Fe
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
What a mysterious departure from the norm for Zoink Games. The Swedish studio’s previous output has been limited to irreverent 2D games such as Stick It To The Man and Zombie Vikings. But Fe is something else entirely. Fittingly, its titular creature is a spiky outsider in a strange polygonal forest full of animals, where exploration is inextricably linked with communication. Skittering fauna, phosphorescent plants and an ethereal score immediately captivate: a deer calf freezes out of what might be fear, or curiosity. Fe carefully approaches. Then, it opens its mouth.
What follows is a gorgeous little gurgle that tails off into a kind of low-pitched growl, a noise designed to soothe. Produced by lightly feathering the trigger, the sound radiates from Fe in milky waves and is immediately endearing. The deer seems to like the babyish cooing, too, breaking into operatic reply. “There is definitely the idea of a child in Fe,” says Hugo Bille, creative director, as the two animals share a conspiratory crackle of lightning to signal their bond. “That helplessness is a big part of its character. It’s capable, but small and ultimately vulnerable.” Indeed, the adventure is inspired by the devs’ unsupervised childhood jaunts through Nordic forests: giddy experiences coloured with fear and wonder.
Like any infant trying to understand the world, Fe’s greatest tool is asking incessant questions. By controlling its voice to an agreeable pitch and volume, and making nonthreatening movements, Fe can build relationships with forest life. Each semifantastical being will respond differently to its advances, so the player must pay attention to audiovisual cues and adjust approaches accordingly. “The core idea from the very beginning was that we wanted to create a language that was ambiguous,” Bille says. “You can’t be sure what effect your input is having. If an animal runs away, was it because I went too close? Did I do something with my voice? That’s what it would be like to talk to an actual animal out there: you don’t have a shared language.” It’s all about trying to get on something else’s wavelength – a philosophy further illustrated by sound design. “Joel [Bille], who does all the sound effects and music, even makes sure Fe’s animal sounds are in key with the music,” says Klaus
Lyngeled, CEO and creative director. And once you’ve convinced a new pal to follow you through the forest, their species’ special ability will invariably come in handy, even if you don’t know how yet. An awareness of what’s around you and how it all might fit together is key: this is a game that rewards a certain healthy curiosity. “Our core tenet is
always going to be exploration,” Bille says. “That’s a big and nebulous concept, but we can break it down to two things: exploring the environment, and exploring the ecosystem.” While previously, an odd orange flower might have ignored our crooning, coming across another with a deer in tow reveals all – it can yodel a tune that causes these draft flowers to bloom and help boost Fe upwards to new areas. The twittering of birds, meanwhile, opens a certain kind of pollen pod, whose glowing spores interfere with the technology of enemy traps.
Yes, enemies. The idyll is threatened by an ominous army of Silent Ones: shadowy, cycloptic beings that capture wildlife for testing, from which Fe must help protect the forest. Their ominous presence requires stealthier play: moving slowly through tall grass, hiding in treetops, keeping Fe’s voice low. Sometimes, their traps can even be used to your advantage, as we discover when luring a bear away from a stolen egg with a tempting berry. But a later section of our demo, worryingly, sees Fe snatched up often by Silent Ones: the open nature of the forest, however, means such stealth is unlikely to be overly enforced. If spotted, you can escape, provided you’re able to scramble up a tall pine in time. And what a scramble it is: barely animated at all, as Fe’s shape flickers from spot to spot in singular frames. “I wanted something quick and fluid,” Lyngeled says. “It has to feel like you’re a real squirrel. They don’t think even think about it. They just And after a while, you don’t think about the animation either. It just becomes natural.”
Climbing trees is just one potential locomotive power – so is a winged glide letting Fe swoop, mid-fall, into effortless flight – that organically opens up more of the forest. “When you make an action-adventure platformer like this, it’s your responsibility to spend a lot of time on the core movement,” says Bille. “You need to want to go back to places and traverse them in new ways, so traversal needs to be fun in itself.” And in the absence of visible maps or objectives, a good vantage point is functional. “We want a world big enough that you can get lost in it a little bit, but small enough that you get comfortable with it over time,” Bille says. The spell of this adherence to a less didactic form of design is briefly broken by a rare UI insistence that we collect three crystals to buy an ability. “That does look a little bit game-y,” Bille admits. “We’re trying to strike that difficult balance between making something understandable and making it feel natural.” Lyngeled points out that such abilities aren’t strictly necessary to progress. “For me, the real upgrade system, if you want to call it that, is learning new songs.”
Communication is the true heart of the game, and enough of it grants Fe free use of different animal languages. An encounter with a gigantic, trapped deer adds its lexicon to your radial vocabulary menu. Gone is the need to constantly lead critters to obstacles: Fe can simply pipe up in the dialect of your choice. And as the echoes of its burbling song tune into various life forms and light up the forest, something stirs in heart and eyes alike.
Emotion seems caught up in every corner. “Especially in regards to the animal interactions, and the believability of it, and forgoing human speech,” Bille nods. “Something we talk a lot about with Fe is – there’s a great word in Swedish, ‘ursprünglich’, I can’t quite translate it – but the original state that is at the core of us. Approaching another creature and, stripped of all the culture and civilisation that surrounds us, meeting somehow. That might be where the emotion is coming from: we’re scaling off so much of our humanity.”
Lyngeled, meanwhile, traces Fe’s affecting energy to more personal sources. “I think there’s definitely something of Andreas [Beijer, co-creative director] in there, the way he’s thinking and feeling. And I think we put a lot of energy into it, because it’s something new for us, too. It’s an exploration for us as we make it.” Indeed, there’s an irresistible parallel to be drawn: both Zoink Games and its curious little creature are charting unfamiliar territory by learning to speak a different language.
“I wanted something quick and fluid. It has to feel like you’re a real squirrel”