Rusty's Retirement has many different settings that you can play with to optimize the game in the best way for your playstyle. Whether you have your game on the bottom or side of your computer screen, you may occasionally want to access Focus Mode – a feature found in the game's settings that can be useful when you need to focus on something other than your idle farming. experience
What is Focus Mode and what does it do?
We know that Focus Mode in Rusty's Retirement slows down crops (as it says in the settings menu below it), but that might seem like an odd addition to an idle game that you're supposed to let run on your screen while you do. something else
The purpose of Focus Mode is to allow you to get away from your game without having empty harvest fields and lazy bots that don't do their jobs.
Idle games are typically played in a way that allows players to earn more items or currency to purchase items by actively playing the game. They don't require your full attention, often just needing you to keep tapping the screen or sometimes do a few tasks before letting the game run while you do something else.
Many idle games take up the entire screen – which is what makes Rusty's Retirement such a unique game. The gameplay continues whether you interact with it or not, but you will eventually run out of things on your farm for Rusty and his friends to water, harvest or build.
What Focus Mode does to fix this is to slow down certain events happening in the game while you play. Once activated, it takes twice as long to grow any crop than when you don't have Focus Mode.
5 Ways to use Focus Mode in Rusty's Retirement
You can activate Focus Mode at any time from the settings menu, just by clicking the white box next to it. If you see the 'OK' mark in the box, Focus Mode is already active.
The best way to use Focus Mode is when you want to focus on something else while working on your computer or laptop. When Focus Mode is on, your bots will be forced to slow down while tending to your farm due to the slower production time.
But having IRL work to do isn't the only reason to use Focus Mode in Rusty's Retirement. There are other benefits to this feature that can also work well for your gameplay.
1. Slow down the use of Biofuel
When the production rate is doubled, your robots will use less Biofuel because they are not moving crops to the generator as much. The benefit of this is that you won't come back to the game to see that most of your Biofuel has been used up while you were inactive.
You will often get less Biofuel than Spare Parts, although Biofuel is worth more and you can convert it to Spare Parts whenever you want. Returning to the game to see that your Biofuel has been used is not ideal.
2. See your achievements
The downside of idle games that keep running while you're offline or inactive is that you lose a lot of game time. Events may occur while you are offline, and you may miss achievements if you are not actively watching the game.
With Focus Mode, your entire farm will slow down as your crops take much longer to grow. Several achievements in Rusty's Farm are related to producing Spare Parts and Biofuel, and it's always disappointing to miss that little announcement from Steam that you have a new game achievement.
3. Organize your estate
By slowing down the production of your crops, you can plant all of your crops around the same time instead of having your crops grow and be harvested at completely different rates.
Seeing the uniformity in an idle game is indeed one of the best feelings. I hate seeing my farm in different stages of growth and all messy. That's why I started adding the harvest patch signs too!
4. Take advantage of longer production times
As you try out Focus Mode in Rusty's Retirement, remember that it's best to plant crops that have longer growing times than shorter ones. There is no point in using it if you are only going to plant wheat, radishes and cabbages, or if you only have one Biofuel generator on your farm.
To properly use the Focus Mode function, grow cauliflower crops or higher. This will ensure that you have more time (over an hour) to take care of the other responsibilities you have before you have to return to the game and plant more crops. This also means you won't be waiting for your plants because you won't be interacting with your game as much while in Focus Mode.
5. Play other games at the same time
This might seem like an odd end point, but I was able to play another game at the same time as Rusty's Retirement because of the Focus Mode feature. Although the game may sit on your screen while you do other things, you can minimize it without the game stopping. Or reduce the size so that it takes up less of your screen.
If you're someone who struggles to focus on one thing at a time or you enjoy multitasking, you might like to use Focus Mode to make Rusty's Retirement work alongside another game you like. Pulling Rusty's Retirement can also give you something to do between game breaks or while you're waiting in Overwatch queues. Personally, I've been playing it alongside Spirit City: Lofi Sessions because that has my to-do list and productivity timer to keep me on task.
Now that you understand the uses of the feature, consider the other possibilities you have when playing an idle farming game that you don't need to continuously play to progress.
Looking for more Pro Game Guides PC gaming content for 2024? Check out our guide to the 10 Best console games coming to PC in 2024 and the full list of Xbox Game Pass Core (April 2024).
