Leaving Fallen London: How Failbetter Games spent several years growing hope and ‘discovering the art of the possible’ in their new eldritch farming sim

In the summer of 2021, Failbetter Games revealed Mandrake to me. The studio then revealed its next outing to the world at the PC Gaming Show 2025, a rural life sim where growing plants is a kind of forbidden magic.

It's post-apocalyptic, but instead of irradiated grey rocks, there's folkloric smallholding, and I learned about it over a video call, sitting on a kitchen chair. We weren't that long out of the UK's third and final COVID lockdown, and I wasn't prepared for mandatory working from home (post-apocalyptic...