Lightyear Frontier Sets Itself Apart From The Sea Of Farming Sims

Summary

• Lightyear Frontier blends farming and adventure with a customizable mech, adding a unique twist to the genre.
• The game focuses on maintaining a friendly relationship with nature, removing combat elements to prioritize harmony.
• Future updates will introduce animal raising, promoting a cozy farm vibe without disrupting the planet's ecosystem.

Farming simulators have taken off in recent years. From comfy cozy games where you inherit a deceased relative’s land in a mystical town, to more realistic simulations that mimic actual farm work, there’s a vast spectrum of games to enjoy and plenty of new ones on the horizon. Lightyear Frontier is one such game, although it comes with a few unexpected twists.

I recently sat down with Frame Break CEO Joakim Kopriva Hedström, to discuss what Lightyear Frontier does differently from the traditional farming sim and how it blends the realities of working the land with adventurous elements that other games in the genre implement. It’s serious, silly, and does its own thing all at the same time. “We knew early on we wanted to make something in the farming space.” Hedström starts.

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“What would a mech farming game look like?” Hedström and his team asked. “That’s when the ideas started coming. How does a mech plant seeds? It shoots them into the ground. How does it water them? It has a water cannon. We immediately had a ton of ideas for what it could be.” Lightyear Frontier continues to thrive in an oversaturated market filled with half-baked attempts at capturing what makes this genre so special. Despite being out for a few months already, there’s a long road ahead filled with updates and new features to experiment with.

It’s not just the planting and harvesting of crops, but the overall environment and vibe that makes a farming sim truly memorable. Games like Farming Simulator focus on a more realistic approach to replicating the experience of manual labor with machines while others, like Stardew Valley, prefer a simpler approach with more attention to farming aesthetics and dating your homestead sweetheart. However, elements like combat are also added to spice things up.

How Did Lightyear Frontier Come To Be?

“One of the early things we wanted to do was find a sweet spot between realism and abstractism,” Hedström tells me. While combat elements were introduced in early versions of the game, it quickly became apparent that battles became too much of a focus. Rather than enjoy exploring this previously untouched planet, the attention shifted to preparing to fight for your farm each and every night.

This spurred the team to make several changes. In order to focus on the game’s strengths, combat was removed completely. “It’s not about combat, it’s about a friendly relationship with nature,” Hedström said when asked about the direction of the game. From farming to living in harmony with the flora and fauna that surround you, everything requires a conscious effort.

“Things don’t grow back. You’re going to have to do that yourself. So you still need to have in the back of your mind, ‘Every tree I cut down is one tree less. I should probably plant the sprouts I find.’ Even the rocks go away. You need to plant rocks. It’s part of the fun of farming on an alien planet. Rocks grow on trees, actually. We hope to do more with that in future updates. There was a user that went and cut down every tree and made the planet a wasteland. I admire the dedication but we wanted the player to be aware of their environmental impact.”

Many games have resources like rocks and trees respawn a few days after being harvested, if not readily available the next day. It’s a little too generous, but Lightyear Frontier allows you to revitalize the planet how you see fit. There are also environmental factors to worry about, like storms destroying your crops or the seasons changing. Additionally, since the game takes place on a distant planet, the development team had more freedom to explore what it means to thrive as a farmer.

Where Did The Idea Of The Mech Come From?

One of the most unique and defining elements of Lightyear Frontier is the fully customizable mech used to perform tasks on your new farm.

“Someone said mechs as a joke,” Hedström laughed, “until we took it seriously.”

There’s an element of plausibility to each of the tools wielded by your mech. You have a water spout that sprays an arch to sustain your crops, a massive drill that breaks all sorts of materials, and boosters that launch you into the atmosphere for impromptu rock climbing. The mech also seamlessly blends the larger than life element of the planet. Animals and wildlife look miniscule from inside the mech, but once you hop out to explore and enter caves, you’ll realize that those little Ratscallions are actually much bigger than your farmer. The mech serves as a reminder that you are just one cog in a much larger machine.

When asked about the names for the wildlife, Hedström laughed. “There are a lot of puns,” and the team works diligently to translate the puns to maintain the humor. “There’s a lot of pun-based design. There’s usually a pun in Swedish that’s like a combination of two animals, then that gets made but the pun doesn’t work anymore because we need to translate it to English. We have this resulting creature we’re all in love with and we have to come up with a real name for it.” This adds to the lighthearted nature of the game while giving the planet more life as you uncover its secrets. A dose of the familiar goes a long way when you’re exploring uncharted territory.

What’s Next For Lightyear Frontier?

As for the future of Lightyear Frontier, Hedström discussed the idea of raising animals as your own on the planet. “Obviously, being in Early Access, we couldn’t have that in the release version, but we’re working hard on it. It’s almost done.” Unlike other farming games where you have to buy or capture critters to raise, the goal is to “find these abandoned eggs and take them home and you raise them.”

“In the vein of how we want the game to feel, how do you keep animals on your farm in keeping with the cozy feeling?” While it’s not a new idea for the genre, it’s a welcome addition that supports the overarching theme of living in harmony without disrupting the planet. “Similarly, Stardew doesn’t let you butcher animals.”

I inquired further as to why this was the case instead of purchasing or catching wildlife to domesticate on the farm. Hedström replied, “In many ways, our game is the opposite of Palworld. It’s not like you go and capture animals. You befriend them,” Hedström said.

Befriending animals grants you bonuses in each biome, allowing you to harvest more resources. This latest update is almost ready to be shared, but beyond that, the team prefers to keep things under wraps until closer to completion. One coming idea that we can share is the inclusion of other people coming to the planet beyond everyone’s favorite traveling merchant.

“I adore our community. They’re just great,” Hedström smiled when asked about the driving force behind the game. All the support and love for farming in space with a cottage core aesthetic has kept Lightyear Frontier afloat when the market is filled with hundreds of similar games, and helps it to remain uniquely distinct.

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