Fae Farm Review – Coziness Comes at a Cost

Fae Farm on Swap

The comfortable sport phenomenon is a tough one to pin down. Greater than any single gameplay mechanic or style setting, it’s about instilling within the participant a particular feeling. Fae Farm is probably the primary sport to have a look at everything of the various array of titles that match beneath the comfortable video games umbrella and distill them into one thing definitive. It succeeds, principally, however falls fatally quick in one of many defining parts of the comfortable expertise.

Inheriting your plot of land from a just lately deceased relative has all the time appeared a bit morbid as a place to begin for video games which are presupposed to really feel calming and secure. Fae Farm’s opening is extra aspirational, together with your character adventuring to the land of Azoria upon discovering a message in a bottle. This heroic answering of the decision to motion could also be switching one trope for one more, but it surely’s a welcome change that units the tone for the sport and the function you’ll be enjoying in it.

Every of the sport’s chapters is launched with a charmingly illustrated slideshow accompanied by a story instructed in rhyme. These cutscenes emphasize the storybook nature of Fae Farm — a sport that does issues merely, sweetly, and briefly doses. There’s a plot right here, but it surely’s deliberately skinny within the typical fairytale style.

Because the mayor explains to you upon first washing up on the island, their issues are many — overgrown thorns, mysterious mists, energetic volcanos, and raging blizzards have sprung up, all blocking entry to different elements of the island. In fact, in step with the pressure-free tone of the sport, these are introduced as issues to be solved quite than existential threats as you would possibly anticipate out of your typical RPG.

With no urgent danger to the island and its inhabitants, you’re free to go about your enterprise at as leisurely a tempo as you want. Which is sweet as a result of that’s the place Fae Farm is at its finest.

The core gameplay loop is neatly portioned into 18-minute segments — the size of 1 in-game day. Relying in your priorities you would possibly spend this time doing side-quests for the islanders, harvesting assets, crafting, or adorning and sustaining your own home and farm.

As for the primary questline, every space of the island has an identical chain of quests. The primary batch of those could be swiftly accomplished as they serve to introduce you to the brand new space, its inhabitants, and any new gameplay mechanics. Issues then decelerate significantly while you acquire entry to the world’s dungeon.

Every dungeon is 25 monster-filled ranges deep, and also you’ll want to achieve the ultimate stage to progress the primary story and open the subsequent space of the island. That is not possible to do in your first run as there merely isn’t sufficient time within the day so that you can progress by means of each stage. Fortunately you’ll be able to craft seals, which when positioned on the rostrum in the beginning of every stage, let you immediately teleport there the subsequent time round. This successfully implies that every time you run by means of the dungeon you’ll be able to minimize a couple of extra ranges off for the subsequent time round.

At first, this sudden roadblock feels jarring after having breezed by means of a number of quests in fast succession. On reflection, it’s a sensible means of forcing you to take your foot off the accelerator and spend a while with the remainder of the sport.

You might spend a day catching fish to prepare dinner for stamina-replenishing meals, in order that the subsequent day you’ll be able to head again into the dungeon to mine the assets you might want to craft extra seals, then spend the subsequent day adorning your own home when you wait in your crafting machines to prove your gadgets.

In fact, you’ll be able to skip all these superfluous actions and energy by means of the dungeon as quick as doable, however you’d be hard-pressed to not get distracted by one thing alongside the best way. For those who’ve come to Fae Farm primarily for its RPG parts, fight, and narrative, you’re going to be underwhelmed.

That isn’t in any respect to say that they’re dangerous although. They work in concord with the remainder of the sport, maintaining every day feeling recent, and serving to to offer you a way of momentum in these essential early hours when the long-term dream of getting your excellent home and farm nonetheless appears too far off to understand.

If every little thing is to this point sounding uninspired to the purpose of being straight-up generic, that’s as a result of, for essentially the most half, it’s. Fae Farm is a sport constructed on the reassurance that you simply’ll have seen all this earlier than, however by no means fairly so polished. There are not any surprises, simply nice vibes. In terms of making a sport that’s the right tonic for the top of a tough day, there’s energy in simplicity.

