Fae Farm [Review]
Fae Farm is a farming sim with a few extra role-playing esc elements to spice up the gameplay. Phoenix Labs developed and published the game. Fae Farm coins a more cartoony/chibi-esc art style similar to how Harvest Moon looks. Though Fae Farm is a farming game, as you can probably tell from the name, it focuses on magic and the fantastical. It has an unnatural and vibrant color scheme to fit the bill, making it less naturalistic than other farming game styles.
The magic of Fae Farm is prominent pretty early on, after the tutorial you’ll be able to speak to a Harry Potter-looking guy who gives you a few requests. After doing his missions he’ll give you a staff to wack away these dark vine-like shadows that block you from exploring further. I did encounter a small issue with this though. I hadn’t started the missions from “Harry” just yet but found a staff. I had destroyed the shadow vines with the staff but was still blocked from going in the newly opened direction. We didn’t realize that the problem was we had to complete the mission for the staff before being able to go into those areas. I don’t mind that, but I wish I couldn't get the staff before completing this mission as it did cause some confusion. Luckily once I had found that mission it wasn’t difficult.
I used the term “we” a few times now because this game is fully co-op! You need to finish a tutorial and then you’re able to invite people to your world. The process is simple and the game makes the co-op aspects easy. Like; you share recipes with everyone, so collecting a recipe will allow everyone to make the item. The game being co-op certainly makes things easier as you can divide tasks up, I was playing with two other people so while one of us would farm the other two of us would explore, complete missions, and collect materials. The sharing missions is a nice co-op feature as one person can start the mission, go complete it, and if another player is in the area they can complete the mission by talking to the NPC. It makes it easier than running around the map and wasting the day.
My favorite thing to do in the game was to explore and catch bugs. It’s just really satisfying and it takes my favorite thing to do in Animal Crossing and makes it a prominent feature. You can collect and use them to make food or juices or sell them for profit! This and fishing, is a good way to get early game money while you’re still building up a farm to grow food. I’m not ashamed to admit that while my partners were busy making a profit I spent most of my time catching bugs in a frog’s mouth.
Ah right I suppose I can explain that one. As I said, this game focuses on a magical aspect rather than being solely a farming game. The setting and characters are just as magical as the gameplay and there’s a giant frog you can talk to. He offers to eat you to send you to a pocketed dimension with tons of bugs to catch! Well, of course, there are also supplies and even an NPC to talk to but I was only there for the bugs.
Of course, there is more to the game than bugs. It has farming sim staples such as fishing, befriending and romancing NPCs, changing seasons, an expandable house, character customization, and dungeon crawling. Not every farming game has those last two and it helps make Fae Farm stand out. Especially the dungeon crawling, it’s common enough in farming games but not all of those games are co-op. This one being co-op makes me enjoy the game a lot more. Plus, farming games being co-op makes them a lot more manageable as there’s always so much to do in them that it can be a bit overwhelming on where to start.
I do want to mention some frustration I encountered with Fae Farm. For starters, at a certain time, the day ends. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you are doing, the game will force you to end the day and wake up at the house. This is a unique feature I’ve not seen in farming games before and for good reason. It’s frustrating and almost broke our game. When we first started playing our third player took a while to get into the game, when he did the day ended and took him out of the character customization screen. When the characters woke up he walked around with his unfinished character for a few seconds before the game abruptly took him back to the customization screen. I’m glad the game had a fail-safe for this but it’s an unnecessary feature to begin with. The only other farming game I can think of that does this is Stardew Valley, but the days are much longer than the ones in Fae Farm and in that game, you only pass out at 2 AM. In Fae Farm, the day ends at 12 and it doesn’t seem to bar you from doing things too late in the day. One of my teammates was actually in the middle of purchasing livestock, the day ended before it could be brought home. The day either needs to end later or features need to be barred after a certain time to prevent players from trying something that can be stopped.
Fae Farm is an enjoyable game, one that becomes even more enjoyable when you have people to play with. Not a lot of farming games are co-op, and some of the ones that are don’t work all that well as one, so I love to see a good co-op farming game. That doesn’t erase the frustrations I had though, and the day-end being forced on the player is a very annoying feature that I can’t get past. With this, I will be giving Fae Farm a 7/10 and I still recommend it for those interested in either farming games or games to play with friends. The game is currently available on Switch, Playstation 4/5, Xbox One/Series, and PC.