Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
Kynseed begins with a personality quiz that bestows upon you in-game benefits based on your answers. That’s a pretty good sketch of the life sim’s magic: choice. The debut from English studio Pixelcount (a team of former Fable devs), this fairytale-inspired game has entrepreneurship, fishing, marriage, combat, and plenty more – and you can focus on whatever you wish. It may not be the fairest of them all, but it’s a merry time nonetheless.
Releasing in Early Access in 2018 before its 1.0 PC release in 2022, Kynseed takes place in the faraway land of Quill, where humans walk among gnomes, pig-like monsters and all manner of otherworldly creatures. You start as a child where certain tools are prohibited, you have a bedtime, and pop-up boxes promise ‘You can use this when you are older.’ This lengthy prologue is a sort of tutorial – and it manages to be both overlong and overstuffed.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
You get a task a day, but the game doesn’t help you achieve said task and the days pass quickly. My tasks piled up and I feared I was being punished for exploring a land that begs to be explored, or for not knowing how to equip a bucket to milk a cow. I got it eventually, though I worry more impatient players won’t stick around. However, if you’re the kind of impatient player who loves a cosy game where you can complete satisfying microtasks and fill a bag with coins, then you should definitely stick around.
Now, there is a turning point I can’t omit, because Kynseed gets infinitely more interesting and fun after the event. So, beware: spoilers lie ahead.
Towards the prologue’s end (six-ish hours in – told you it was long), you meet Mr Fairweather, a devilish-looking creature who gives you the eponymous Kynseed to plant on your farm. The game then skips ahead five years, making you an adult. Fairweather’s currency is years, and throughout the game you’ll often trade years of your life for upgrades or revival after combat. Meanwhile, the Kynseed grows into a tree that changes with your actions over time.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
Much later, if you have children, you can also, um, die and inherit the tree as your kids – effectively playing as a new character. The seed of this concept is quite unique in this genre, though I’m not sure it’s grown to its full potential (ahem). In fact, for a game that uses time in such an interesting way, the story pacing feels rocky.
Timeskips are usually significant, yet Quillians seem unconcerned about you missing for years, apart from some casual greetings about not seeing you for a while and subtle appearance changes. You still have the same tasks on your list and your projects have been halted. Of course, the first timeskip unlocks those adult-only abilities. It just doesn’t have the emotional heft I would expect; it functions more as a checkpoint between the prologue and the rest of the game. The prologue also implies secrets from your character’s past as a child born in The Shoe (as in, ‘there was an old woman…’). But in the adult chapters this narrative thread frays.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
In Kynseed’s gameplay, you reap what you sow. To progress, you need ‘Reputation’, which you earn through pretty much anything: fulfilling quests for villagers, running a business, fighting monsters. If you want to run a business, you earn money towards purchasing a shop. If you want to fight the scariest enemies, you collect ore to smith better weapons. The path to every goal is paved with breadcrumb-sized tasks that are very moreish.
That said, occasionally nibbling away at the breadcrumbs can feel grindy. You see this pattern throughout Kynseed; its vast quantity can come at the expense of its quality. The menus have sub-categories and sub-sub-categories, and items aren’t always where you think they’d be. There are three fast travel methods. The 100-plus characters are diverse in appearance and I can tell a lot of work has gone into their dialogue (fairytale references, Nirvana lyrics, and a whiff of fart jokes abound), but their personalities still come off flat.
Crafting when cooking, potion-brewing or smithing makes up a decent slice of the game, though it’s another area that feels overstuffed, with a steep learning curve. At each relevant station you’ll find one of many minigames. When cooking you need to chop an ingredient into small pieces, but pressing ‘A’ sometimes doesn’t even cut it.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)
To make tools like swords or sickles, you’ll play through different minigames based on hitting a target at the right time. And when you brew potions, the ingredients bear symbols that aren’t necessary yet distract from what you’re supposed to be doing. In each, you get instructions to help you, although they’re chunks of text hidden away, which can hamper your crafting flow.
Kynseed’s intricate pixel art reflects Stardew Valley or Moonlighter, but it finds its own Goldilocks balance between sweet fairytale and grim undertones. Quill’s neighbourhoods are dotted with rustic cottages, lush greenery and the occasional creepy statue. The soundtrack is quaint, with plucky violins and trilling flutes befitting the woodland backdrop. Tempos speed up when you should – like when you’re working in the shop or fighting monsters.
The game has a solid sprinkling of settings for accessibility and quality of life. Among them, you can slow down monsters, remap controls, reduce UI animation and make text more legible. On Switch, it runs mostly well. There are some stutters when the game is busy with rain, high people traffic, fauna.
Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)
I also experienced a few little bugs: cutscenes played twice; I had to ‘discover’ a region twice; doubles of a character appeared. On our first date, Hazel acted like we’d never agreed to go out in the first place (not a greeeeat way to find true love, though we ended up married anyway). And, as is common in many Switch games, handheld mode makes things like items and text Thumbelina-sized. When I flicked over to Switch 2 I found a couple of improvements — apple-crisp colours and bigger text in handheld thanks to the bigger screen — until the game crashed, which never happened on Switch 1.
Conclusion
Kynseed is bountiful with tasks to do, NPCs to please, and lands to discover. Oftentimes that quantity seems to take priority over quality, though that doesn’t always detract from the pops of dopamine you get when you complete a microtask.
Stick with the lengthy Once Upon A Time and you’ll be rewarded with open-ended options for play – running a business, foraging for plants and exploring the lands with your pet, to name a few. One can reach Happily Ever After in around 80 hours, but you’re better off whiling away that time meandering along the many pebbled roads of Quill, onto whatever task it is you choose.