Fe (Xbox One)
Fe, pronounced Feeya, has nothing to do with the chemical symbol for iron, and if anything, it is diametrically opposed to anything man made or metallic. Fe is the Swedish word for fairy, but you’ll see no tiny winged women in Fe. Instead, the creature this refers to is a forest guardian, a skogs-fe being an old term for something more similar to the English word fay then our more specific term fairy. Developer Zoink even says the Swedish word fä has links to the name choice, fä meaning critter and more closely connecting to the story’s fox-like protagonist. Despite the lack of any true portmanteau between fe and fä, a lot of thought was definitely given to this game’s title, even if it ultimately makes it harder to find on Google.
Fe does little to explain its game world or what your goal in it is, plopping you down in it as a small fox-like creature who interacts with objects and other animals mostly by singing at different pitches. The game will break its silence to make sure you understand mechanics and controls, but otherwise, you’re thrown into a natural environment that looks decidedly unnatural. The forest, the mountains, the water… everything in Fe is pretty much some shade of blue, purple, or pink, favoring the much deeper tones that would almost evoke comparisons to cyberpunk and neon aesthetics if not for the fact almost the entire world is meant to be natural. Rocks, trees, and most everything you interact with are often angular shapes defined by abrupt angle shifts that don’t feel artificial but certainly give the game a distinct look. It’s an otherworldly place without feeling truly alien, the vegetation and creatures seeming to be close to ones we might know while still featuring fantastical designs. It’s as if you are viewing a magical realm apart from ours where these fay can live free of any human influence.
Unfortunately, despite how distinct the world looks and the grand and beautiful sights it does have, the game mostly ends up hurt by its adherence to this art style. Even in different locations the world will feel quite familiar thanks to the reuse of colors and consistent environmental design guidelines, and in the bigger locations it can be hard to really figure out what areas are important or just jagged set dressing you just so happen to be able to jump on. The game does allow a lot of freedom in how you explore and there are moments you can exploit level geometry to find your own solution to a traversal challenge, but what might start of as a striking and potentially beautiful aesthetic starts to lose its luster as new areas don’t really challenge it much. There are some places like the snowy area that break away by featuring white and blue a lot more, but this unnatural natural world loses some of its beauty by limiting its color pallet and design style. There will be instances of bright oranges, pinks, and reds to accent things of importance or indicate danger, but for a game you’ll spend more than a few hours with, the otherworldly charm fails to adjust and evolve to stay impressive.
When it comes to what you are doing in Fe, you’ll search around different locations for friendly fauna and collectible pink crystals, both of these able to grant you new abilities to open up new areas. Pink crystals are often rewards for completing small traversal challenges and unlock new abilities for Fe, the creature learning things like scaling trees and gliding that will help it reach new places and opportunities while others like the dash feel like they were kept from you just so you don’t go too long without getting the more useful skills. Most of them are technically optional, the game’s main focus being on earning the new songs from new creatures. Fe interacts with the world by singing different sounds at different pitches, with the different areas of the world often focused on meeting new creatures and assisting them until a massive representative of their kind teaches you the song they know that can interact with the world.
Different sustained notes can cause different results, but a lot of them feel like they’re basically just activating one thing or another. To ride giant birds to predetermined points you need to sing their song, to activate flowers that will launch you far away you sing near them, and to activate flowers that keep you aloft while gliding it is again just a song you need to briefly squeak out to make sure the thing you need is active. Some creatures or objects even require you to find the right tune, the player needing to get the pressure on the trigger button right and sustain it just to make a bit of progress. There is one helpful song that isn’t just triggering something necessary though, that being the one that makes a small bird fly to your aid and show you the way you need to be going, but switching between songs to make sure you’re able to activate what you need is a little cumbersome. The menu isn’t bad for what it is, just a ring you aim your stick to pick which creature’s tune you want, but coming to a stop to pull it up isn’t very natural for a game that otherwise propels its plot with a lot of silent moments conveying clear emotion.
The main trouble facing this fantasy forest are large cycloptic bipeds made of stone. Known as The Silent Ones even though the game won’t say the name of anything, these strange beings are going around and capturing creatures and altering the land as they do so, and if they spot Fe, they’ll capture it too. They aren’t the only danger in this world, but other things like animals in the water feel like part of the natural life cycle while The Silent Ones are clearly intrusive, destructive, and attack animals on sight. It’s not hard to spot the allegory of humans vs. nature here, but the game tries to contextualize them within this fantasy world. Hierogylpyhs on large stones can be revealed around the world, showing the history of this realm and The Silent Ones in picture form, but finding the remains of these strange figures and singing to them can also have Fe briefly view the memories of a Silent One from its own perspective. There does not appear to be incredible complexity to this history, but it is an interesting aspect that strengthens the world-building in an game world that can sometimes feel sterile or samey.
The platforming is how you experience exploring that world though, and for the most part it feels a little aimless even with the bird companion. Most challenges are simple things like getting to a specific area or avoiding the attention of The Silent Ones. There are some decent puzzle challenges to be found and some moments definitely aim more for evoking a feeling than providing a challenge, but overall the game is a bit tame in its demands. Some moments like scaling a titanic deer creature are impressive and interesting from a conceptual angle, but hopping around rocks and trees and hiding in grass from the enemies doesn’t make the moment to moment action too interesting. Exploring for extra lore or pink crystals can be mildly rewarding, but too much of Fe only hits that mildly interesting note to make the adventure truly engaging.
THE VERDICT: When a game is trying to be artistic or emotional, it is worth meeting that game on its level and judging it appropriately. However, Fe’s distinct visuals and mix of the unnatural with the natural are experienced not by appreciating these aspects but instead by engaging in platforming, skill use, and item collection, and most of these aspects are mediocre and not helped by things like the environmental design being too similar in appearance for its own good. The game plays fine on the whole despite some awkward choices with the singing mechanic, there are some beautiful and striking sights that still work, and the glimpses at this otherworldly place’s history are worked in fluidly, but the interactive aspects of the game never really impress on their own merits.
And so, I give Fe for Xbox One…
An OKAY rating. I’ve often felt bad for giving a lower rating to a game that seems to be trying to be more about its presentation and the feel of the world created, and while I think Fe is still quite undercooked when it comes to aspects like its visual design or world-building, it does represent why this happens. Fe asks you to experience this world not as a true visitor but as a creature who needs to engage with platforming, puzzles, and enemies, and thus you are meant to think of the angular environment not just as a painted world but as a means to an objective. The singing is not some beautiful communion between two parts of nature, it’s a mechanic for activating useful assistance. You can still see some of the artistry underneath the layer of gameplay necessity and Fe’s video game elements aren’t so bad they harm the artistic choices, but you are asked to view the game both as a creative piece of art and a creative form of interactivity, and neither is all that well realized. They both have their moments and they both have their flaws, but put together they can’t achieve their full potential. They don’t really hold each other back though, but more focus on either could have lead to a more exciting experience rather than one that’s simply decent.
Fe is a game that needs more thought put into it outside the choice of name. The world’s appearance doesn’t need to so rigidly adhere to certain colors and design styles, and the platforming needs to either explore its mechanics better or fade in the background for an experience more focused on evoking emotions or experiencing artistic designs. Fe is trying to be something interesting and some of that makes it through, but the vision behind it all isn’t focused enough to help realize what this game could have been.