What is Fae Farm?
Fae Farm is a cosy farming life sim. Along the lines of Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing. Although, it is missing the anthropomorphic animals. Instead, it has Human villagers and Fae villagers. With farming, gathering, animal ranching, friendships, romance, collecting of various things, dungeons, and decorating; there is a fair bit to do. While it sounds more similar to Stardew, it is similar to Animal Crossing due to the 3D aspect, the way decorating and collecting items work, and the way house upgrades progress.
Beginning Of The Game The first thing you have to do is make your character! Character creation is fairly simple, choosing from a range of options. There are no gender options to choose from; instead, there is a set of body types, facial hair choices, and pronoun options. Being an Agender individual this was quite pleasing. I love it when games are inclusive. To me, this earns bonus points.
You begin the game in a cut scene, which is fairly standard for most games, during which your character is shown finding a message in a bottle. After which you emerge in Azoria.
Greeted by the mayor who gives you your first quest; in which you need to visit your Homestead and open a welcome package. I won't bore you with the details of the quest lines. The overarching story is that there is something going on, in various areas of the map, which need to be investigated and fixed. By doing so you unlock new areas, characters, and necessary ingredients.
Farming Farming in this worked slightly differently than I first expected. Going into it I assumed it would be a case of tilling the soil with a hoe, plant seeds, and water. While most of that was the case, some aspects were different. For starters, to be able to plant seeds you need to first craft soil beds. After which you can plant any seeds you have. Seeds can be acquired by either buying them from someone in the town square, or you can craft them. I chose to craft the majority of my seeds, however, you need to have the crop first to be able to craft them. This means that you have to buy the first lot of seeds, but after that, you can craft them. Getting the seasonal crops stumped me for a moment, I either missed the tutorial for it or it never walked me through it. In order to get seasonal crops you first need to use a special fertilizer that turns normal crops into the seasonal variety. Once you have the fully grown crop, you can also craft them. There are also Fae crops which you can get once you have solved the issue occurring in the Fae realm. You have to water crops daily but the only penalty for missing a day is that their growth will pause. Water will either cost stamina, or mana, depending on if you use the boost on upgraded tools.
Animal Ranching Raising animals is also fairly simple. To acquire the animals you first need to visit whoever sells them. Different animals are sold by different people, and Fae animals have to be unlocked first. You can also breed animals but I haven't done that yet. To raise friendship with the animals you need to care for them daily, as well as making sure they are fed. By doing so they will produce items you can use in crafting and cooking. If you miss a day caring for them they won't produce items. Luckily, outside the barns, there is a book you can open which shows you which animals have or haven't been cared for yet.
Crafting and Collecting I decided to put these two categories together because they go hand-in-hand. Firstly, I will discuss the collecting side of things. In various spots across the map. some hidden and some noticeable, there are scrolls to collect. These scrolls unlock different decorations and flooring which can be used inside or outside your home. Some items can only be unlocked via quests, storylines, and finding the corresponding crafting materials.
Once you have the recipe unlocked you can use different workbenches to craft things. Raw ingredients can be turned into materials that are used for crafting, while some raw ingredients can be used for some recipes. I have my material workbenches outside, and I keep my food crafting inside.
There are some items that have special bonuses, these items can increase your health, mana, and stamina. However, they do need to be in the house you are using as your main Homestead for the bonuses to count.
Dungeonoiring
Currently, there are three dungeons which tie into the main story quests.
Each dungeon has unique materials and enemies. Enemies drop materials and get tougher as you progress. You fight using your magic staff which can be upgraded as you progress through the story. The unique materials you can find and gather are used to unlock special household decorations, seals for teleports, and to upgrade your tools. Some of the seals are used for portals in the dungeons, which teleport you to different levels.
In the dungeon tracker, you can see which floors have portals and what the item drop is like for each floor. I found this quite handy when looking for specific gatherables.
Friendships and Romance As mentioned earlier there are both human and Fae NPCs in this game; 15 non-romanceable, and 6 romanceable.
Friendship is fairly easy to progress with, you can do this by just talking to them every day. This also increases the romance for the romanceable NPCS. You can also give gifts to get an increase but I didn't do this a lot. After getting the relationship to a certain level romanceable characters will offer to go on a date with you. These dates are just a cutscene but they're cute. After a few dates, you can propose marriage, which then leads to a short quest. Everything Else There are a couple of other things I thought I should talk about but since they are just small things I've lumped them in altogether. Firstly, let's discuss selling things. You can sell raw materials, food, crops, and animal produce. These can be sold at either the town centre or the stands on your farm. Each table or stand has a limited amount of spaces, meaning you can only sell a certain amount each day. Everything has its own price, with some things being worth more than others. I found pickled veg sold for the most, out of everything I sold.
With selling comes money. At first, money isn't that easy to come by, but once you have more unlocked it isn't too hard to earn a fair bit. I never really struggled for money, and money only became a necessity when upgrading things and for the marriage quest. Speaking of upgrades, there are a variety of upgrades you can get for both your homes and your tools. Every 2 tool upgrades improve its boosted skill, which can make gathering or farming faster. Homes can be upgraded a few times, allowing for more space to increase stats (health, mana, and stamina) via decor.
Skills can also be leveled up which give bonuses that relate to the skill. There are 8 skills in total, with a max level of 20.
The map is an okay size, with different areas with their own themes. To start you only have access to 9 areas, and one dungeon. By the time you've unlocked all the map, you have access to 16 areas and 3 dungeons. I have counted your farms/homes in with the areas.
Seasons are each 28 days, with the year being all four seasons. Seasons, weather, birthdays, and events can be seen on the calendar.
Lastly, I'd like to mention the Almanac. A handy book/menu where you can keep track of everything you've unlocked and look-up where materials can be obtained when needed. This came in handy for me quite often.
What do I enjoy about Fae Farm? I'm a fan of cosy, life-sim, and farming games so this appealed to me straight away. I enjoy that it's similar to other games I have put time into but also that it does some things differently. The story was interesting and straightforward, although the final quests for the chapters were a bit lacklustre. I enjoyed decorating my farm and my house. I still have things I want to put into place, but so far my favourite place I've decorated is my upstairs room in my main house.
It got repetitive but I enjoy that in my farming games. I enjoy having the daily routine with slight changes depending on the weather. Finding the recipe scrolls was an interesting touch, although I did have to look up a guide for the last few. Is there anything I don't like? Although I put nearly 74 hours into the game, I felt it was a bit short. The quests being a bit samey may have contributed to that. The main story was not always my focus, and I only progressed with the main story when I required something that it would unlock. While I don't mind aspects of a game being repetitive, it does get slightly boring when the quests are all quite similar. More variety would have been nice. There were a fair few things to unlock, clothes and decor, but I feel like there could have been more. The amount in the game currently is a good amount though, I managed to decorate things how I liked with what was available. Sometimes the animals were hard to tend to. This mostly happened when they were stood near each other and selecting a certain one became difficult. They also have a tendency to get in the way when tending to the crops.
Would I recommend? Yes, I would. I do hope this game continues to grow with updates.
If you think this game is something you would like to purchase, it is available on; Steam, and Nintendo Switch.
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