Fans of Disney Dreamlight Valley, Stardew Valley, and other farming life sims should put down their pickaxes and watering cans for a minute and take a look at the new trailer for Meetlight. The life sim (via GamesRadar) just began a Kickstarter campaign, and along with the expected activities like growing crops, crafting tools, decorating your house, and flirting with the town cutie-pies, it also has aspirations of satisfying fans of fantasy RPGs like Breath of the Wild by providing a big open world full of secrets to explore.
You play as Anna, who "just experienced a terrible tragedy" (cough) and is starting a new life by taking over her grandpa's forge and becoming a blacksmith. There's a lot more to Meetlight than just whanging away on an anvil, however. The trailer shows farming vegetables and milking goats, chopping down trees and mining, taming wild animals and horseback riding, camping and spelunking, and even using a Breath of the Wild-like glider for exploring the open world.
And there's a mystical fantasy realm hidden beneath the cozy natural world. Due to the death of Anna's spouse, you can "unlock the capacity for clairvoyance, which you will gradually develop and perfect." Using this ability will let you see a secret world of magical creatures like tiny pixies, massive dragons, and in one case, a huge troll wearing just plaid underpants. Weird. It looks like you can befriend some of these magical beings, and even put them to work on your farm—the trailer shows a fairy delivering a bucket to a well outside Anna's house.
Something I find personally appealing is the more grounded and realistic resource management on display. Rather than piling up hundreds of pieces of wood in an inventory slot, we see Anna carrying a single log over her shoulder to create a stack of lumber on her porch. In another part of the trailer we see Anna mine a boulder in a cave, carry a hunk of ore to a mine cart, then ride the cart back to her home, unload it, and carry the ore over to her blacksmith crafting station.
I dunno why, but carrying a single unit of something in my arms feels more satisfying than loading up my Infinite Pants of Holding with hundreds of items. Then again, if building my house requires dozens of trips from the woods to the foundation, one log at a time, I may wind up feeling differently.
As I'm writing this, Meetlight is already close to its Kickstarter goal of $23,357 (an oddly specific number) and with a month left in the campaign I'm confident it'll hit that mark and then some. The release date on its Steam page is listed as 2023.
