Farming, fishing, friendship... faeries?!

September 9, 2023 5:25 AM

Fae Farm is the cozy game I’ve been waiting for since Animal Crossing: New Horizons [CNN] “Fae Farm places you in the sprawling land of Azoria, where you can harvest crops, catch critters, reel in fish, raise animals, defeat monsters, show off fashionable looks, craft items and decorate to your heart’s content, not to mention befriend villagers and even date and marry one. The game takes a lot of cues from cozy games that came before it, including Wylde Flowers, Littlewood, Stardew Valley and, of course, Animal Crossing: New Horizons — but its magical world and abilities, plus its unique art style and convenient game mechanics, make it stand apart from some of the competition and may even set a new standard for cozy games in general.”

• A gloriously thoughtful and beautiful farming game [Nintendo Life]

“Let's cut to the chase. You're here because you've most likely got a hankering for another farming-type game in your life. In fact, you've probably played most of them already, from Stardew to Harvestella, and you've most likely been burned a few times by games that didn't quite scratch the itch. Now, you're wanting to know if Fae Farm, one of the most promising-looking farming-type games of the past few years, matches up to the hype. The short answer: Mostly. The long answer: This review. To start off with the praise – of which there is a lot – Fae Farm is utterly gorgeous. You may think the trailers look a bit like My Sims or one of those mobile game adverts where the grandma murders everyone, and we agree, but in motion, Fae Farm is beautiful. Colours bloom from every inch of its meticulously hand-painted landscapes, and although the character art leans on the side of simplicity, it works well, especially when the game is played in handheld mode. The designs of the food, the decor, and the monsters are all so adorable and clever that it seems almost timeless and illustrative, like a Beatrix Potter book. It's a genuine pleasure to look at.”

• The magical farming sim for Nintendo Switch is exactly like all the other magical farming sims [Kotaku]

“I sometimes hide disappointment behind a meek observation that, well, “it isn’t for me,” but I’m sure that Dauntless developer Phoenix Labs’ life sim role-playing game Fae Farm, out on Switch and PC on September 8, is for me. Calm and uncomplicated “cozy gaming” is heavily associated with women, I’m one of those. Fae Farm, in which you play a traveler who’s chosen to travel to a distant island in order to restore it, is washed in fairy magic, and I like that. I love Robert Redford in Barefoot in the Park, I spend too much money on my haircuts—I’m just like other girls. Fae Farm disrespects that, then, by being a duplicate of almost every major life sim game that came before it, acting like all other girls want is copycat farming mechanics and obligatory marriage. [...] I’m over seeing girls’ cuteness being understood as their obedience—to social expectations, to men’s interpretation, whatever—and I don’t need Fae Farm following suit by serving us hollow chocolate bunnies, something easy to eat. Other modern cozy games have already demonstrated that the genre can handle emotional depth, and I prefer that to the worn-out Harvest Moon picnic blanket. We can wrap ourselves in something more prickly, life sims’ primarily female audience is certainly capable of complexity. Women like more than flowers and marriage. We contain multitudes. It’s not a big deal.”

• A Farming Dream Come True [COG Connected]

“One of Fae Farm’s greatest strengths is the environment and content. It is a cozy farming game where you never run out of things to do. Every day can be a different day if you want it to be. One day you could be focused on foraging and taking care of your farm, and the next day you could be building furniture and decorating your home. If you’re up for it, you can find a romantic partner to go on dates with. There are plenty of fish in the sea (literally and figuratively), animals to take care of, and recipes to discover. As implied in the name, there’s magic in Fae Farm. Your ability to use a magical staff is critical to the plot and to make your life easier in Azoria. You, with a limited store of mana, are able to cut thorns that are blocking paths and cast magic to disperse the shadows. There’s also a potions shop, battles in the dungeons, and shortcuts you learn to increase your farming efficiency. It’s also important to the plot, which is surprisingly coherent and logical to the gaming environment. [...] Although the formula is familiar, the gameplay was refreshing and it was nice to do more than farming for a change. Newcomers to farming simulators could struggle at the beginning. I relied on my previous knowledge of games like Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, and Animal Crossing, so I knew roughly what to expect, Without this experience, it could be hard to succeed early on in the game. Fortunately, there’s no strict timeline and you can move the plot along whenever you’re comfortable. Fae Farm was also very intuitive and forgiving, so it never felt like a wasted day even if all I did was collect snails.”

posted by Fizz (20 comments total)

Argh, forgot to include the trailer. Here you go.

This game is a lot of fun and it scratches the right cozy/farm/life-sim itch. :) Perfect as we head into autumn.
posted by Fizz at 5:43 AM on September 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

This looks like an interesting game to try. I like games with low stakes and not much happening.

I bought a Nintendo Switch back in early June of this year. It's my first gaming device. Up until then I had only played Minecraft on my Mac.

I bought a few games over the first few weeks, to see what kind of games I liked:

- Minecraft, obviously. However, despite the fact that I've been playing Minecraft for over a decade on my Mac, I just couldn't adjust to Minecraft using a controller.

