City-Builder games as a genre seem to be exploding this year. I’ve reviewed not one, not two, but three separate City-Builder titles in the last few months, and plenty more have been on my radar. Something all of these new City-Builder titles seem to have in common is small dev teams and a desire for their settings to stand out from others on the market. Some certainly succeed, while others sacrifice important gameplay elements in order to deliver an aesthetic premise.
Fabledom is another City-Builder that checks a few of these boxes.
Developed by Grenaa Games, a small team of just two people, we can definitely give Fabledom the indie title. This is Grenaa Games’ first title, and I certainly hope it’s not the last, as the quality of their product would be impressive even if they weren’t such a small team.
Fabledom is a City-Builder set in a fairy tale setting. And by fairy tale, I mean the opening cutscene looks just like the story-book opening to Shrek. The aesthetic is that of a magical fairy tale land, without being any one story in particular. Creatures like unicorns, golems, goblins, and anything you might expect from a super high-fantasy world are present and rendered in a super cute cartoony style.
In Fabledom, you play as a Prince or Princess, sent away from home by your parents to create your own kingdom in a far away land. There are several things to consider and manage while doing this, ranging from the obvious to the not-so-obvious mechanics that make up the game’s core gameplay.
Firstly, you have to actually build your kingdom. Starting off with just two men and two women, you must build on your chosen lands and turn your settlement from a hamlet to a thriving castle. To do so, you must produce and manage wood, food, stone, and gold, which are used to build new buildings and keep your population fed and happy.
Every 10 days, new villagers show up to join your settlement, but only if you have enough space for them. Expansion becomes a delicate balancing act of constantly needing more labor, room to house that labor, and food to feed that labor. These are pretty standard City-Builder mechanics where you want to make sure you grow fast enough to keep producing, but not so fast that you can’t feed the people you already have.
Once your settlement starts to grow in size, you’ll need soldiers to defend it. This starts out with the Hero unit, which is exactly as the name suggests. Your picture-perfect fairytale knight can be sent out to explore the map around you, completing quests outside your city’s boundaries. Later on, your army will expand to include spearmen, archers, and great stone walls to protect your people.
The less obvious mechanic in Fabledom is romance. That’s right, as a young Prince or Princess, you are expected to mingle with other Princes or Princesses and eventually upgrade yourself to a King or Queen.
The game features a diplomacy system that allows you to interact with the Princes or Princesses from neighboring kingdoms, each of whom is playing the same game as you. These rulers can be traded with, befriended, fought against, or romanced, eventually leading to a fairytale wedding.
However, the marriage feature is not yet implemented in the game, and as of now, all you can do is go on your first date with your chosen romance.
This is the biggest feature that sets Fabledom apart from other City-Builder games, and you can tell that it’s one the developers want to greatly expand upon. I look forward to seeing the direction the dev team takes with the romance feature, and how marriage affects your kingdom.
In the game’s current Early Access state, there isn’t too much to do. However, the developers have posted a detailed roadmap, showing step-by-step which features they plan to add. They have also said that they plan for Fabledom to be in Early Access for about a year.
If this is true, then I applaud the small dev team for the astronomical amount of work they’re taking on themselves, but I wouldn’t blame them if they need more time.
The devs promise to add a ton of new buildings on their roadmap, which is perhaps one of the most important features a City-Builder fan can ask for. They also announce several new neighbors with their own diplomacy missions and interactions, as well as, of course, marriage at a future date.
It’s hard not to be intrigued by the future of this game, even if at the moment it’s not the most exciting City-Builder I’ve ever played. Taking into account, of course, that the game is in Early Access, I try not to judge it too harshly, but with the content currently available, I felt like I had my fill of the game after about an hour.
Managing resources never felt like a real burden or a dangerous balancing act. At the moment, I don’t think you can actually starve your villagers. I had an incident where I got distracted by a movie playing in the background, came back, and noticed I had no food for my villagers to eat. Despite this, the game said I had 18 days’ worth of food stockpiled, and I was able to quickly produce a ton of food by assigning more workers to my farm.
This goes for all of the resources in the game. Anytime I ran out of anything, I was able to quickly produce the said resource back to a surplus and continue my rapid advancement. At one point, I was simply plopping down tons and tons of houses to make room for new villagers without ever really feeling like there was a reason to slow down or carefully plan my expansion.
In its current state, Fabledom is a little boring but still serves as an impressive game considering how small its developer team is. The future of the game, however, seems promising, and I encourage fans of the genre to keep a close eye on updates to this title.
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