Fabledom
by Aethyna
Apr 19, 2023 |
1
Votes |
78
Played |
0
Reviews
9
rate
Genres:
SimulationGraphics:
3DLabels:
Sandbox Game , City Building , Building , Fantasy SettingPlatforms:
Publishers:
Dear Villagers Fabledom is a fairytale-themed sandbox city builder where you get to build your very own kingdom from the ground up as a newly independent Prince or Princess (or even Highness). Develop your city, fulfill the needs of your burgeoning population, and eventually, defend it from envious invaders! Play Now Similar Games Played
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Disclaimer: This is a first-impression preview of the early access version of Fabledom. As a work-in-progress, the game may not be representative of the final product. We will definitely update our review to include new features and updates once the game is fully launched.Summary
Fabledom is a fairytale-themed sandbox city builder where you get to build your very own kingdom from the ground up as a newly independent Prince or Princess (or even Highness). Develop your city, fulfill the needs of your burgeoning population, and eventually, defend it from envious invaders!
Plotline
In Fabledom, your happy-ever-after story is yours to tell. You can interact with a variety of rulers across the land, forge relationships (or rivalries) with them, and who knows? Maybe someone may catch your eye enough for you to decide to court him/her!
Gameplay
The gameplay in Fabledom is pretty typical of a sandbox city builder. If you’re an avid fan of the genre, you can pretty quickly jump right into the thick of things. There are various production buildings where some will allow you to have your Fablings harvest raw materials like wood, food, or stone, while others will allow your Fablings to convert these raw materials into goods like coal and planks from wood.
You’ll also need to manage your resources and the whole logistics of it, and this is where your stockpiles and, eventually, granaries come in. It makes moving resources and getting them to where they need to go a lot easier and faster, especially when supplying crucial items to your Fablings’ homes or to new construction sites.
Roads help a lot here as well because they increase travel speed for your Fablings and they do try to use roads as much as possible, but unlike some city-building games, they aren’t exactly compulsory in Fabledom. This is because, like normal people, your Fablings can walk through anywhere, like fields of wheat or someone’s open backyard, to reach their destination.
Manpower is also another important resource in this game since all these buildings will need to be staffed to work. There is, after all, no automation in a medieval fantasy world. You’ll get a maximum of two new Fablings every few days, but you can only have them join your town if you have the appropriate housing for them. Inversely, you could also not accept any newcomers if you think you’re not ready yet or if you simply don’t want any.
As you progress, you’ll start encountering specific buildings that have very specific staffing requirements. For example, once you have your hospital built, you’ll notice that you can only staff it with Commoners (a.k.a. Tier 2 villagers). This is different from Farms where you can only staff it with Peasants.
Naturally, higher “tier” villagers will have more requirements too. Living in little “Tier 1” hovels, even with useful attachments like a chicken coop or a clothesline, just won’t do it for them – they want a condominium with townhouses, shops, and archways, and access to more complex foodstuff like bread that’s made from wheat or, what is apparently a luxury in these parts, meat from the pigsty. Homes also have basic requirements that you’ll need to meet, such as being within range of a water well, or in the case of condominiums, a town well, and a sewage system.
As with other city builders, Fabledom also features buildings that have positive or negative effects on residential homes. Structures like the stone quarry cast a negative aura around them, negatively affecting the happiness of homes located within its vicinity. On the contrary, certain buildings, like the theatre, inn, bakery, and hospital, have a more positive effect on homes around them, increasing the houses’ desirability and to an extent, the residents’ happiness level. It’s, of course, crucial to keep your people happy. As docile as the Fablings are, they won’t tolerate a ruler who’s excessively cruel to them.
Another important factor to sustain your population growth is food. More Fablings means more mouths to feed, and hence, you’ll need to scale up your farms and food production accordingly. Note that your Fablings can only consume 3 food items for now, namely vegetables, meat, and bread. So, if you have a huge stash of wheat, your Fablings will still starve to death since it’s not something they can eat directly/after cooking.
You’ll also want to take note that you won’t be able to harvest anything right after winter. Crops do take a while to grow, after all. And of course, like any medieval-styled city builder, you’ll want to stock up on food before winter hits since crops don’t grow during winter and well, hunting for game isn’t exactly a thing in this game, at least for now.
That being said, if Fabledom is your first foray into the city-building genre, worry not! The game also comes with a series of quests that will introduce new elements of the game to you as you progress as well. Although technically those are entirely optional, the game will progress as your little town develops, it’s a good idea to complete them just to reap their rewards – precious gold coins that you need to set up most starter buildings.
Gold is obtained passively in this game, much like having new Fablings join your town. However, there are other factors that will affect how much gold you get such as building upkeeps that will decrease your income, while having new tax-paying Fablings, especially the higher-paying Commoners, will increase it instead.
Sometimes, you may even encounter events that may upset your plans. For instance, the witch’s curse turns every Fabling in town into skeletons that consume twice as much food, which frankly doesn’t really make sense… since when do skeletons eat food? This can be particularly devastating if you just have enough food to get through winter and you get hit by the curse at the start of winter.
Some events may also request some form of payment, in gold or other resources like food, in exchange for more manpower, additional happiness, and a nobility boost. Nobility doesn’t really do much in Fabledom yet, but supposedly you will be able to use it to perform various diplomatic actions that are currently unavailable in early access.
The highlight of Fabledom is your ability to interact with other rulers via messengers, forge a relationship (or even rivalry), and for those you’re interested in, romance them. The courtship process can be quite long and costly though. Currently, you can interact with two rulers and can only reach the “first date” stage for the one you’re courting. There’s no marriage yet but that’s something the developers have planned in their roadmap for the game.
For now, Fabledom has an early access “end” that I’ve managed to reach within 4-5 hours. The game’s fun for sure, especially if you’re already a fan of the genre and would love to play something cozier and relaxing. However, admittedly, a lot of the game’s content, including some that were featured in its trailers like the military aspects of the game, isn’t in Fabledom right now, so some players might want to keep the game wishlisted for now, and grab it at a later date, once the game is more fully fleshed out or even after the game is launched. For me at least, I can’t wait for the game to have trading and fishing, more encounters and suitors, and finally, a fairytale marriage!
In addition to more content, there is also plenty of “Quality of Life” features that I think the developers should definitely include in a future update, such as the ability to upgrade roads by simply replacing them rather than having to demolish the old one and building the new one. It would also be good to have a way to distinguish Peasants and Commoners when assigning workers manually to various jobs more visually.
Graphics/ Sound
As a fairly cozy city builder, Fabledom features cute and cartoonish visuals that match well with its fairytale theme. This contrasts with the more realism-oriented indie title, Manor Lords, which is also a medieval city builder. The characters are all well-animated and the environments and the buildings look fantastic. It would, of course, be nice to have some random slight variations to each building even if they are of the same type, but that’s definitely optional at this point.
In terms of sound, Fabledom comes with a selection of pretty relaxing background music that you can enjoy while developing your town. Like any good fairytale story, there’s also a kind elderly narrator, which frankly speaking, sounds just like the narrator in the Dungeons series. The narrator doesn’t speak constantly though. He only adds in quips from time to time, mostly when you’re done with certain quests or have triggered certain situations, such as mass starvation.
Conclusion
All in all, Fabledom shows a lot of promise for an early-access title. The game’s content isn’t fully fleshed out yet and there are many walls you’ll hit while playing right now, but it manages to show the vision the developers have for the game and it’s looking really good. Of course, with the upcoming Military update which would add in the much-awaited combative element to the game, allowing you to utilize your hero more, rather than simply resolving encounters.
Fabledom Blog
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