Fabledom Review - Gamecritics.com

Your Own Story

HIGH The lovely fairy tale-esque aesthetic.

LOW It doesn’t feel as expansive as it should.

WTF: A mean witch keeps turning my citizens into hungry skeletons!

Let’s go ahead and state the obvious up front — yes, Fabledom’s cutesy aesthetic is generally representative of its overall accessibility compared to other titles in the city-building genre. There’s not an overwhelming amount of parameters and building types to keep track of, and they’re easily available. It’s difficult to make citizens upset, and Fabledom allows the player to grow a settlement at their own leisurely pace, letting them relax and take in the vibes.

However, the ‘softness’ and accessibility of Fabledom doesn’t necessarily take away from the strength of its simulation, or its status as a unique entry within the genre. Forging confidently ahead, Fabledom asserts an identity of its own by importing a few mechanical elements from other genres, to fairly strong results.

Fabledom’s initial setup is simple, effective, and delivered in the form of a cute little storybook. The tale takes place in a land of wonder and prosperity, in which kings and queens send their grown-up children out into the world to build their own kingdom from the ground up. And… that’s pretty much it! At this point, the player is released into the world along with some peasants (the most basic type of citizen) and a few supplies.

Like the majority of city-builders, Fabledom is essentially a sandbox — players can place structures, roads, and other materials wherever they wish, slowly growing their population as new citizens join their kingdom at regular intervals, but newcomers to the genre can enable a handy tutorial system that provides a series of objectives. These start out small and ask the player to engage with Fabledom’s entire range of mechanics — it’s an absolutely perfect intro for anyone intimidated by the genre.

When building their kingdom, the player will need to employ citizens to staff all of their buildings while also producing supplies and keeping everyone happy enough to continue increasing the population.

It’s easy to staff buildings and move citizens between them (citizens don’t get unhappy about being moved, so the player can juggle them at will to maximize output) but it’s through careful management that some of Fabledom‘s depth begins to emerge.

At regular intervals, ‘visitors’ come to the player’s kingdom. The number of visitors who are then interested in joining the kingdom depends on the overall happiness rating, and this in turn depends on a number of factors such as the amenities near citizen homes, the current level of hunger, how heavily the populace is taxed, and more. Fabledom doesn’t have the endless nested menus of a Paradox title, but it still creates some nice dilemmas for the player by juxtaposing a few of its key systems in order to try and achieve an optimal state.

Even if a player masters the city-building stuff immediately, Fabledom still contains a few unique wrinkles that they can poke away at.

Early on, the player can spawn a ‘Hero’ who can then move around the map. Between city-management tasks, the player can order the Hero to interact with randomly-spawning events, often leading to combat encounters or management decisions. They can also send them on missions to other kingdoms in order to collect rewards and affect their affinity with that kingdom’s ruler.

Oh, I haven’t even mentioned the other kingdoms yet! The player can interact with the leaders of neighboring kingdoms by doing quests for them, sending gifts and eventually marrying them, if they so desire. Yes, Fabledom has dating sim elements! In aggregate, these gameplay adds make Fabledom feel more engaging on a personal level than some other city-builders do — it feels more active.

That said, these unique elements could use some expansion and elaboration. There aren’t as many randomly generated events in Fabledom as I’d like. Seeing repeated events isn’t game-breaking, but it did begin to make the world feel a less expansive and reactive.

Also, considering the narrative weight given to the dating and marriage elements, I can’t say that my own choice felt particularly notable or weighty — the final cutscene doesn’t even seem to reflect the player’s choice of partner, and — beyond a passive bonus — marriage itself doesn’t seem to have much of an effect after that point.

While some of the reaches Fabledom takes end up a little empty, there’s no denying that it remains a friendly, streamlined, indie take on city-building that not only offers quite a bit of charm, but would also be a great place for a genre newcomer to get their feet wet.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Grenaa Games. It is currently available on PS5, Switch, XBO, PC and XBX/S. Approximately 20 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was not completed (I seemed to reach a cutscene marking the end of the game’s story, but play continues as normal after that point). There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated E and contains Mild Fantasy Violence. There’s no additional consumer information available, but I can’t think of any objectionable content beyond the (very mild) combat sections.

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. Every gameplay element has a corresponding visual cue, and all the dialogue is accompanied by subtitles, so the game is fully accessible.