Fabledom

Fabledom on the surface is a cute city builder, but beneath that it really needs some polish. My experience with this game didn't last very long, because I quickly found myself frustrated at the speed of which the people would transfer goods. Ultimately this lead to missing out on buildings being built, and expanding my kingdom. If the speed had not been an issue, then I probably would of enjoyed it more and continued to play, but as it stands, Fabledom needs a few updates on its mechanics before I can even consider buying it again. It's a shame because I really wanted to like this game, but in this current state, I just can't recommend it.

Competent, Cozy but not Compelling [h1]Fabledom: Competent, Cozy but Uncompelling[/h1] Fabledom is a competent medieval city builder that, if it had come out a decade ago, might be seen as a classic. Today, it comes across as a bit dull, outdated and perfunctory. It's not a bad game by any means, it just doesn't hold up when compared to similar games released in the last couple of years. Because it doesn't do anything particularly wrong and cozy indie games by small studios get a free pass on Steam, this game will have a higher review score than it probably deserves. But for many players this will be a pretty forgettable experience that they'll spend a few hours with and move on to something that's simply deeper and better. Fabledom follows the typical grid pattern, building-placement formula that Banished nailed down back in the mid-2010s. You plop down houses, work buildings, a few decorations and off you go. Many buildings have a positive or negative effect radius, so you're constantly balancing proximity for efficiency with desirability. You've seen this formula before. The twist is that you're in a bit of a fantasy universe, taken out of the tales of Mother Goose and other novels, so the buildings are a bit more whimsical. So you might get the odd beanstalk or witches' house and you have a hero with your army that you can use on missions and a bit of combat. But the core of the game is the building placement and there's nothing new to be found here. Put in the order for the buildings to be built, watch them get built (slowly, more on that later), place a couple of workers and do it all over again. You'll balance the normal farms, wheat-to-bread production chain, wood, coal, stone, iron, planks....is any of this sounding familiar? If you've played a medieval city builder in the last 15 years, it is. The supply chains are very basic in Fabledom. Perhaps one of the biggest differences is that your Fablings don't have babies. They just move in if there's space to do so. They can die if you screw up like running out of food or if there's a sickness but there's no birth cycle, education or anything like that. There's also no tech tree either. You unlock new buildings strictly by population numbers. So there's really very little incentive to do anything but put down as many food production centers and houses as your coal/wood supplies can support, especially at the start of the game. There are other leaders around the world and you can do some basic missions and diplomacy with them, but this area of the game isn't particular compelling either. Once you build a messenger's guild you can send them out on some basic missions but I didn't find this particularly engaging. It's a decent way to get more resources or perhaps help/hurt a nearby leader but that's about it. Likewise, there's a bit of a romance aspect where you can court a nearby leader. But again the systems here weren't engaging to me and it takes a lot to progress the relationship, so I never did get to the point I got married. Then again, neither did the vast majority of Fabledom Steam players. Reading the above, you'd rightfully get the impression that I'm not particularly enthused about Fabledom and you'd be right, despite my thumb's up rating. So let's talk about why that is. The main reason is that Fabledom does nothing new. This gameplay formula was created, popularized by Banished, perfected by other titles and the genre has largely moved on. The entire gameplay loop is very dated. It's not just me. 65% of the owners of the game got to a population level of 25 people. If we use that as the base for anyone who has spent more than 30 minutes with the game, then fewer than 40% of that same player base got to a town of even 200 people or built a castle. Considering players of building games tend to stick with them, that's indicative of a game that just isn't holding the attention of most people who tried to play it. The graphics are about as dated as the game play. I want to be clear that they're not ugly to be sure. They're bright, colorful with a bit of a cartoony art style but they're a bit fuzzy, even on the best graphics quality. Turning off the film grain helps a bit in this regard. But ultimately the game looks charming but a bit old. The graphics would have been good a decade ago and acceptable 5 years ago. Now they look worse than modern mobile titles. This isn't a game where I sit back and marvel at my creation like I would in Anno or Farthest Frontier because the visuals just don't do it for me. I understand that this is a 2-person studio but this game looks a bit out of date already. I might be wrong on this but I don't think this will be a game that visually ages well. The music isn't really any better. It's entirely forgettable and something most of us are likely to turn down or off entirely. The tutorial is mainly a set of goals to figure out the basics. But those goals just kind of....end, leaving the player wondering what to do. And there are many unexplained concepts and systems, which cause confusion and anger on the forums. It doesn't help that there are some odd bugs in the game as well. At one point I wasn't getting any prompts to get new people in my town even though I had space. It turned out my desirability dropped to zero, which is a practical impossibility. Now as a new player it took me 30 minutes to figure that out because desirability isn't explained. And reloading the save did nothing, so I figured my entire game was hosed. Ending the game entirely and re-launching it fixed this bug but it left a bad impression because I could have easily given up and uninstalled the game. It happened one other time as well, with a save, quit and reload the fix again. So I'm not sure what is going on there. But my main issue with this game is the pacing. It's gawd-awful slow and even at the highest game speed it takes my Fablings a long time to do most anything. It'll take many minutes for them to make 20 planks and get those to a job site to build a single building. If it wasn't for pop up messages I have to respond to, I'd probably just let it run overnight to collect as many materials as possible to make progress faster when I'm actually playing it. But because the pop ups stop the clock, I can't do that. As such, I actually fell asleep playing this. It's that slow. This game could probably use the benefit of modding given the small development team but the devs didn't build in any mod support or Steam Workshop support and that's a shame. Finally, there are some end-game type problems with Fablings not relocating to their work place, making the game very tedious and requiring a lot of micro-management to change their workplaces since you can't change their home. I've already seen evidence of the impact of this in my small city and it does impact my desire to grow a larger city. That level of micromanagement isn't what I'm looking for from a cozy, casual city builder. So what the game ends up being is a competent, semi-cute city builder that's entirely redundant and fairly forgettable. If you're into city builders and you've played a bunch of them already, then maybe give this a try but get it on a steep discount. [u]Conclusion[/u] Recommended but only to a very limited audience and only get on sale