Through both visual and auditory queues, Zoink Games had their work cut out for them by making a wordless, interactive story play out as a 3D platformer using atmospheric presence to tell a tale. But with very, very few exceptions, they pull this off with near-perfect artistic grace.
Fe is a wonderful experience that asks you to think a bit, while also entertaining you with a silent story and majestic moments that are Journey-esque. The gameplay for Fe is well designed, fits the bill for what is going on and does its best to make sure you’re entertained and challenged.
Despite its beautiful art style, Fe lacks of game mechanics and content that can make a difference between it and some other indie games on the market.
Swedish indie developer Zoink delivers a beautiful and slow-paced platform adventure, that really feels unique. It isn't without flaws, though. The level design is a bit confusing and the control is far from perfect.
Fe is very pretty, and the music is equally stunning. It's a wonderful little game let down by some drawn out puzzles and some tricky climbing mechanics.
Fe is an incredibly impressive game. At first glance it is beautiful, whimsical and mysterious. Through the "Singing" mechanic you get to interact with various animals and plants as you explore the world. What's most exciting about this game is how it uses these mechanics. Hideo Kojima has commented on the ideas of the "Stick" (to keep people away) and the "Rope" (to bring people together) when talking about the upcoming Death Stranding, and while this game bears no resemblance to a Kojima Production, the gameplay is beautifully built around the idea of the "Rope". By learning languages and interacting with the various wildlife the main mechanics become friendship, communication and cooperation. Playing this with a friend is especially fun, as it's very nature revolves around friendship.
Fe
A mix of charming, frustrating, and confusing
Fe is a 5 and a half hour long open world 3d platformer with a dash of collectathon elements where you play as an adorable fox like animal out to save the forest from these not so adorable glowing eye jerks that are trapping your animal friends..
You’re sent to one section of the map at a time to complete a task to unlock a new song to sing...
As singing is how you interact with the world...
to learn a new language you have to help out the adult version of a certain animal...
Youre able to sync up with the baby versions freely though, and they’ll help you through the worlds until you learn their language
Learning a language can mean anthing from gathering stolen eggs, or freeing a giant deer and then climbing them shadow of the colossus style…
these first 2 languages were the most clever and I feel as though the game quickly runs out of ideas for the remainder of the game..
As the charm going forward is almost completely gone...
these new languages will help you of course progress further into the game, but will also help you reach new areas for crystals that you can use to upgrade your abilities to make traversing this world just a little bit more easy…
but traversing is just never fun...
the platforming feels clunky aside from the snappy and satisfying tree climbing, youll be falling to the bottom of areas numerous times just to have to restart your climb especially once gliding is involved
And interacting with the world feels more like busy work than actual interaction..
Constant language changing with your wheel while you’re trying to figure out the right path to the marker on the map...
The platforming isn’t awful though... its very passible, but the lack of polish is noticeable...
Thankfully the beauty and the charm of this world makes up for all of this...
the interactions with the different animals are adorable…
the colors, the feel, and the music help immerse you into this world…
Enemy encounters here are terrifying and are spread perfectly as well keeping this game perfectly paced…
I never felt the game overstayed its welcome...
Though the ending is definitely a head scratcher mostly because of how anti-climactic it ends up feeling and how lousy of a job the game does at making you care about its story ...
The game just feels as though it ends abruptly and I felt no feeling of accomplishment
I didn’t necessarily want more
it was just like… um okay?
But dispite my complaints I still enjoyed getting there...
I appreciate the giant puzzle this game ends up being…
the gameplay is constantly being changed, keeping the game fresh and engaging from start to finish...
You’re never just going through the motions…
youre always thinking and planning routes in your heads
unfortunately though there just isn’t anything memorable here…
It has the potential...
The opening 2 levels showed promise…
The game just drops the ball and forgets the great halfway through
I give Fe
a 6.5/10
I bought this because it looked interesting and in the same artistic style of games like journey or Abzu. Unfortunately it is not nearly as compelling. I found the overall world and mechanics to be really confusing and tedious. The story is too vague to mean anything despite some cool moments, and the open world all looks bland and the same. Despite being a small fox creature the character controls are very loose with poor jumping/climbing mechanics. It's really frustrating that the fox can't climb any walls or pull himself up onto ledges...because the world is made almost entirely out of rocky ledges. You have to always find a tree to climb up and glide places, which is very tedious. I also don't like that progression is mostly tied to collecting miscellaneous stones - again, tedious. The progression relationship between learning new songs and collecting all of the various items is also vague and takes a while to figure out, making it unclear where you can go and where you can't.
The art style itself is fairly unique but looks inconsistent in some areas due to foggy/faded backgrounds and strange lighting. I also couldn't figure out a way to fast travel around the world, which is frustrating because the geography is surprisingly large and tedious to get around. This caused me to not finish the game - I stopped about three hours into the supposed five hour length. The cat and mouse gameplay with some of the enemies is also annoying from unpredictable AI. Overall Fe feels like it's imitating better games, or trying too hard to be artistic just for the sake of being artistic - without a clear overall vision. It's visuals are not amazing enough to make up for the annoying controls and meandering game play. There are some fun moments and a few cool ideas but overall bland and tedious.
SummaryIn Fe, players are enchanted by the natural surroundings as they uncover secrets, complete side quests, and meet the mystical creatures of the forest. Players climb, glide and dig as they voyage through the open experience meeting, interacting and rescuing plants and animals from the Silent Ones, the machine antagonists that are threaten...