Fabledom on PC
The majority of video games tend to favour shock and awe, speed and tension, but there is always room for a more chill time, and when it comes to city builders that truly embody the feeling, Grenaa Games and Dear Villagers‘ Fabledom is an excellent representative. It’s wholesome and endearing to a fault, and instead of war, you’ll be busy trying to court the love of your life instead.
Having been in Steam Early Access for a while, the proper launch of the game opens the gates of fairytale stories and happy endings to the masses, and there’s definitely plenty for fans of the genre to chew on, starting with the main campaign.
As a prince or princess, it is up to you to pick a starting point in the world as well as the type of partner to court in order to hopefully join fledgling kingdoms together. With only a few peasants at your disposal and a cart full of resources, this begins the tale of your rise or fall as the game eases into the proceedings. What follows should be familiar to anyone who has enjoyed city builders before—building more homesteads, fulfilling the needs of your people, improving things, and expanding the kingdom.
Fabledom does do things a little differently for certain aspects, such as varying sizes of plots for homesteads, allowing for additional attachments that provide active and passive bonuses for your Fablings at the cost of space. Buildings like farms will also need to have designated plots for the type of crops you want to grow, and so on. Furthermore, jobs need bodies to fill, and it will be up to the prince or princess to decide which are more pressing, as the more workers you have for a particular function, the more efficient things would be.
Consider the varying types of finite resources that can be harvested from the world and what you’ll need to build increasingly complicated buildings, and the game reveals its strategic layer. Expand too fast, and you might find yourself in a resource crunch. Do it haphazardly and unhappy workers will be less than impressed, and going too slow means you will be missing out on the deeper fun that lies ahead.
Progression also takes a different tact in the fairytale world, with technology being replaced by a better class of people that can reside in your home. Peasants are supplanted by Commoners, who in turn bow down to the Nobility who may one day take up permanent residence, so it is recommended that you keep everyone happy so that various functions of the city continue to roll along without a fuss.
The jeopardy, beyond dwindling resources and the harsh chill of winter, comes in the form of encounters of the whimsical kind. Think tower beanstalks with requisite giants, roaming packs of gnomes, or a pesky witch that has a penchant for curses. Fabledom allows players to summon different heroes to aid in such situations, but don’t be expecting intricate encounters; it is just about outlasting your opponents or resurrecting a hero to try again.
That is not to say taking up arms is your only option, as the game can offer up surprising options that can lead to distinct outcomes. Do you want to fight the cyclops or welcome him into the fold with mercy? Does the abandoned graveyard warrant disturbing, or should you leave it alone? The choices are yours, and usually, there are generally good rewards at the end of the path.
At some point, the need for expansion must be fulfilled, and while you can buy up more plots of land to continue the growth of your domain, it is also vital to make friends and potentially turn them into lovers to help the economy. Trading will give you access to resources that may be hard to obtain, and the more adept you are at diplomacy, the better the odds of securing a good deal. Falling in love is quite literally the next step in establishing your legacy, and Fabledom provides enough flexibility to cater to all kinds of good endings.
Going on dates and improving your relationships will take time and resources, but the upside is always enticing. What those requirements are depends on your target of fancy, as the more run-of-the-mill princess is going to ask for things that are drastically different from, say, a dark knight of the realm. On the flip side, you can start a war, but that is, by all accounts, against the spirit of the experience, something that never came across our minds.
Perhaps the biggest enemy in Fabledom is time. Although all of the systems in the game work really well most of the time, it can take a while for things to get going and stay at a pace that can keep the player’s attention for long. While it’s understandable that a sprawling city may take more time to get things done, it can feel gruellingly long to add more buildings and ensure your people are doing the right things at the right time.
The AI can also cause some frustration at times, with prioritised building queues ignored in lieu of less important tasks, or not using the most effective paths to get to where they need to be. This is more of an early-game problem where growth is the key objective, but even in a big city, there may be chokes that are causing your progression to slow down without you even realising it.
Without a doubt, when it works, Fabledom is a charming city builder that has plenty to offer. The game’s systems are clear and easy to understand, the lack of tension is welcome, and it all looks lovely from up top and even when you go down to street level to mingle with your people. The way alliances work is also a delight, and whether you are chasing love or a political partnership, it all seems to lead to a fairytale ending. Just make sure you have plenty of time to govern; after all, this is your kingdom.
Fabledom is now available on Steam.
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Summary
Without a doubt, when it works, Fabledom is a charming city builder that has plenty to offer in the genre.
