Gone are the days of cows and chickens in farming sims, I'm replacing my farm animals with yokai in Tales of Seikyu

Fantasy farming simulator Tales of Seikyu strays from the traditional formula of raising cows, chickens, and sheep, and instead puts you into a world of yokai legends. Of course, you'll still have the perks of cultivating crops and collecting resources from livestock, but there's a lot more than meets the eye once you start to explore. From humanoid otters to sentient slimes that help around the farm, there are many quirks to get stuck into and creatures to befriend in what is scheduled to be a refreshing addition to the farming simulator space. 

Our new endeavor into the farming realm takes place in the town of Seikyu. At a surface level, the location seems pretty normal. It's got all the enchantment of a stunning fantasy village brimming with natural beauty and plenty of nooks and crannies to explore. But, once you start looking a little closer, especially in the trailer for the game, you'll start to notice more oddities. Seikyu is home to the weird and wonderful, and it's our job to explore and befriend whatever we can. 

The more critters you encounter, the more skills and abilities you unlock along the way. So not only will you be responsible for restoring and renovating a derelict farmland, you will also be tasked with learning about the abundant world of folklore around you. Tales of Seikyu is home to 30 characters with in-depth storylines that unfold as you develop relationships with them, spilling secrets about the world and assisting you on your adventure. 

To make exploring all the more exciting, you'll also have the ability to shape-shift, which you gain through magical masks rewarded for puzzle-solving. As a crow tengu, you'll be free to soar through the skies and zip around quickly, or scale cliff faces as a nimble dryad. Gone is the need for horses as a faster way to get around the map, and these two skills appear to be just a taste of what we will be able to unlock the further we delve into Seikyu. 

We've only seen a brief example of these skills in action, as shown in the most recent trailer released for Tales of Seikyu. As we get closer to a possible release, we're expecting more details on these skills and possibly a spotlight on what other skills we can unlock. For now, though, these modes of traversal are pretty exciting for those of us who have exhausted ourselves running around on-foot in the vast majority of farming simulators. 

But with all that said, Tales of Seikyu currently only has a release window of 2024, so sadly we still have a little while to go before we can delve into the world of farming with yokai. But, you can wishlist the game on Steam now to keep up to date with any future updates or trailers that expose more of what is to come from the enchanting adventure that awaits.