If you use gaming to de-stress, Fae Farm offers up the perfect respite from the daily grind, providing a user-friendly and delightful gameplay experience.

However, a wide range of bugs hold the game back from its true potential.

I’ve spent the past month playing Fae Farm on the Nintendo Switch, and here are my thoughts.

What is Fae Farm about?

Fae Farm is a fantasy farm sim that feels like a mix between Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, with many unique additions.

Like Stardew Valley, it has romance options for NPCs, a multiplayer mode, and dungeons. The story also sees your character tasked with helping out a town.

Like Animal Crossing, it features a cutesy aesthetic with systems and skills like cooking, flower breeding, and more.

The story starts with your character discovering an island called Azoria, where they are given a farm and are asked to help deal with various magical challenges the island is facing.

Throughout the course of the game, you unlock more quests, cycle through the seasons, and discover the cause behind magical forces on the island.

User convenience at its core

While Fae Farm has its occasionally challenging quest line, the overall experience is incredibly user-friendly.

Quests are recorded in a log where they are sorted by category, making them easy to track. The main storyline is also pinned to the UI so you can keep those tasks front-of-mind.

Rather than needing to switch between harvesting tools like your sickle, spade, or axe, the game detects the item you’re targeting and switches automatically. This means you only need to switch between harvesting tools, a fishing rod, a critter net, and your magic staff.

This is simplified further in areas like dungeons, where you switch between your staff and harvesting tool only.

If you’re easily overwhelmed by there being too many controller inputs, the game shows the controller buttons when you’re on your farm or switching to your weapon.

So why the focus on the user experience? Because when you’re looking for a cozy farming sim, you mostly want to relax.

The systems in this game make that experience possible. It’s a low-stakes game where failure is not penalized. For example, if you don’t make it back to bed in time, the game simply saves and switches to the next day.

You don’t die. If you run out of health, you respawn at the entrance to your dungeon. And if you get ahead of your questline and complete some items like crafting stations before the quest, your previous completion is recorded.

Bugs that hold it back

There is so much joy to find in Fae Farm. But there are also the occasional bugs, ranging from simple inconveniences to ones that may impede your progress.

For example, a bug made me suddenly married to an NPC, without going through the wedding ceremony. When I tried to reset the relationship, it didn’t work. So I can’t complete the full courtship process in Fae Farm.

However, you’re not penalized for dating multiple NPCs, so I’ve used this time to get to know other characters.

The more I played, the more I encountered additional bugs. For example, I experienced a bug that prevented saplings from spawning despite using a propagation hive. My animal lure did not keep farm animals out of the way.

Most of these are inconveniences rather than game-breaking, but they do take away from the overall experience.

Is it worth it to play Fae Farm?

Despite the occasional bugs, Fae Farm is an absolute joy to play and a welcome addition to the cozy farm sim genre. Even if you aren’t a huge fan of the cutesy aesthetic, there is so much to do and explore.

It took me about 50 hours to complete the main questline, but I still continue to play the game as I unlock more flower types to get new colour palettes, complete job quests, and unlock additional outfits through achievements.

My only regret is that I rushed through some of the main storyline rather than taking my time to enjoy everything.

If this is your type of genre, Fae Farm offers plenty of activities and crafting to keep you occupied. And once it fixes its bugs, it will truly be a title that sets itself apart.