I’m glad that in a world of Powerful washing simulator, PC construction simulator and Gas station simulator, I can still be surprised and delighted by the specificity of the genre.

It’s hard to clearly understand how ironic Lawn mower simulator is. It is published by Curve Digital, an established independent publisher, and developed by Skyhook Games, responsible for the severity of death Simulated trainr franchise. (Although props are offered to them for a spin-off with a non-improvable name, The Count of Monster Disco.) There doesn’t seem to be any notion of humor in the trailer, or the store page, but obviously everyone involved needs to be at least somewhat aware of the stupidity of the name.

Games Steam store page explains that it will allow players to “experience the beauty and detail of mowing the great British countryside”, in “the only simulator that lets you pilot an authentic and extensive roster of licensed lawn mowers from the real world of prestigious manufacturers “. They’ll include Toro, SCAG, and STIGA (John Deere looks surprisingly remarkable in its absence), and all of these will allow you to run your own grass mowing business.

More importantly, this being a British game, it must surely be aware of its own prestigious heritage. As by Kotaku British pet, I’m well aware of the importance of mowing the lawn in video games – it was, in this case, an integral part of the Spectrum games of the late ’80s.

It all started as a very silly joke on the biggest video game magazine that ever existed, Your Sinclair. One of the magazine’s editors, the regrettably late Duncan MacDonald, sat in the YS hangar “chuckling to himself” according to an account by Theresa “T’zer” Maughan, then editor of the magazine. “He had this screen of green disappearing with this thing moving back and forth, and called him out Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator. We thought it was hilarious and said we had to put it on the cover!

Brilliantly, Dunc went on to review his own game in the magazine – an incredibly rave review, not mentioning its authorship, but rather crediting it to “GardenSoft” – because in 1988 everyone was playing video games. was having fun and was nice about it. And it was distributed free to readers on the… cover tape. (Imagine where you should start explaining this concept to someone born this century. Then cry.)

It started a long-standing joke in the incredibly popular UK magazine Speccy, of such enduring importance that it has its own. Wikipedia entry, and therefore many follow-up games made in his honor.

I especially remember playing an official sequel that involved random alien attacks, ending your lawn mowing race. There was also, according to the magazine, a Advanced Lawn Mower Simulator III, which saw the player enter a terrifying nightmare dream landscape.

I think my dream of Lawn mowing simulator being a spiritual sequel to Duncan MacDonald’s masterpiece, it is unlikely to be made. If you’re on the Xbox Insider program, you can play any version of the game right now. Otherwise, it will arrive on the Xbox and PC news on August 10.