Fe - Review

Singing to the moon.

Console: Nintendo Switch

After my successful run-ins with Indie games last year, from Severed to Gris, I've been keeping my eye more on the Indie ball. So, when a slew of Nintendo Gold Points were about to expire I put them to good use and snagged myself another promising-looking Indie title: Zoink's Fe. It was the above keyart and the intriguing trailer that caught my attention but I intentionally didn't dive any deeper into the game. Part of the charm with these indies for me is that they are mystery boxes just waiting to be opened and see what is in it exactly. 

Some have been pleasant surprises, others have been letdowns. Sadly, Fe falls into the latter category. I think it's a good example of a game whose execution falters and that got off the wrong foot, tainting my enjoyment right from the start. 

Let's talk about it. 

The forest is under attack by these mysterious, shadowy beings who trap each and every animal they find with their Medusa-like gaze. Fe, a fox-like creature, seeks to defend the forest and its creatures from these invaders. 

Fe has received praise for its 'hands-off' approach. For not holding the player's hand and letting them free to roam and take the game at their own pace. There's joy in figuring stuff out all on your own but if you throw players into the deep end with nothing then you run the risk they become completely lost. That's what happened to me. 

For the first 10-15 minutes I had no clue what was going on or what to do. I felt completely lost, it took me too long to get to that first beat, and that was not an enjoyable experience. That was the 'wrong foot' of the opening. A bad first impression can make or break a game, especially in these times when there's so much stuff fighting for your time and money. Someone less stubborn might not've pushed through, which is a bit of shame. I don't like Fe much but I did enjoy the back half more than I did the first half. 

The shadow creatures.

That is because of a couple of things. To start, the narrative got somewhat interesting near the end. In the beginning, everything was too vague for me to form any connection. Freeing animal buddies and learning their language is neat and all but is there really nothing more to this story than this basic 'save nature' message, I wondered? 

There is indeed more, but it takes too long for that ´more to rear its head. By the time it got more interesting, I had already checked out. On top of that, just after lifting the cover of the big surprise, the title follows it up with a rather anticlimactic conclusion. Yeah, the story here is a bust. 

It´s up to the gameplay to carry this title; which it doesn't. The problem here is the concept is nice but the execution is deeply flawed. Fe starts with a very limited moveset. He can run, jump and sing his fox song and not much else. The little critter can't even run. Yet. That's an upgrade which, to be frank, should never have been anything but a part of his basic moveset. 

There's only one real collectable here, these glowy wisps. Collect enough of them and Fe is granted a new ability inspired by the other animals living in the forest. You could say it's their way to support Fe in his quest. The eagle, for example, gives Fe a nifty glide which makes moving around the world pretty fun. This gets expanded even more once you learn more songs. These allow you to talk to the other animals to help you out or use them to make flowers bloom to different effects. You can jump on them as platforms for instance. 

All nice and well but, in the end, it feels meaningless. You don't need many upgrades to complete the game. If you have the glide and climbing you have everything in your toolbox to make it to the end. The rest is completely unnecessary; they don't add anything of value so why hunt them down especially as they are such meaningless additions such as the run? 

The songs fare better in that you actually need to learn all of them to see the credits but that they all basically do the same thing hurts them. They enable a way to do more platforming, in their own way yes, but nothing more. They could've been far more creative with this power, or even chain multiple songs together for better platforming challenges, but they don't even do that. 

It's always the same story with a slightly different coat of paint and that goes for so much of this game. Yes, it does its best to be mysterious and hands-free but when you zoom out and think about it, this title has a few tricks and keeps repeating it on end. Every new area plays out the same, every bit of motion control signing is the same and every platforming challenge is mostly the same pattern. 

Now, repetition in video games is far from a sin. Entire, excellent, games are built around repetition such as Hades and Sifu. However, they make that a core part of their identity. They manage to keep it fun and fresh even with all the repeating. Fe doesn't manage that because I don't think all the repetition was intentional. 

Do I have anything good to say about Fe? I do but these aren't glowing points of praise. That the soundtrack did its job but is otherwise unremarkable sets the tone perfectly. Moving on from that opener, when Fe's moveset got that mandatory 'expanded' phase of the climb and the glide, that is when I found my moments of fun with the gameplay. 

Climbing, gliding and hiding to your goal all the while carefully avoiding your shadowy enemies: those were the moments I was enjoying myself. It's a lot of fun quickly moving around the world like this, figuring out how to get to where, and seeing some of the visuals. Can't explain it any better than that but I do have some examples to throw around. 

This got my attention.

My favourite bit was coming across a giant deer, freeing it from its bonds and avoiding the shadow creatures, who gave me genuine chills with their sound effects and erratic movements, and then the subsequent climb up the beast was my favourite bit. It had it all: the tense sneaking around, the platforming, exploration and sense of awe.  

I also liked it when I could finally do some sort of damage against these shadow creatures. The normal ones you can only hide and run from, being spotted is as good as a game over. In the last leg of the journey, I encountered enemies that you could neutralize if you played your card right and that was a fun game of risk and reward to play. 

It's just a shame that, and yes we're back to the negatives, is that the game never became as fun as the above again after those sections were over. The game couldn't meet those 'highs' again because the game design is so basic and well, that repetitiveness I talked about. 

What also never helped anything are the controls. How Fe moves. It feels like he's on ice 24/7. He's so slippery, overshoots nearly everything, and it's difficult to position him right. In short, it's all very fidgety and imprecise which makes controlling Fe frustrating at times. 

Lastly, this nightly, isometric, overshaded world looks pretty striking but it sadly can also be hard on the eyes. Things can blur together and be overly dark thanks to the colour pallet and lighting. With how everything is geometrically similar individual elements don't stand out much. Depth can be hard to judge properly and the weird way light reflects off surfaces and creates a disorienting flickering effect.

This is a neat visual style that I do like but comes with a bunch of caveats. One of those 'it looks best static' type of deals while we are dealing with a medium that is never static. A bit anticlimactic to end the review out on that, but it is what it is. 

This game can look really stunning.

Conclusion

I wanted to like Fe but I just can't recommend it. The art and the trailer looked good and the blurb on the EShop sounded promising. Yet, the title disappointed me at almost every turn. While it looks good and I'm certain the developers had a vision they believed in, it falters in its execution. The narrative is too vague and confusing, the controls are too fidgety and the gameplay is too repetitive in its structure. There isn't a lot here that I enjoyed and if not for my stubbornness, I would've dropped the game halfway through. You can find the same kind of experience in better games. I'm sure of it.