Fe (video game)

Fe (pronounced ) is an action-adventure video game developed by Zoink and published by Electronic Arts under its EA Originals program. It was released on February 16, 2018 for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. In it, the player controls Fe, a fox-like creature in a forest setting, attempting to defend it from hostile entities called the Silent Ones, gaining help from other forest creatures by guiding them to complete tasks and learning new abilities from those it helps.

Fe is the first game in the "EA Originals" series, which is EA's program created to promote indie developers.

Gameplay
Fe is an action-adventure game in which the player controls Fe, a fox-like creature within a forest that is highly responsive to the songs of the creatures and plants within it. The forest creatures are being attacked by entities called the Silent Ones for unknown reasons that threaten the forest's wildlife. Fe is able to sing to other creatures and objects to gain their help. These creatures can teach Fe a new song which gives the fox additional abilities through the forest, such as activating a flower that acts as a jump-pad to launch Fe to higher locations and explore more of the world.

The game has been noted to have minimal instructions, requiring the player to experiment and to perceive the forest's ecosystem to determine how to progress, instead of a set of objectives. One example requires the player to observe that one species of bird likes a certain type of flower, suggesting that they may be able to use the bird's song to interact in a different manner than if they used the flower's song. Fe has been favorably compared to Journey and Shadow of the Colossus for this "hands-off" approach to gameplay.

Development
Fe was developed by the Swedish-based studio, Zoink. The studio's chief executive officer, Klaus Lyngeled, called the title "a personal narrative about our relationship with nature" and to emphasize that "everything in this world is connected". Most of the team grew up near forests and frequently played within them, getting close to the wildlife there, while overcoming fears of the deeper forests being scary places. Creative director Hugo Bille said they wanted to stay true to the recollection of their Nordic forests, populated by creatures with no spoken language. Bille said games like Journey and Shadow of the Colossus were inspiration, and that they always wanted to capture the exploration mechanics of games in the Metroid and Zelda series.

Fe was first announced during the EA Play event occurring alongside the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016 in June of that year. It was presented as the first of "EA Originals", a new segment of EA's publishing aimed to help indie developers with financing and publishing of their titles to reach a wider audience without EA being as involved in the game's development, thus allowing the studio to take more of a share of sales revenues. The game was later featured in a playable demo form at the 2017 Gamescom exposition in August 2017, along with the target release of 16 February 2018 for Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Reception
Fe received "mixed or average" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic.