Farlands is a very ambitious Farming Sim set in Space! – An Interview with Jandusoft’s Eric Rodríguez at Gamescom 2024

During this year’s Gamescom, I had the chance to talk to many different developers and publishers, and amongst them was the designer and producer of Farlands, Eric Rodríguez, who showed me what his game is about, talked about the difficulties of working on such a title, and also dove deep into his inspirations for it and in what ways Farlands really stands out from other games like it.

Farlands is a very ambitious farming sim set in space where you get to explore multiple planets, each with its own traits and quirks as well as differences in the flora and fauna. It was recently released in Early Access, so make sure to check it out if you haven’t yet!

Hello, my name is Eric Rodriguez and I’m the designer and producer of Farlands.

So what is the game about?

Picture a farming sim like maybe Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon or any other in the genre but move it to space. You have a whole new set-up, a whole new set of environments you can explore and also we’ve added another layer of space exploration that you can do with your ship.

So you start your own planet with your farm with the basic tools as any other farming simulator. But at any point, you can grab your spaceship and start exploring. So that’s a small twist that we are trying to bring to the formula.

So, in Farlands, you basically build up your farm, explore the world, do a little bit of terraforming, but you also try to show there’s biodiversity in the university, correct?

Absolutely. So the story of Farlands is that the system is at the at the limit of being destroyed and you want to stop that because you just bought your your own planet. So you’re you’re the firstst that doesn’t want this to to end.

Hence you’ll make a deal with an alien species trying to preserve this kind of endangered system, and you’ll collect hundreds of resources of every planet to donate them to a museum.

There are more than 400 resources you will be finding on eight different planets each with lots of environments. The space setup gives us lots of flexibility to showcase different modes, and different ambiences, so the planets all feel unique and special.

An early access release for a farming game, especially one that’s this horizontal with these many mechanics, is a great thing!

What was your biggest inspiration for the game?

As you can tell, Stardew Valley is one of the main inspirations, but I’ve been playing farming games and cosy games my whole life, so you will find some things from Harvest Moon, especially Harvest Moon DS, and Animal Crossing, like the museum and the way you interact with the characters and the relationship systems.

What is your favourite farming or life sim?

That will be Animal Crossing. Animal Crossing Wild Worlds for the DS.

Oh, that’s a great one! A classic!

Yeah, it is.

The game just released in Early Access. What is currently already in the game and what is planned for the future?

OK, so right now we are only one month in since the early years of release, so the game is in a more sandbox state. The story has a few snippets, but it’s not yet fully in place. And we have a full roadmap on the Steam page with everything we will be adding.

But for example, the full relationship system is not yet in the game. It is planned. We planned already out what the full game will have. We just need to start adding every block of content to the game.

Right now you can explore five planets, you can upgrade your ship, you can start donating everything you find to the museum, but you will find limitations in the fact that you cannot find every resource because there are whole plans that are still locked and that you cannot explore at the moment just yet.

What did you choose to go for early access in particular?

We ran out of money. That’s the short answer.

The long one is that this kind of game needs to have the community involved. We need to see what they like, and what they don’t like. Because in terms of content, we know what we want to have in the game, but there are a lot of things we can tweak to make it the best possible version of itself.

An early access release for a farming game, especially one that’s this horizontal with these many mechanics, is a great thing!

And how frequently do you plan on releasing updates?

Approximately one update a month, but it will depend on how big the update is, obviously.

We have our internal roadmap and everything is prepared so we can more or less manage that. But we know a couple of the updates will take maybe 1 1/2 months or two months to be ready.

Every planet has a different day-night cycle!

What inspired you to make a farming sim that is set in space and in a more “normal” world like other titles? A science fiction world where you travel the Galaxy and stuff like that.

So as I told you before, I love farming games and I also love space exploration.

When my partner and I were talking about what to do, we knew we wanted to develop a farming sim, but we had doubts about how to innovate or create something new in the formula. So, I said “Maybe we could move it, I don’t know, to space” and just that idea sparked a lot of concepts about what we can try to do […].

We started iterating and trying things and the space theme gave us lots of space to add new layers […] to the farming formula.

So because of the upgrade system for your ship and the different planets, the different biomes, the aliens and the animals, the game really stands out from other games in the genre. What are some aspects that fans of the genre will feel right at home with? What are some differences?

From titles like Stardew Valley, there are lots of small things [that are similar]. Fishing is a bit different, [though not fully implemented]. There are a lot of small things that work differently, so [fans of the genre] will find the game familiar, but the biggest difference is the ship.

So in farming games, you have your basic set of tools. Here you have them as well, but [Farlands also features] (…) the spaceship as an extension of your tools. You use it to travel between planets and to be able to reach the resources and the things you want. You can upgrade it as well and in the end, this change in how the world is structured gives another layer of resource management.

Now, [for instance], you have to [consider] the resources you spend to refill your ship’s fuel, the time it takes you to reach a planet, and the fact that every planet has a different day-night cycle.

So, for you, maybe it’s 12:00 in the evening on your current planet, but [on the other one] it’s Monday night and you’re about to faint.

The way the ship changes the game has a ripple effect on every system and as a result, the final game is really different from any other farming experience you may have had.

That’s very interesting! So the time is different on each planet? Do the planets also have different seasons?

There are no seasons in the game on other planets. Currently, [for those?] there’s only one season. That’s a scope limitation, but there are different day-night cycles already.

For example, there is a moon that has a very similar schedule to your home planet. But for example, if you were to go to the next planet to the right, that’s a planet where every day lasts for a week. You can go and find resources only available in the daylight – or you can go there during the night and you’ll find mobs and other things not available during the day.

So there’s an incentive to explore at different times and days of your planet to see what’s different on every planet.

That indeed sounds really interesting and unique, and I can see what you meant when you were talking about the scope limitations. But it’s also kind of realistic? Like, other planets in our system don’t have “seasons” in the same way that we do, and time is experienced differently over there, too.

Exactly.

In a game like Farlands, the hardest part is that everything collides with everything.

So it would make sense for one or two planets to maybe have seasonal mechanics although that’s not within the scope at the moment, theoretically. Are there any plans to introduce something like Seasons to some planets?

Not at the moment, no.

We are a small indie team. Our resources are limited. So we’ve designed everything we want to add to the game and it’s not planned, but it’s something I always have in the backside [of my mind]. We can think about it.

But we’ve changed the way the seasons work on your farm because for us it doesn’t make much sense. It’s nonsense when you have a whole different setup like this. But then you have winter, summer and autumn. So on your farm, you have three “seasons” instead of four. You have a cool one, an intermediate one and a hot one. And the way they change is different to any other farming game. So there’s like an extra layer of learning to the basics because you don’t have anything for granted here. Everything is new and different.

What’s the hardest part of working on this project?

In a game like Farlands, the hardest part is that everything collides with everything. So [when developers work] on the mines, for example, [they] may break the resource gathering system. [When they are] working on your character’s abilities, it may change the way another planet interacts altogether.

It’s different for more linear experiences. Here we are developing in horizontal and you can explore every system that is in place and everything we add to that system will break a few things along the way.

Keeping track of all the bugs is hard because they can appear in very remote and unrelated parts of the game [due to] the way the game is programmed.

Will the game also feature a skill tree or something like that? Or perhaps automation?

Automation? Yeah, absolutely.

A few machines that you can process your resources with, for example, will be in the game.

There is no skill tree, but you can upgrade your character with a kind of hidden achievement system as you play, like in Harvest Moon DS. In Harvest Moon DS, there are these little fellows that you can collect doing things like breaking rocks.

We have a similar system here in Farlands and when you collect a few you can go to this museum and they will upgrade the quantity of stamina you have so you can keep doing the things that you’re doing in a better way.

Is there something else that you’d like to tell my readers?

Well, check out Farmlands in Steam. I think that’s the most important part and I hope you can give it a try and enjoy it. The early access is already available. We launched it last month and it’s it’s going great. (…) We have more than 1000 positive reviews. So we are very happy with the state of the project and we just want more people to know about it and more people to enjoy it.

Thank you very much!

Farlands is out in Early Access, so make sure to check out its Steam Page and the team’s socials if you haven’t yet.

I had an incredibly great time talking to the developers. I also got this incredibly adorable little model of the spaceship while I was there which is really hecking cute! The team is incredibly passionate and ambitious, especially given their relatively small size, so I’m looking forward to following the journey of Farlands as it gets more and more updates!

This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.

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