Listen to our full interview with the Phoenix Labs Fae Farm development team below.
Phoenix Labs has swung for the fences with its cozy dungeoneering social sim Fae Farm. With elements of core cozy games like managing your homestead, gathering materials, tending to animals, talking to villagers, fishing, and, of course, customizing your character’s appearance whenever you want. But the added ability to find resources in dungeons and move through them, progressing from one floor to the next, is a unique element that begs co-op play. In this interview, we got the chance to talk about creating the sound of the game, making it the same experience for each player in the same world, and ultimately, the collaborative spirit that brought the game to life.
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Speaking with Akshay Balakrishnan (Senior Programmer), Dorian Pareis (Audio Director), Cris Velasco (Composer), and Dan Poole (Senior Voice Designer), it’s clear that cooperative play and growth are key factors in the Fae Farm experience and that’s what was brought into the development process. Over the course of this 20-minute interview, we hear about the development process and how it took place across different departments of the Pheonix Labs teams.
While not everyone is familiar with the game development process, these Pheonix Labs developers pull back the curtain on what has gone into crafting the world of Fae Farm from an audio perspective, but how audio connects across the entirety of the game, from design to programming and even animation.
If you are unfamiliar with Phoenix Labs’ prior games, like Dauntless, that game serves as a great multiplayer roadmap for Fae Farm, despite how different the genres are. This drop-in-drop-out co-op game can include up to four people and the magic-infused cozy farm sim also features cross-play across all announced platforms for the game which are currently PC and Nintendo Switch. By allowing players to choose how they play, the Phoenix Labs team has been able to prioritize meeting players where they are. This interview sheds light on how building a game is a team effort, and how that collaborative and cooperative spirit went from developing co-op in the game to the development team creating it.
Fae Farm releases September 8, 2023 on Nintendo Switch and PC.
