It feels like we recently wrote our Fae Farm preview and now we’re on to Moonstone Island. In our 40 plus hours with Fae Farm we appreciated the charm of the game, even if it only goes so deep.
Fae Farm is one of the latest entries in the cozy/farming game genre which in and of itself isn’t anything of note. What is interesting about this release it it’s the sophomore title from game dev Phoenix Labs which are known for their Monster Hunter-like game Dauntless. As you can imagine, the two properties couldn’t be further apart. Fae Farm has a fun unique twist with its fairy and fantasy driven story, aesthetics, and gameplay. It reminds me a bit of the wonderful Wylde Flowers which made it as one of [my top games from last year]. The question is, with an ever growing genre of cozy titles and faming sims, what does Fae Farm do to innovate or differentiate?
Charm. I don’t care what anyone says about Fae Farm and its gameplay, there’s no denying the world of Azoria and its inhabitants are a delight to explore and watch. I’m happy to report that unlike other farming sims like My Time at Portia, there’s no need to grind for hours and hours in order to craft items. Sure, you will need to hit up the mines to get ore and cut down trees for wood—the usual fare. Once I gained my fairy wings I was hoping I’d obtain a lot of fancy magic and spells and that the battles would liven up, but they never did.
The enemies, or jumbles as Fae Farm refers to them, are overly simplistic enemies that perform overly simplistic attacks. The game has various mines that act as dungeons with vastly different looks. One annoyance is you need to use materials to craft seals in order to fast travel to each of the 25 floors per dungeon—simply unlocking the floors isn’t enough. You also need to craft fast travel points called Wayshrines, although this is far less annoying than crafting so many seals for the mines.
You’ll spend most of your time farming (obviously), mining for ore and materials, crafting, scavenging for blueprints that are strewn throughout the world, and battling simple creatures. You’ll do this over and over and over. You’ll also get quests and sub-quests that you’ve seen dozens of times before. Perhaps the most disappointing aspect is the lack of any interesting dialogue from NPCs and romance-able characters.
While I was playing through the game before it released to the public, I was very annoyed when I read that Phoenix Labs was lowering the price from $60 to $40 as they seemed to buckle to public pressure. But after putting 40+ hours in, I have to admit, the game wasn’t worth the original asking price. It’s unfortunate then that the game is still $60 on Switch compared to the significantly lower price on Steam. This isn’t all to say that Fae Farm is a bad game because it most certainly is not. My main gripe is that in a sea of cozy games, Fae Farm doesn’t do anything to rise to the top. Underneath the advertised fairytale charm is a farming game distilled to its most basic components with not much in the way of innovation. I really wanted to love Fae Farm but I wanted so much more.