And that’s superb, or not less than it might be if not for one essential space of the sport the place comforting familiarity provides solution to aching blandness.

There are two core issues with Fae Farm’s NPCs. Firstly, they don’t look fascinating. Secondly, they don’t say something fascinating.

Having the ability to construct relationships — romantic or in any other case — is arguably what makes the comfortable style as well-liked as it’s. Greater than any narrative arc, interacting with the oldsters that come and go because the seasons go is what provides you a way that the stuff you’re doing are worthwhile. It’s the distinction between adorning a home in a chunk of stage modifying software program and adorning one in a world that feels alive.

In Fae Farm you’re feeling as if you’re making an attempt to carry issues collectively on an island filled with automatons. The residents of this would-be prototype Westworld repeat the identical handful of strains advert nauseam — each apparently sharing the identical handful of inventory phrases.

All of them have roles that they perform diligently irrespective of the season, climate, or time of day, however these jobs — mayor, fisherman, furnishings vendor — are secondary to the island’s major obsession: coziness.

Look, we get it, cozy video games are the present large factor, and Fae Farm has been designed from the highest down with peak coziness in thoughts. However quite than let the participant determine for themselves if the sport has succeeded in placing them in such a state of being, the island’s citizenry repeatedly has to let you know that one thing will make you’re feeling ‘cozy’, or that they’ll promote you a ‘cozy’ merchandise.

The phrase is repeated a lot that it makes you begin to really feel as if you’ve unwittingly partaken in some type of thought experiment whereby the builders are trying to see if they’ll induce a state of ‘coziness’ within the participant by means of easy repetition.

You may construct friendships with lots of the NPCs that bumble across the island, and you may have interaction in romantic relationships with a choose handful. Some of the memorable issues about these sorts of video games is feeling an natural curiosity in a personality beginning to develop, after which being given the chance to take it additional. By studying extra about them as they develop into extra comfy opening as much as you, your connection to your individual character grows as effectively. Issues do open up a bit bit as you have interaction the NPCs alongside their relationship tracks, but it surely nonetheless feels too distant they usually’ll nonetheless be repeating the identical strains too typically.

In its quest for coziness, Fae Farm appears to wish to put up a barrier between you and any feelings in any respect. There’s no concern, problem, or heartache available right here, however equally, there’s little pleasure or triumph. What ought to be an escapist fantasy as a substitute feels extra like emotional escapism.

Fae Farm is just too straightforward to select up and play to not be successful amongst farming sim followers. Lots of the style’s long-standing tough edges have been smoothed out to create a sport that feels trendy, and sure, very cozy. The second to second gameplay is pure, frustration-free pleasure. The storybook world comes alive with a distinction of warming, autumnal tones, and luminescent purples and blues. There are heaps of programs to play with and every little thing feels built-in into one harmonious bundle.

It’s a disgrace then, when a lot of the remainder of the sport has been thoughtfully designed to supply an unparalleled stage of satisfaction, that Fae Farm ought to fall quick in a single, however all-important side of the comfortable expertise. Making a Mr. Resetti or a Garrus — a personality that’s straightforward to like, or not less than has meme potential, is not any small factor to ask for. For those who put the work in you’ll discover glimmers of character in a few of Far Farm’s islanders, however they’re too thinly drawn to make any actual reference to.

As a farming sim and a lite RPG Fae Farm does every little thing proper. Phoenix Labs have clearly thought lengthy and onerous about how one can put off all of the mechanical niggles from different video games within the style. Due to that, Azoria is a world you’ll fortunately dip again into for an hour each evening over the course of months or years. I solely want it was a bit braver, a bit quirkier, a bit extra human. As such, Fae Farm feels consigned to easily being the new new factor within the cozy group, quite than an expertise that’s as memorable and beloved because the video games it has accomplished a lot to construct upon.

Concerning the creator

James Crosby

James is a contract author for Twinfinite, sometimes protecting new releases and stay service titles. He has been writing about MMOs since 2015, and has revealed a e book about Star Wars Galaxies.