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Fae Farm is a fantasy Stardew-like where you can live your off-grid cottagecore dreamsGive my son the juice!
Give my son the juice!
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Phoenix Labs
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Phoenix Labs
Farminglife sims likeStardew Valleyremain enduringly popular, and until Stardew dev ConcernedApe’sHaunted Chocolatierarrives, there are plenty other games popping up like cute life sim mushrooms to horn in on our shared desire for a simpler, more rustic way of life. The route to this in Stardew Valley is actually quite hard, requiring mastery of several different interlocked systems that each ask a level of expertise that, on most days, I cannot be arsed to work towards. I love Stardew Valley, to be clear, but I hold no expectation of ever getting the most out of the farm space alloted to you as a result of your grandfather’s death.
Fae Farmis a Stardewlike with a fantastical veneer and 3D graphics, but importantly it frontloads progress. It’s slightly easier, in ways that seem small but cumulatively mean it takes up way less of your brain’s runtime on bad days. For example: all activities, including watering your crops, use less energy than in Stardew Valley. This means you can run around clearing farm space and gathering resources, and have a working plot in just a couple of days. Heck, you can have a pretty full day in the mines before you’ve mechanised your farm. Game changer!
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Phoenix Labs
Whenever the idea of cottagecore comes up, I - like a build-a-bear curmudgeon who only plays one recorded line when you squeeze her tummy - go “living in an unheated country cottage sucks”. Granted, I didn’t live in a Cider With Rosie-esque smallholding in a closeknit community where everyone made each other jam and bacon, and the unheated cottage was my dad’s (when I was with my mum it was an unheated country semi-detached redbrick). I’m just saying: in real life there’s less gingham and roses and more henshit and wet socks.But. Fae Farm’s version of the fantasy is pretty cute.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Phoenix Labs
You can hybridise flowers! You can get a little drinks production table and make vegetable and berry juices, or iced tea! Chopping stations and proper ovens yield chowders and complex salads. And the raw cotton you get from this world’s fantasy version of a sheep can go into cushions and rugs for your increasingly cute home. Fae Farm’s community of vendors and citizens, many of whom will give you little quests, will buy basically anything you can catch (bees, frogs, trout, etc), so there’s never a day you aren’t generating some income. You go from zero to insta-ready hero in less than an in-game week. I’m sort of surprised that isn’t a skill track to follow.
