Fae Farm is a cozy farming sim where up to four players can craft, cultivate, decorate their homestead, and use spells to explore the enchanted island of Azoria. Sounds like an absolute blast, right? It essentially has everything a farm-sim lover could ever ask for along with a touch of magic to increase the charm factor. But underneath its cutesy exterior were a bunch of frustrations I just couldn’t overlook.
For a game that looks very animated, colorful, and full of life, Fae Farm’s characters are very one-dimensional and lifeless. For starters, everyone has -at best- roughly five lines of dialogue that they cycle through. You could speak to the local blacksmith and then your love interest only for them to say the exact same thing. This took me out of the gameplay as everyone just seemed frustrating to me after reading the same responses over and over again. Normally in games like this you can become friends with all the townspeople, but you cannot even befriend any of the shopkeepers here. This wouldn’t be so upsetting, but they are over half of the total villagers in the game. Even more upsetting, I took a peek at the Relationship Tracker only to discover that I’ve been ‘flirting’ with someone I’ve barely spoken to. Oh, I accepted a quest from them, got it. So romantic.
Another gripe I noticed the more I played was that the game just moves too quickly. There is a point where you’ll have to manage animals and crops across a handful of different biomes, and you will have to tend to these gameplay mechanics every single day. This means teleporting to each biome to take care of business. All of this constant traveling leaves very little time left in your day to do the things you actually want to do, like explore the cute world and progress the story. And this is especially frustrating because the narrative is as adorable as it gets. Similar games in the genre offer an option to slow down the passage of time which allows you to do your farming duties and go about the rest of your day without issue. Or the passage of time is just plain slower. Sadly, no such option or setting is available here.
Now if you are playing Fae Farm primarily as a multiplayer experience than none of these annoyances will ever really register for you. You won’t be interacting with the characters as much because you are going to be talking to your friends. The passage of time is also never really a problem because you and your buddies can each set up a house in a different biome, making time-crunching a thing of the past, giving you more time to explore. Another benefit to playing with friends is your economy will boost DRAMATICALLAY as you will have three other people to cook food and harvest gems. All of this makes sense as Fae Farm has been consistently advertised as a multiplayer experience -and it shows. But when similar games in the genre can do this and also provide a solid single-player experience, it’s a bit of a letdown. I guess that is my main issue with Fae Farm, it just isn’t as enjoyable if you don’t have a community to play with. With all of that being said, there is still some pretty strong positives to be found here, many of which help set Fae Farm apart from similar games in the genre.
Fae Farm is super cute. Like overwhelmingly cute. It’s got plenty of unique animals and critters to appreciate. The art style has a MySims quality which I connected with immediately. It makes each of the creatures look even more adorable. And since Fae Farm has a fantasy element to it, you’re going to discover tons of wildlife that you wouldn’t find in most farming-sims. They normally have some form of a community center or a museum, whereas here we have conservatories. These little furniture placements are not only pretty to look at, but they provide resources which can be used for different recipes, to fulfill quest requirements, and even craft potions. This brings us to the real magic of Fae Farm.
Magic plays a pretty pivotal role in Fae Farm. For starters, you get to have a set of pretty wings. Not only that, but you get a cute little flying jump. Potions can provide short-term magical help, which can range from simple weather manipulation, like summoning a rain cloud that waters your crops, to granting you invisibility. The latter is my personal favorite as it has allowed me to go in the mines without having to worry about any combat encounters. As the story progresses you will learn spells that will not only aid you in combat but also unlock other areas of the map. Lastly, you can upgrade your tools with magical abilities. Doing so will allow your tools an area of effect instead of just individual interactions. This means you can take out a whole slew of rocks instead of just one at a time or water an entire square of crops at once.
The biggest way that Fae Farm differentiates itself from similar titles is how Health, Mana, and Stamina function. These are all increased by the furniture in your house. The more you craft and place, the bigger each of the stat bars become. It makes it so that the more you explore and craft, the more you increase your Health, Mana, and Stamina pool. Then if that isn’t incentive enough to get you to go out looking for more crafting recipes, you can customize the colors of all the furniture pieces too!
There is a lot to appreciate in Fae Farm. It is adorable, and I am actually enjoying it. Hopefully in time the team can elevate the single-player experience to match the multiplayer. As of right now, I do not think it is worth the price tag if you are playing it by yourself.
