Each cozy gamer’s bought one: that one little indie recreation that you simply fall in love with at first sight and instantly resolve to not shut up about since you imagine not practically sufficient folks have found it but. I discovered my new darling on this week’s Steam Subsequent Fest: an lovable sandbox crafting recreation filled with hand-sculpted creatures referred to as OddFauna: Secret of the Terrabeast.
In OddFauna, I’m just a little critter referred to as an Astor who lives on high of an enormous goofy whale with legs factor referred to as a Terrabeast. I chop bushes to craft constructing items so I can snap collectively a tiny little cottage on my Terrabeast’s again, plant a tiny vegetable backyard on his rump, and befriend little Fauna critters for my neighborhood so I can increase my foolish large beastie man.
The demo for OddFauna that you may play proper now throughout Subsequent Fest is fairly quick. It is 5 in-game days that took me about 90 minutes to finish. I used to be locked to staying in a single one of many biomes and had only a little bit of time to strive snapping collectively my first compulsory crafting recreation wooden field home.
I did get to plant just a little crop of parsnip-looking “sweetroot” and befriend three wild Fauna by providing them flowers and meals I had foraged. Some Fauna have skills like digging, others I can trip as a mount. The remainder of the time I spent harvesting leaves and wooden to craft new instruments and experimenting with utilizing my shovel to terraform the bottom.
I am all the time a sucker for a crafting recreation with a constructing system however what drew me to OddFauna initially had been its hand-crafted characters. All the creatures, constructing items, instruments, and crops are sculpted with clay after which painted by one half (Emma SanCartier) of its husband and spouse improvement workforce after which 3D-scanned to be animated by the opposite (Cliff Mitchell).
Each little man within the recreation is hand-sculpted✨
#indiegame #oddfaunagame #cutecreature #polymerclay— @oddfauna.bsky.social (@oddfauna.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-02-25T18:02:11.293Z
I’ve an actual fondness for video games that hand-create property in conventional artwork mediums earlier than digitizing them and OddFauna nails that trick of importing sculpted characters and having them nonetheless really feel nice to regulate inside a recreation.
OddFauna’s demo is fairly quick and it does lack a bit in the best way of really explaining a few of its programs like constructing, crafting, and planting. It may do a bit extra to provide me route on what my overarching progress by the sport shall be—presumably upgrading my Terrabeast. As soon as I figured these bits out although, the basics of exploring the world and cultivating my beast felt nice.
What I am most all for seeing from OddFauna subsequent are a number of the neat reactive environmental options talked about in its retailer web page and authentic Kickstarter. “Your selections have an effect on the opposite OddFauna,” the builders say. “Be considerate of the various flora you plant in your TerraBeast, totally different environments will entice totally different beasts.” I am fairly curious to see simply how impactful my selections to terraform new water options or plant new groves of bushes are on the Fauna round me.
OddFauna is aiming for a spring 2026 early entry launch so it isn’t too far off now. You possibly can strive the OddFauna demo in Steam Subsequent Fest operating till March 2.
What I actually need to know although: why is that this man sporting garments made out of my good friend?
