Fe, Fi, Fo, Fom, I smell a review for Fabledom
As a fan of city builders, I was especially excited to check out the 1.0 release of Grenaa Games’ title Fabledom. As the name suggests this is a world where Ogres will come and set up shop in your town, magic and skeletons are all real and well, basically it’s a fairy tale world where the player can set up a town and attempt to lead it successfully by navigating the politics of this middle age inspired fantasy world.
Fabledom has a lot of things going for it, clearly the time it spent in early access has done it some good. When starting off players can choose to have a more stress-free game by playing in creative; where everything is unlocked from the outset for the player or go for the more standard campaign mode. In this mode players will choose a starting country and if they will be a Prince or Princess, and if they are looking for one or the other. The endgame goal in Fabledom is to turn your small hamlet into a strong fairy tale kingdom, and of course that requires a married ruling pair, I guess.
MSRP: $20.99
Platforms: PC
Price I’d Pay: $20.99
Much of the early game is focused on building up the population of the small hamlet. This is rewarded with new gathering and crafting hubs for the city, players should pay attention to stockpile coal and food for the winters. While its nothing like the game ‘Frostpunk’, the winters here can cause some trouble for the unprepared. Fabledom also has some simplified combat, players can recruit heroes to their cities which can interact with various points on the map. Different encounters can randomly occur like a goblin scaring the Fablings (that’s what the townsfolk are called) and your forces will intervene. As I said its pretty simple and only a matter of one side whacking the other until the HP is empty, but it gets the job done.
Speaking of the encounters, there are some pretty cool ones that are pulled straight from the fairy tales from our youth. One of my favorites was Jack and the Beanstalk, and sure enough Fabledom has a beanstalk complete with Giants. There are witches that will curse the townsfolks and even more, all of these acts like the random events that would happen in the old SimCity games like alien attacks and such. I loved handling all of these fantasy emergencies every time they popped up. Really the only real issue I have with Fabledom is the AI, which after spending so much time in early access, surprised me.
In the game players will have challenges that will have time limits on them, this can be crafting weapons or something of that kind. For some reason, the craftsmen would not work, despite having all the materials needed. There was no way to kick start them, or force them into working and I would end up losing out on the currency that is needed to influence certain heroic events. I am happy to say that outside of the AI just being lazy, everything else in Fabledom works really well.
I came away impressed with Fabledom, it offers something unique and new to the city builder genre. Some of the humor was a little dry for my taste, but its impossible to deny this games cutesy charm. It’s a very likeable and chill city builder and aside from the AI still needing some work; despite being in EA for a year, Fabledom is a relaxing and wholly enjoyable game.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.