What does that look like in Fae Farm?
Can you describe the day-to-day gameplay?
We have a couple vectors for progression, daily cycles of activities that you could do.
So the overall loop is that you have your farm.
Or the stuff you like to do could just be farming.
So not exactly linear, but there is a linear thread at least.
Is there a sort of day-night cycle in it?
De Sousa: Yeah.
Can you share a few of the ones that inspired you and how so?
That’s a thing you’re free to do.
So I spent a lot of time there with horse racing opponents and stuff like that.
And you’re just going out to the dungeons and coming back home."
So that was the original inspiration for me, in terms of where that came from.
But Isaac is bringing in all sorts of awesome [experiences.]
Epp:Yeah, I mean, I’ve got well-over 800 hours in Animal Crossing.
I’ll also spend 20 hours in a character creator if you let me.
And I think another one that jumps out to me is Spiritfarer.
That was a real gem of an experience, and had just a lot of good heart to it.
It felt cozy and personal.
And I think that personal angle is a thing that I just love to see more of in games.
What are some of your favorite features in Fae Farm?
Epp:There are a lot of things in the game that I like a lot.
I think the Cozy System is super unique and novel.
Can you describe that a little bit for me?
And all that is just through being cozy, which I think is just awesome.
It’s similar to that.
Were there any other features you wanted to discuss?
There’s a Water Bloop [spell] that is particularly fun.
I’m sure you’ll fall in love with it like we did.
De Sousa:A lot of farm sims tend to just go straight to automation.
They’re like, “Oh, it’s a lot of friction to do all of these activities.
So let’s just get you to stop doing them.
Here’s a machine, that’ll do it for you.”
And it’s very fun to do that.
De Sousa:That’s a great question.
And that tends to be picking roles and specialties.
So if one person’s like, “Hey, I’m going to be the farmer.
And then, we’ll work together and get stuff done faster by doing it that way.”
So it’s more sort of picking roles and specialties to help each other go faster.
But all of that stuff is still accessible to a person who wants to play single-player.
And they’re not limited in, “you’re able to only get to level blah.”
So you’re free to only pick so many things.
Will each person have their own kind of house and farm, or is it a shared thing?
Can four people play on one console or is it four separate consoles?
Epp:It’s four consoles.
De Sousa:Yeah.
They’re just all over North America.
So I was like, “But you’ll play something on a Switch!
You’ll play Animal Crossing.
Is Fae Farm any simpler?
Epp:Oh, yeah.
Do we want to have the player host their own server and then people would connect to it?”
So if they’re like, “Oh, I’m going to start a farm.
Come to my farm.”
That should be all that they have to know, ideally.
Can one person leave and a new person come in?
How does that work?
Epp:you’re free to play with any or all of those people at once.
If someone needs to leave, because their toddler’s fussy, they can totally do that.
And if you want to invite someone else, they can pop in and play too.
It’s pretty flexible in that way.
De Sousa:Yeah.
Is it one farm per save or Switch?
Because everybody has more than one Stardew Valley save.
What types of steps are you taking to see to it the game is inclusive and accessible?
Epp:I want any game I work on to allow the players to find themselves in it.
I think that is really important.
And I’m glad that it’s getting talked about now.
And what about accessibility?
So things like that just to make it a step easier for people.
Epp:There are a lot of input things that we’re trying to avoid wherever possible, too.
All of our interface design is done purely with values.
No matter how you perceive the colors, it’ll work for you.
PR representative:Yeah.
Was there anything else that you wanted to talk about?
Epp:The art style is wonderful.
It’s sort of like in the background, you just feel like you’re in a magical place.
And we also wanted to double-check that it looked handcrafted.
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