Radical Forge has officially unveiled Southfield - a colorful and chaotic farming sim which looks a little bit like what’d happen if Stardew Valley was combined with Gang Beasts or Human Fall Flat.
Playing as a huggable, blobby creature known as a Bud, players will be able to customize their own farm with unique builds and machinery setups, grow weird and wonderful crops, and complete quests for fellow Southfield residents. Perhaps best of all, you’ll be able to do so solo or alongside up to three friends in co-op play. All of this is brought to life with wild physics which appear to make the whole experience delightfully silly.
“Southfield is kind of built in a way where you and your mates play together, and then chaos will ensue,” game director and CEO of Radical Forge, Bruce Slater, tells TechRadar Gaming in an interview. He highlights the fact that unlike in other co-op farming games where some players might be upset or frustrated if things start to go wrong, in Southfield, it’s much more funny when things do.
Speaking of the game’s inspirations, Slater describes Southfield as “a cross-combination of quite a few different games.” He explains: “It carries a lot of things from physics games like Gang Beasts and Human Fall Flat over into a game like Minecraft with a little bit of the building stuff from Fortnite, which is really cool. I'm really proud of the extensions that we've done to some of those systems, like the building system that we have is a really nice extension to the game as a whole.”
The Gang Beasts inspiration can definitely be seen in the movement of the characters in Southfield’s reveal trailer. This isn’t surprising given that Radical Forge previously co-developed the beat-em-up party game.
“I spent three years of my life doing level art and some physics stuff with the Boneloaf guys,” Slater says, referring to his time working on Gang Beasts. “Ever since then, I kind of always wanted to make something like this. So when we got the opportunity to make something like this, we kind of went all out in the studio. [...] Like, it's that but with less beating each other up and more like cooperative farming and adventure.”
Southfield is “coming soon” to Steam, and prospective players can wishlist it now.
Looking for more games to play? Be sure to check out our lists of the best PC games and best indie games for some great titles to dive into right now.
