If you were to ask me “hey Ian, what genre do you think is oversaturated in the world of video games?” my answer to you would be the farming sim. The immense popularity of Stardew Valley set off a chain reaction of cozy indie devs striving to create new experiences within the world of farming. Hell, even Square Enix decided to try their hand at it with Harvestella. Now I’m not going to pretend to have engaged with a significant number of these farming games – I do enjoy the genre but I’m kinda picky about it, and if a game doesn’t do something relatively early to grab my attention and set itself apart then I’m likely to bounce off of it before it even really gets going.
Fields of Mistria initially grabbed my attention not with any of the game mechanics but with the animation style. I enjoy Stardew Valley and have a lot of respect for what the solo dev Concerned Ape is able to accomplish with it, but the character designs are an area of the game where I consider it to be quite weak. Most of the characters are not particularly compelling in terms of presentation. Fields of Mistria immediately set itself apart with a unique identity thanks to an art style that captures the spirit of 90’s anime. The nostalgic, evocative character designs were enough to get my foot in the door so the game could try to impress me with the things it has going on mechanically.
The fundamental premise of Fields of Mistria isn’t too different from most of these types of games. A once-booming rural town gets hit with an earthquake, devastating the community and driving a number of people away. The baron is away constantly politicking, leaving his daughter and son to care for the community in his wake. Adeline, the daughter, takes charge and comes up with a plan to aid the community: entice an adventure with the offer of free, fertile land to cultivate. You play the role of the adventurer who takes up this offer, either because you truly want to be a farmer-hero or because hell, who’s gonna turn down a free house in this economy? You design your hero and then arrive in the village to begin your new life. In the demo, you only get to experience three in-game days, so there are some aspects of the tutorial that have been condensed in order to let you try a few different things right from the jump.
Character customization is solid so far and seems that it will get more promising as time goes on. There are multiple hairstyles and eye types to choose from as well as skin colors, a few outfits to swap between and some accessories to help your character look a little more unique. You can play as a man, woman, or nonbinary through your pronoun selection and your pronouns don’t have anything to do with your customization options; this is pretty standard among indie farming fare now but it was good to see Fields of Mistria including it as well. It was clear from the customization screen that there are a number of planned options that haven’t been implemented yet, up to and including a starting pet to keep at your farm.
You can make way more interesting characters than this but I always choose the most boring possible customization options to accurately reflect my real-life design
The activities available in Fields of Mistria are going to be pretty familiar to any Stardew fans. Core activities include farming, fishing, and mining, and it’s clear that with time to raise some funds and gather building material that ranching, cooking, and crafting will all be added to that list as well. Each morning you wake up around 6:30 and you have until 2:00 the next morning to do whatever tasks you wish to accomplish for the day, stamina permitting. Using your tools depletes stamina while eating food restores it. In addition to your basic farm tasks you can also take requests from townsfolk to gather or make specific items for them, or to accomplish other tasks of their design. Adeline, for example, gives you a task to meet every single person that lives in the town.
To be clear, just because I describe all of this as “standard” isn’t necessarily a put down for Fields of Mistria. A lot of the mechanics are the things you expect to see in this sort of game but they are well-executed versions of the mechanics. When playing with keyboard and mouse, your mouse cursor indicates where your character’s action is going to effect, which makes it really easy to plant seeds exactly where you are trying to. You also can’t accidentally waste seeds by clicking on a tile that isn’t tilled soil. Even though the placement of items in the field or in the mine is all very grid-based your character’s movement and aiming isn’t, and it feels smooth to move through the space. This is particularly important for battles in the mines, where you’ll be moving out of the way of monster attacks and then moving in to counter.
Sometimes good monster design is as simple as slapping some eyes on a mushroom
This is where I have to be honest and admit that it has been so long since I have played Stardew that I don’t really remember how involved the combat was. In my memory, you just slash stuff til it dies and it keeps moving towards you menacingly. I watched a YouTube video to refresh myself and not every enemy in the game behaves that way; some monsters just kind of hang out while others are more aggressive, some jump or dig instead of walking or flying, etc. What stood out to me immediately about Fields of Mistria is that even the earliest enemies in the mine all seemed to have specific moves and a particularly approach that was needed in order to defeat them. For example, there’s a little mushroom guy who won’t attack you unless your back is turned, but then he sneaks up on you and tries to puff some spores onto you. If you face him he enters a defensive posture you can’t damage, so you have to let him almost get you and then whip around and press the offensive. A lantern enemy has periods of time where it emits electricity – hitting it with your sword in this state shocks and damages you, so you have to wait to strike when the lights go off. These simple touches alongside the cute designs of the enemies give them some personality and character that made them stand out to me a lot more than the little guys you fight in Stardew. It reminded me of Zelda or Mario in the way that each enemy’s attack patterns and weak points are like a mini puzzle to solve.
Still, there was one particular mechanic that really made Fields of Mistria stand out to me during my brief time with it. This one gameplay element made me want to know more about how it is going to be implemented in the full game. That element is magic. Your character has the capacity to learn and cast magical spells, and in the demo you can learn two. One is a generic self-healing spell for the mine. The other spell though…that one is called growth, and you can use it to instantly grow any crops you’ve planted to full size, or to advance a tree sprout one stage in its growth cycle. This means you can plant nine seeds in the ground and then immediately harvest all of them, seriously impacting the normal pace of the farming cycle and reaping the financial rewards of your harvest way faster. Now there are limits – you only have so much mana and it restores slowly over the course of days, so you can’t just run around casting willy-nilly. But the possibilities introduced by magic are enticing, and I want to learn more about what kinds of spells will be available in Mistria and how they can change up the game.
That’s all it takes, really – the game caught my attention with the character designs and then secured it with one new mechanic with a lot of promise. Add to that the fact that all the other stuff I typically expect from a farming sim is A) present and B) executed competently and Fields of Mistria is a game I was eager to wishlist once the demo was done. There are a few other little touches I haven’t commented on like the Animal Crossing -style museum or the way that townsfolk dialogue seems context-sensitive to give you in-game clues, but that stuff isn’t even really what has me excited. I’ll be watching with eager eyes to see how much the developers do with the magic system, and perhaps what speedrunners do with it after that. The game enters early access this August, so if this concept sounds exciting to you and you can’t wait to get your hands on it for yourself, you’ve got more than just the NextFest demo to look forward to.
“Uh, Ian, aren’t you forgetting something?” Ah of course, I imagine you want to know about the romance, yeah? According to the Steam page the game will feature a dozen romance options – ten that are shown readily on the page and two who are veiled from the player. The ten characters who are displayed on the Steam page can all be met in-game during the demo and you can talk to them, give them gifts, etc. You can check affection and gift preferences in the journal and all that just like most of these games. As best as I can tell, there are no limits on your relationships based on gender. You want to hit on the aloof blacksmith’s apprentice who will barely give you the time of day? Go for it! Personally in terms of design my favorites were Adeline, the town leader in her father’s stead, and Balor, the shipping box guy who gave me a classic case of “do I want him or do I want to BE him?” I also saw a little relationship heart icon next to one other character I wasn’t expecting…perhaps we can learn a little more about what’s going on with that come August as well.