- Untitled Goose Game: I've used software from Panic for years, so trying out their game seemed like a natural progression. Nope. I couldn't, and still can't, figure out what you're supposed to do in this game. People online were complaining how they beat the game in a few hours, and here I was a few days in and still couldn't figure out how to get past the first tasks. Maybe for people who game a lot it's easy to figure out, but I'm not that person.

- A Short Hike: This one I enjoyed, and will probably get back to. I'd buy the soundtrack for sure.

- Katamari Damacy Reroll: I introduced my late wife, who was a hard core gamer, to the original Katamari Damacy game after reading about it here. We were shopping at Best Buy and I saw it on the shelf and convinced her to buy it. She probably put hundreds of hours into that game and loved it. I've played it a few times, but I think I need to get a different controller for it.

- Animal Crossing, New Horizons: After seeing so much online about this game, I finally bought it in mid-June. And I haven't played any other game on my Switch since. I love that it's low stakes, calm, easy going, and doesn't require me to expend a lot of mental energy on something I do to try and relax.

So I'll definitely be getting this new game. I always say that I enjoy Minecraft because I can just turn off my brain and wander around in the game. Walk a bit, build something, walk some more, kill a zombie, walk some more... Animal Crossing isn't exactly the same, but similar enough. Hopefully this new game will be a good addition in my quest for chill games.
posted by ralan at 5:59 AM on September 9, 2023 [9 favorites]

I might try this, if I can find out one thing--does anyone know whether the game is stopped when you're not playing?

That's why seeing comparisons to Animal Crossing is actually a disrecommendation for me, because I definitely don't want a game where time keeps moving forward when I'm not there. I need to be able to put it down for however long is necessary, and come back to the same moment.
posted by theatro at 6:20 AM on September 9, 2023 [7 favorites]

@theatro, I believe it does save exactly where you left off, no matter the time of the day. The first day in the game, you won't unlock the save feature until you get through a number of introductory tasks/quests that are guiding you through the early gameplay aspects but after that first day/night cycle, a save button is available at any time. A nice quality of life feature.
posted by Fizz at 6:31 AM on September 9, 2023

Hm! I'm interested, but also the Kotaku review is off-putting. I enjoy romance and marriage arcs, but I need them to be interesting.

I'd been enjoying Graveyard Keeper a month or so ago, but I haven't gotten back to it. It's funny and dark, but there's a lot of grinding and it's not at all intuitive. Games don't have manuals anymore, on account of those costing money, so when something's confusing you have to go to Reddit or to a Fandom wiki that I think one guy writes. Finally, none of the NPCs like to talk to you. Everybody in the town wants something from you and has nothing to say if you don't have it. And they're often pretty sharp when you do talk. Now this wouldn't be a problem in a more action-oriented game where the fun is in killing or not being killed. But in a cozy game, you want to feel cozy every so often.

Fae Farm might be swinging too far in the other direction, but I do feel drawn to it. On the other hand, there's no returns on Switch, which makes my $10 and over purchases few and far between.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:34 AM on September 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Hah, yeah, Graveyard Keeper is not cozy really at all, although it uses the same mechanics. (I like it quite a bit and could never get into Stardew Valley.)
posted by restless_nomad at 7:02 AM on September 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I included the Kotaku article because I do think there's a lot of relevance to her critique of that cozy genre and how it does market itself towards women in very particular ways and I do think there's something to be said about her concerns about how some of the social/life-sim parts of Fae Farm fall flat. That being said, I think Fae Farm is also mostly geared towards providing quality of life improvements and more options and more diversity in the things you can and want to do in the farming simulation genre.

I just wish the social parts of it were a bit deeper but its already doing so much else in the rest of the game that you can sort of accept the limitations of the dating/romancing/life-sim stuff. It's definitely going to scratch an itch for a very particular kind of gamer who craves that loop of balancing farming and looting and decorating.
posted by Fizz at 7:03 AM on September 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Funny, Stardew Valley triggered my anxiety big time. Put anything on a timer in a game and I'm a puddle. I can play Souls games, all kinds of "challenging" games (really into Baldur's Gate 3 now) but Stardew has the day/night cycle and I just constantly felt like I was falling behind, had to rush home, not making the most out of every day, etc. I know you don't have to maximize every day, but it just felt wrong to not get enough rest, and not make sure the money was rolling in and such.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:20 AM on September 9, 2023 [10 favorites]

Thanks, Fizz! That fact makes this game into a definite birthday-present-for-self contender.
posted by theatro at 8:59 AM on September 9, 2023

Stardew Valley is a tough act to follow: it's cheap ($15), is on all platforms (not just Switch), and has an extensive modding community. I am of-a-certain-age so I like the 16-bit 2D aesthetic (the SNES A Link to the Past is my favorite Zelda game after BotW), so I can't help but look at these other farming cozy games and think... eh.

