It’s been quite a while since I’ve dipped my toes to anything closely related to a game like Stardew Valley but here I am with Fae Farm. While I can’t say that I’m a huge fan of the genre, my few measly hours hammering away at the mines and tilling the soil to my soon-to-be empire of garden beets is hopefully enough to give you a good idea of what Fae Farm is all about.
Developed and published by Phoenix Labs based on Vancouver, Canada, the cozy farming sim feels like a breath of fresh air despite coming from a team of developers that made Dauntless, a game that only shares the word “farming” but with a completely different meaning.
While the jump from an action-RPG game like Dauntless to a farming game called Fae Farm is nothing but impressive, what really made it stood out for me is how well its executed. No, its not the perfect game without its issues and bugs, because at least in my initial testing, I have at least some words to say for it but we’ll leave that bit for much later.
What makes Fae Farm, as a game, stand out for me is that while it looked more like a spiritual successor to Stardew Valley, it fixes the issues of what farming sims are lacking while also providing its own twist with its magical world full of mystery and fantasy.
Welcome to the magical world of the Fae…
Right off the bat, you’ll be greeted with a hot minute of a loading screen. Grab a coffee and maybe a snack while you’re at it because once that’s over, you’ll be meticulously tinkering with your avatar using a handful of choices to really make it unique. Thankfully, this doesn’t follow up with the same extremely long loading screen we had to endure right at the beginning of the game.
I won’t go into the specifics of what the game is about but basically, well, uhmm… while you’re taking a stroll in the beach, you found what seems to be a message inside a bottle which sadly enough, is not about a pirate’s secret stash of stolen treasure. This happens to be someone’s bright idea to invite people to Azoria, an island that they knowingly knew that is surrounded by deadly whirlpools and you just happened to be someone that, let’s just say, is curious enough to sail with a flimsy raft to said island. But hey, at least you’re given a house and a huge land to plant crops, right?
After having your bearings back in order, you’re free to explore the island, meet new people and all those jazzy stuffs that farming sims are commonly known for. You’ll feel quite at home here if you’ve ever played any the genre has to offer but this is not to say that newcomers will feel lost either.
The game’s included story provides you a good guide to what you could potentially be doing which in a way also acts as the game’s way to introduce you to the world and its inner workings. You’ll be setup with the more basic of tasks like learning how to catch a fish or catching critters with a net to eventually being able to have a good grasp of the more advanced tasks like farming, mining and even crafting.
As someone who has played through a handful of titles from the genre, what really kind of annoys me there is that inventory management in most of them has been quite a chore. However, I am pleased to announce that Phoenix Labs actually knows what they’re doing… like it’s not even their first take on the genre… well, actually I don’t know if it is or not but I’m actually really pleased on how well this game flows.
I don’t think I can live without these QoL anymore…
What I mean by that… is you know when you want to cut some logs with your axe or cut some weed in the yard? Other games would expect that you have the right tool in your bag or inventory to execute certain actions but with Fae Farm, there’s a smart system that just lets you automatically use the right tool without having to equip it from your hotbar or something.
This is such a great quality of life that honestly needs to be a thing for every farming sim I play from here on out. This idea greatly improves my productivity as it just bypasses the need to switch through the many tools, I would otherwise have to scroll through just to get the right one for a specific task especially when I would’ve needed to switch through them to mine ores or coal while also digging out the sand next to these resources.
Getting your field ready for planting crops, decorations and even your multitude of crafting benches of different types is also done in a neat and straightforward kind of way. Pressing the down button on the D-Pad allows you to open up everything that can be crafted or placed in the available area where you can place these objects which are organized and sorted by type. Crafting them is easy as placing them down and should you choose to swap them around at any point, you’re free to reclaim them with all the resources used being refunded.
Farming much like doing other tasks is also using the smart system that I mentioned earlier. Going near a well and pressing the A button will try to refill your watering can while being near a plot of soil when you press A will pop up an icon showing you the seeds you have in possession so you can plant them with ease as you run around while holding the A button. These tasks like watering your crops, mining resources or cutting down trees also get improvements as you get better quality tools which eventually unlocks skills to help you make tasks easier such as increasing the AoE for watering and mining at the cost of stamina and MP.
Considering the theme that Fae Farm is trying to go for, I probably should’ve guessed that the features that I loved wouldn’t have ended there. I don’t know why, but it just feels like the game really knows what I want and the developers really want to respect your time here. One thing that I eventually got to unlock as I’m trying to explore the mine after a couple of quests in is that you can craft these sorts of seals of different types that is meant to unlock wayshrines of some sort.
These so-called shrines act as a way to fast travel from one point to the other which makes it so much easier to move around and gather certain types of resources that I needed in my quest of making an empire of garden beets. Crafting on the other hand is if to put it simply, made easy.
You have a warehouse that you can access right at the start of the game which can hold all your resources and what makes this better than any old craftable chest from other games is that it can also automatically transfer resources needed to craft items from your crafting benches. So, remember when I said the developers respect your time? Well, I wasn’t joking.
On another note, the more common activities you’d probably expect from a game in this genre is building relationships and flirting with the opposite sex. While I’m not a huge fan of these side activities which honestly didn’t even have much merits after getting married as I found myself just going back to the usual chores and house decorating routine I do on a daily basis.
But speaking of house decorating which happens to be one of the very first things the game teaches you to do, decorating your house with all sorts of furniture also provides certain benefits based on their type. This gives a way for you to increase certain stats like HP, Stamina or MP that gets adjusted after a good night’s rest which to me, sounds so clever.
Conclusion
The world of Fae Farm is vast as it is vibrant. It takes heavy inspiration of Stardew Valley with worthwhile improvements to its archaic systems. There’s a good amount of side activities, a main story to follow and even the menial tasks that I would otherwise feel too lazy to do normally, doesn’t become a huge chore as I get more upgrades to my tools and get access to craftable items to help with my daily routine.
I can say that I’ve enjoyed the amount of time I’ve played through it but like I said in the beginning, it wasn’t completely all fun and games. The game’s minute-long loading times is forgivable especially for the Nintendo Switch when I can just put it on sleep mode and continue right where I left it.
However, where it starts breaking that flow is when I do start it up again while leaving it on sleep mode, the game would just freeze for a while and maybe it will start to run normally again but the worse outcome would be getting errors forcing to close the app. Although, a more recent update after the game’s release soon fixed that problem and I haven’t really been able to get into that state again.
Regardless, Fae Farm as a whole did a lot more good for the genre than just more of the same old stuffs we’ve seen in past titles. I’m happy to say that despite my minor gripes to the game’s issues, it now holds a place as one of my favourite titles that I can see myself going back to every now and then for its cozy nature and how it views itself as an easily accessible title for both fans and interested individuals hoping to dip their toes to something new.
I’d easily recommend this to anyone just starting out as it is both a good entry-level farming sim while giving a handful of activities to keep them busy for a while.
Fae Farm Trailer
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