In the past few years, especially since the pandemic, farming games have been my go-to. They’re immersive, endless, and offer enough distraction with repetition to become a daily routine. But while I like playing them on my own, the truth is, co-op is what I’ve been craving, especially since my husband and I put about 400 hours a piece into Animal Crossing while sitting in the same room but mostly on our own islands. And it’s the co-op that excited me about Fae Farm, a cozy farming and life sim from developer Phoenix Labs.
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During a hands-off demo, Phoenix Labs gave But Why Tho? and other outlets a look into FaeFarm and the world of Azoria, where the game takes place. And to be honest, there is a lot to love about the game, even beyond the blend of chibi aesthetics and individual artistic brushstrokes. On farming, Phoenix Labs hasn’t strayed much, if at all, from the existing paths set up by games like Stardew Valley. It’s simple and direct while adding one key change – no tool wheel navigation. Yes, even the newest in the genre like Dreamlight Valley requires you to use submenus or wheels to change out your tools.
But in Fae Farm, it’s all just one button click. Instead of needing to rotate through your tools for individual tasks, the same button is utilized across the game’s actions. This simplification allows you to perform most of the more tedious actions in Fae Farm but doesn’t include using the wand, net, or fishing pole. For your character, you have three bars to monitor: Health, Stamina, and Mana. In addition to managing that you also have to upgrade your tools to farm more materials from fewer resources or get access to new resources.
In addition to the streamlined management outside, in your homestead, Fae Farms embodies “cozy” beyond just aesthetics. As you build out your home you can increase the “coziness” by placing items that have Coziness stats attached to them. The more comfortable your home, the easier it is for you to get health, stamina, and mana bonuses each morning. By doing this, decorating your house actually pays off for the rest of your gameplay, something I can’t help but love as someone who spends most of my time in this game-type decorating.
Outside of decorating and the cozier aspects of Fae Farm, the game also has dungeons that are meant to be cleared multiple times to collect resources. Through a mixture of melee and magic attacks, you can form combos to clear each dungeon alone or with others. Additionally, enemies in the game match the aesthetic of the rest of the game and seem to be easily dispatched without much combo building.
As for the most important part of Fae Farm, the co-op, it’s important to call out that of course, the team who created Dauntless has seamlessness at the forefront of development. In Fae Farm, you can play with up to four other people locally or online via drop-in, drop-out gameplay. As someone who spends a lot of time in co-op mode of any game with the option, the largest hurdle for those choosing to play this way is losing progression. That said, Phoenix Labs shared that the game has features that will update your friends’ stories with a progression that happened while they were logged out. The attentiveness to this makes me think that the promise of a great co-op will be met with care.
Overall, Fae Farm has easily become one of my most anticipated games, thanks to this one preview. It looks equal parts immersive and fun, and the fact that I can put hours into farming and do it with someone else is unbeatable. While I have yet to get my hands on the game, this hands-off preview showed an awesome future for this cozy sim title.
Fae Farm is being released exclusively on the Nintendo Switch in 2023.
