Dec 14

Dec 14 Review | Kynseed - The Mysteries Of Running A Farm

minor spoilers

I’m a big fan of cosy farming sim games, so I jumped at the chance to review Kynseed, especially after seeing how pretty it looked. I figured I knew roughly what to expect and Kynseed is, in many ways, exactly the game I expected it to be. It’s a classic, cosy, RPG, with all the standard elements such as farming, cooking and fishing, as well as bargains with ancient fae entities….. Maybe not quite the game I expected.

However, before you can start running your own farm, you’ll need to create your character. Character creation is simple in Kynseed, which I appreciated. You choose one of two avatars to represent your character, pick their hair colour, and then name them. You then sit through an introduction where a brownie (the fae kind, not the food) with Dr. Suess level rhyming skills will encourage you to choose a path for your character. You are presented with various options, each of which will affect your stats. When I first played through, each option helpfully had both the flavour text and the mechanical effect it would have. I was a big fan of having both flavour and mechanics as I’m someone who likes to know what influence my choices will have in a game, but I also enjoy being able to make choices that suit a character.

After you’ve created your character, you’ll be dropped into the prologue, which acts as an introduction and tutorial for the various game mechanics. Through chores assigned to you by ‘Uncle Bill’, you’ll learn about looking after animals, fishing, smithing and all the other basic skills you’ll need to run the farm. While you will be given a main task and a few chores each day, they usually only take a couple of hours, leaving you with most of the day to explore the area. You will want to make sure to take advantage of every opportunity to explore, as this game has some of the prettiest pixel art I’ve seen. A lot of effort has been put into the aesthetics and I adore how different everything looks depending on the time of day or the season. The art feels whimsical and magical, which, when combined with a fantastic soundtrack that changes based on which area you are in, ensures that each area has its own unique atmosphere.

Throughout the game, you’ll develop your farm, buying new animals and crops, alongside having the option to buy and run local businesses such as an apothecary, blacksmith or general store. Both the blacksmith and apothecary come with crafting minigames and there’s also an enjoyable minigame for cooking and baking the various recipes you’ll discover as you explore. There are so many different ways you can play Kynseed. The path you take is completely up to you!

The game is dotted with a range of helpful (and not so helpful) books and notes that range from explaining game mechanics, to describing where to find various plants. These notes are often quite amusing and also contain plenty of useful information, so I’d recommend reading them all!

There are some flaws in the game. In order to see a map of each area, you have to find and activate a number of 'mapstones' in that area. For most of the maps, this is pretty simple, but I've found myself struggling to find them in larger maps. On the subject of maps, I personally would love a minimap to easily see where I am at any given time. I also noticed that while there is a helpful feature to direct you to the general location of a quest, I have sometimes struggled to locate an NPC within a given area which can be somewhat frustrating.

Kynseed is beautiful and the general vibe leans heavily towards a classic cosy RPG. However, as you play, there is a near-constant sense of slight unease, a feeling that something strange is going on in this cosy land of Quill and that things may not be as they seem. This ominous feeling is a wonderful contrast to the otherwise very tranquil setting.

Overall, Kynseed is an undeniably gorgeous and relaxing game, but be careful not to be drawn into things you don’t understand in this strange land where dreams and reality bleed into one.