More and more I feel like the games that I keep going back to are the ones that aren't games so much as systems platforms that a modding community is free (and even encouraged!) to run with. I feel like modding has been the key to the longevity of games like Skyrim and Minecraft. (Though, of course, this is my own tastes.)
posted by AlSweigart at 9:24 AM on September 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

I’m late for a thing but wanted to quickly post that if you’re into this kind of thing and you have a VR set up, the game Fujii is a marvelously chill exploration puzzle and gardening game that is absolutely beautiful.

I’m currently trying to get over a Stardew Valley addiction I developed during a covid infection :/
posted by antinomia at 9:35 AM on September 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Does this game have no penalties for time? I find it hard to play any of these cozy games because I already do so much domestic and care work in my day to day life (especially as a disabled queer person) that the idea of doing...more work is not appealing to me, especially because I'm a recovering maximalist perfectionist. I'm the type of gamer that loves MMOs and being immersed in other environments. It's kind of funny because a lot of my disabled queer friends love these types of games but I just can't get into them. I love Fire Emblem though...
posted by yueliang at 10:10 AM on September 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

Does this game have no penalties for time? I find it hard to play any of these cozy games because I already do so much domestic and care work in my day to day life (especially as a disabled queer person) that the idea of doing...more work is not appealing to me, especially because I'm a recovering maximalist perfectionist.

Once you get through the opening day/night cycle. You'll be able to save (ostensibly pause) at whatever part of the day you're currently in. Each day is 18 minutes (just a bit longer than Stardew Valley which is 14 if I recall). And from what I've seen so far and discovered through reviews/podcasts, you can mostly just ignore the current quest and do whatever you want and then come back to it and you're not really penalized.

Also, regarding storage, from the CNN review:

“In Fae Farm, you get unlimited house storage from the very beginning. When crafting, it pulls directly from this house storage, so you don’t need to have all those crafting items in your inventory all the time. They’ll only need to be directly in your inventory when you buy goods from vendors, which seems fair and sensical.”

There's a lot to this game that just speaks to it streamlining the genre with a lot of handy quality of life mechanics. I'm only a handful of hours into the game but loving what I'm seeing so far. And this game has great tutorializing and slowly pushing you into newer and more nuanced crafting mechanics, materials, etc. All at a steady pace that makes you feel accomplished and not too grindy (though you can definitely indulge in that if that's your thing).
posted by Fizz at 11:41 AM on September 9, 2023 [3 favorites]

I’ve bounced off Stardew Valley a couple of times now. Playing it handheld on the Switch with my aging eyes gives me trouble seeing what’s going on, and I would also appreciate a manual, like the old fogey that I am. Maybe I need to set back up on the tv and see if I do better.
posted by PussKillian at 11:51 AM on September 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

You can also ignore all the tutorial quest shit and just wander (though you might be locked out of certain zones) unless you talk to certain individuals in the early chapters but I do appreciate how free you are to just do your thing on your terms and in the order you like.
posted by Fizz at 12:18 PM on September 9, 2023

I found the Switch to have the Goldilocks problem... I was constantly moving it close to my face, then back to a comfortable range. Back and forth. Made me feel restless and uncomfortable playing hand held. Most games are just too small and detailed for the Switch screen. I think if the screen were like 20% larger it wouldn't be nearly as bad for me. Felt flimsy, too. I ended up giving mine away.
posted by SoberHighland at 2:27 PM on September 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Each day is 18 minutes (just a bit longer than Stardew Valley which is 14 if I recall).

Oh, nonononono. Fourteen minutes is nowhere near long enough for a day, I was stressing myself into knots just with that in Stardew, and 18 minutes isn't long enough either. I believe Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom both have days that are 1/7 of a real day, I can handle that.
posted by HypotheticalWoman at 4:51 PM on September 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

I, too, started finding a lot of text too small on the Switch -- and started using its built-in zoom-in mode to mitigate (double-tap on the home button, in case that might be useful for any of you), until I realized....my newly aging eyes just needed reading glasses! (And now reading books is easier again, too, especially in low light.)
posted by nobody at 5:05 PM on September 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ooh, this is so pretty! It's definitely going on my list. The game that I've been playing the most of lately is Ooblets. It's like a mashup of Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and Pokémon. It's adorable and the NPC dialogue is funny. Highly recommend.
posted by Sparky Buttons at 6:41 AM on September 10, 2023

Thanks for this recommendation, Fizz. I've been meaning to play with my Switch again but couldn't decide on a game, so I picked this one up after seeing this post and played Saturday afternoon and quite a lot on Sunday.

I found play a little stressful the first day because of the ticking clock, which I'm not used to, then I started seeing that as a benefit: there's always a convenient stopping point. The clock breaks the game up into more-manageable units of time, which makes it easier to walk away from and get IRL things done. I really need game/life balance because I will get into a groove and sit still for far too long.

Fun game so far, but the romance stuff is lost on me. I do like to care for and pet my chickoo though. Thinking about getting another today.
posted by heyho at 7:32 AM on September 11, 2023