By Olivia Davies Another demo I got to try at Deck13 Spotlight’s PR event in Magdeburg was Datadyne’s RPG, Forge of the Fae. A Final Fantasy style pixel art adventure which draws inspiration from celtic folklore. The developer was kind enough to travel all the way from Japan to oversee the booths and answer any questions we had. He commented that he didn’t realise Forge of the Fae would do so well, but when it raised just over $225,000 dollars in its Kickstarter campaign, he said he knew exactly what he envisioned for the game and got straight to work.
During the event I was able to play around 2 hours of the demo which saw me play the beginning of the game, but to my surprise when I got home I was able to pick up where I left off and play an additional couple of hours using the preview access key. So I’ve had a good bit of time to see what the beginning of this game is all about.
The Start Of An Epic Quest
Datadyne said that Forge of the Fae is inspired by the golden age of JRPGs and you can definitely see that inspiration in all parts of the game. The narrative begins on quite a small scale, following Macklin’s expedition to find a powerful crystal in the mines to bring back to his tinkerer friend Fiora. You’ll change between both characters so you’ll get to spend some time experimenting with their unique movesets, but more on that later. After Fiora and Macklin team up and get themselves into a kerfuffle with a massive boar, they’ll make their way to the city of Taliesin. There, they witness a miner’s strike that is starting to throw the place into chaos. There’s a nice dichotomy between political unrest in a heavy industry city and the magic found within the nature that lies outside its walls. The game seems like it will pit these two things against each other, I wonder what will come out on top? There is a bunch of intrigue created in the demo that had me invested in where Forge of the Fae was heading.
As a Celt myself, specifically of Welsh origin, I’m always going to be a bit biased when a game represents the culture and history I grew up with. Being from a mining town community, abandoned coal pits, steel words and clustered miner houses echo a past of unrest and poverty which is still felt now. But the celtic nations have always been so rich with folklore too. There are so many places near my hometown and beyond that feature in myth, like Llyn y Fan Fach which is the home of the Lady of the Lake, or Excalibur lake where it’s said Arthyr found his legendary sword. So when I saw Forge of the Fae was taking from that part of mythology, I was excited. Just from the demo, I was pleasantly surprised to see locations being named after key welsh figures such as the great wizard Taliesin, with a part of the city being named Merthyr (which is a small town near where I’m from!). There are also some characters and items with welsh inspired names. The overworld is also home to some fae ruins that I couldn’t interact with in the demo, but I can’t wait to see the game go further with its celtic inspiration.
We meet several characters during the demo, including party members Ceili, Fiora, Macklin, and Roark. They were charming enough, but not very memorable overall. Fiora is the genius type, Macklin is the friendly guy, Ceili is hot-headed, and Roark is a sturdy stone-wall type. They are very character tropey, but I guess I haven’t had much time to spend with them or know really anything about their backgrounds, we only get Ceili’s tie to Taliesin and Roark’s tense relationship with his son. I’d like to see how they unfold and if I’ll warm up to this cast.
Pixel perfect
Forge of the Fae’s pixel art style is gorgeous, especially in its environments. As I said earlier, the game blends steampunk and industrial with magic and nature and you can see this in its gorgeous locations. From the damp mines with rock pools that shine and neon sap and moss adorning its walls and rocks, the beautiful vibrant meadows of the forest, dotted with luscious plants and cascading waterfalls, both against the smog and clustered city of Taliesin. I loved exploring this game’s world which was packed with beauty but also plenty of diverting pathways that would lead me to chests with loot or extra crafting items. I spent a lot of the demo just exploring and enjoying my surroundings, especially with the day and night system where travelling around meant I could see the sunset bathe the environment in orange. This is all punctuated by a beautiful and whimsical soundtrack.
The time system also features in its gameplay. Whereas the day is full of standard enemies, the night is where more pwoerrful ones come out. Day progresses as you play the game, but night will only pass if you make your characters sleep which adds a bit of challenge to navigating the world.
Whilst the character models are detailed and the designs themselves are unique and charming, I found some of their movements to be quite static, mostly with the NPCs. When characters are angry or sad they will kind of hop in place which I found to be a bit silly looking. Maybe it would be better if they just emoted with speech bubbles? Because it felt a bit cheap. The character portraits are also a very interesting choice, they are definitely unique and not very anime which i actually appreciated. I think the body proportions can seem a bit off, with Roark’s eyes being a bit off looking but it’s nice to see a unique style.
I did absolutely love the enemy designs though, they are unique and interesting to look at when you’ve gotte passed the mushrooms and pigs. There are monsters with candles on their heads and a boss that is part snake, part woman that you can save if you defeat the right part. They are also really well animated each with unique attacks. Their special attacks looked a bit cheap, but they did the job well enough.
Classic Combat
Right, let’s talk combat. Forge of the Fae is a turn-based RPG with its unique system of Adrenaline. If you’ve played at least one turn-based RPG I won’t bore you with the details but you’ll have a team of 3 and each character has their own unique moveset. For example, Fiora has a basic physical attack using a gauntlet but also specialises in special fire-based attacks and Roark is a tank type who uses Earth moves. The game has an emphasis on exploiting weaknesses using elemental attacks so you can hack enemy health bars down more with the elemental moves using SP. Then you have Adrenaline which is a gauge that fills up every time you attack. The gauge is made up of 3 segments and for every one that is filled up, that character can execute a special move that is mostly status afflictions. The more the gauge is filled, the better the move. For example, at 1 adrenaline, Roark can heal himself and put up a shield for defence, but at 3 he can heal and erect shields for the entire party. It’s a nice bit of strategy to decide when to use your Adrenaline. Weirdly, in the demo at the event enemies had health bars, but in the preview access they didnt so I don’t know which one reflects the final version.
Overall, the combat is incredibly simple to understand with the Adrenaline system being straightforward for newcomers. The systems that allow you to alter a character’s build is also easy to comprehend. You get points when you level up and then you can put those points into specific stats, like raising attack or speed, or other helpful buffs like increasing the effect of healing items etc. You then also have the ARC crystal system that I didnt really get a chance to use. Basically you can attach crystals to your team members which give them elemental affinities, like Fiora getting fire based moves. Each character gets four slots so im hoping we can experiment with different builds for each character.
Over-staturated Market
Playing games inspired by a ‘golden age’ can be quite tricky, especially when picking out what they do differently to stand out and stand out is key to this genre especially as we have seen an oversaturation of these types of games. Games like Sea of Stars accomplished that but still felt homey and nostalgic, but will Forge of the Fae carve out its own identity? Overall, i found Forge of the Fae to be pleasant but not all too interesting. It does build up some intrigue with the fae and human conflict and its characters are likeable, but nothing ever captured me. I felt the same with the combat, its incredibly simple and feels like baby’s first JRPG which isnt necessarily a bad thing, but in this kind of market I need something a bit more substantial.
Forge of the Fae releases in March 2027 on Xbox Series X|S so fans don’t need to wait much longer.
Thank you to Datadyne for giving us access to their game and to Deck13-Spotlight for inviting us to the event. If you want to hear more about the event or my impressions of Drova II Torn Lands, you can find them on Xbox Nation!