When We Made...
Isaac Epp, game director of Fae Farm at Phoenix Labs, tells Vince Pavey about the challenges of infusing the cosy life sim genre with a dash of fairy magic and adventure
F
ae Farm is the second game by the Vancouver- based studio and publisher Phoenix Labs, and is its take on the ‘cosy farm-sim’ genre that is
becoming an increasingly fruitful market for the current crop of indie game developers. It’s a low-stakes good time, where those that play exploring, crafting, decorating, helping out a varied cast of characters with quests, and maybe even taking part in a little romance.
It was also a very unexpected title from the team behind Dauntless, a popular free-to-play action game
50 | MCV/DEVELOP December/January 2024
developers at Phoenix Labs decide to start making Fae Farm at all? “The project really evolved and matured way beyond Farm’s creative director, started working on the game with a very small team initially, just a handful of folks. This was initially envisioned as a passion project, and eventually the studio leads approached Katie and asked if she’d be interested in developing it in-house at Phoenix Labs. From there, the project became the main focus for a large portion of the development team, and we expanded upon Katie’s initial vision but kept the DNA of that vision intact throughout.”
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