Back in 2022, when Dinkum launched in early access, Lauren Morten capably summed it up like this: “On the grand spectrum of Stardewlikes to Crossinglikes, Dinkum does sound like it falls right in the middle. You’ll decorate your house and town to your liking, fish and catch bugs, and invite nine different characters to join your island. You’ll also be raising crops and livestock though, from cactus to wombats, and Dinkum doesn’t tie you to the real world clock the way Animal Crossing does.”
As the name suggests, Dinkum is as Australian as pranking tourists by telling them drop bears are real. It’s a farmlife sim with all the good things about the Australian outback in it: sunshine, wide open spaces, and adorable wombats.
The Australian farmlife sim hit 1.0 in April and added a creative mode where players are free to control the weather, animal-spawning, and other variables, as well as adding a terrarium for storing all the bugs you catch, a plane you can fly, a town bell that highlights every villager on your map when rung, new guest houses that can be rented out, four more villagers, and more.
Dinkum’s working title was Town Under, and the town’s important because it gives your villagers somewhere to live. Each one arrives with a friendly “G’day mate,” and as of version 1.0 they all have their own inventories you can access through dialogue, letting you give them tools so they can help you work, and give them new outfits so they look sharp.
Half the promise of Dinkum is “what if Animal Crossing didn’t make you wait actual days for things to happen,” but the other half of its promise is authentic Australian-ness. Beyond the obvious stuff like kangaroos and crocodiles, there’s a deep-cut truth to its depictions of Hills Hoist washing lines, scrub turkeys, eucalyptus trees, rusty windmills, and those uniquely daggy police hats.
Dinkum is available now on Steam after having left early access in April, and, as announced during the PC Gaming Show 2025, will be on sale from June 12.
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