We were lucky enough to receive a pre-release Steam key for Fae Farm and boy-howdy am I happy that we did! Full transparency, this is not a final release version but being that the release date is just around the corner on September the 8th with a simultaneous Switch release, I can only assume that the version we have is very close to a full release version (though we can only play to Chapter 4 until release day).
I have to admit that my first impression of Fae Farm was that it was a pretty Stardew Valley clone that lacked the substance of its predecessor and felt clunky. I can thankfully say that after playing further, my first impression was very wrong! It becomes obvious as you progress that Fae Farm is striving to be something very different in a bustling and sometimes lately stale genre.
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Yes, at a high level, Fae Farm is another Farming Sim where you are given a small piece of land and a shack, a set of tools that include a pick-axe, an axe, a shovel, a watering can, a fishing rod (but also a bug-net, hello Coral Island!), where you make your living growing crops, cooking food and mining caves, and you establish relationships with the locals in hopes of friendship and romance. Sound familiar? This alone is understandable and has been attempted many times now, but to make matters worse, the initial complexity of the controls seemed to be an oversite.
It turns out that the basic premise of the games is pretty much all the similarities that Fae Farm has with the many Stardew Valley clones and the game diverges on its own pretty quickly once you start advancing. The complexity of the control seems to be a combination of the fact that this game was clearly designed for simultaneous console release and works much better on a controller (or handheld) than a mouse and keyboard, crossed with the fact that the depth of this game demands some compromise on traditional button mapping. If you are willing to break from tradition, it works very well.
The basic concepts of farming, cooking, mining and fishing are here, but they become quite unique once you go beyond the basic recipes and starting materials. One of the coolest examples is farming, where the only seeds you can buy are the starting seeds. In order to gain access to more advanced seeds, you must grow the basics, use magic fertilizers to change the plants into random new plants, and then harvest those with a seed machine to make your own supply of seeds. Â
Cooking will be an essential source of revenue, and again, only basic recipes can be bought or learned.  Your basic fire pit will allow you to make a standard cooked fish, vegetables or fruit recipe which aren’t particularly valuable. It’s only through building additional and increasingly complex crafting stations that you can make advanced recipes. They are not upgrades to your crafting stations, which is a nifty change, but additional stations (a prep table, a tea bar, etc) that let you create new recipes for ingredients. Adding more of these together makes more complex and thus more valuable wares. This formula carries on to crafting for farming, mining and lumber stations as well. I feel like you will need a very big farm by the end!
Many little things could be better and I’ll start with them. Some are likely not going to change, like the fact that everyone looks like Lego or Playmobil people. I really don’t like this choice as, to me, everyone looks basically the same other than hair or outfit and I really have no connection to any of them. I just know that this one sells seeds and that one is a blacksmith. For a game with such aesthetic charm, I felt this really throws a wrench into it. Other issues could be fixed with updates, like the fact that it can be hard to target the proper square plot that you want to water or build on, and it can be really hard to brush or pet your animals.
Again, I am pleased to report that there are far more improvements Fae Farm makes to the genre then mistakes. Holding your action button will intuitively cycle through available tasks at the location. For example, holding your watering can will water each space in front of you that is in reach and then, if that watering causes those plants to reach maturity, will start harvesting them, all without lifting your finger from the button. Speaking of your watering can, swimming in a river or standing in the rain will fill it! You have access to home storage via your house or your farm with unlimited storage and everything in it can be used to build or produce anything on your farm. Â
Where Fae Farm truly stands out is its beautiful aesthetics and wealth of ways in which you can use them to modify your home, your farm and your character. I am about 25 hours in, have not completed the pre-release 4 chapters yet, let alone all of the content that unlocks on September 8, and already there are more cosmetic items than I will personally ever use AND you can edit items to modify their primary colours and accents. If you are a Sims fanatic who loves to build digital dream houses, this is going to be your jam, not to mention it looks like you are going to be able to have multiple homes! The music is also the best of any farming sim I have played, and considering I love the music in Stardew and Coral Island, I don’t say that lightly.
For those of you who love farm sims to micromanage an agricultural factory line and become digital small-town millionaires, this may not be for you. The AAA price tag is also pretty steep for a farming sim and I suspect, again, it is because of the simultaneous Switch release, but I really think they need to price the PC version closer to its genre. Still, if you are looking for a gorgeous new entry to the farming sim genre with a whole new bag of tricks and a great deal of depth, Fae Farm checks all of those boxes. It’s daring, fun and incredibly good looking, all the things your last Tinder date was not, and I can’t wait to see what the rest holds.
Watch for a follow-up update once we have unlocked all of the content post-launch!
