Fabledom Review — Happily Ever After

Last year, I gave my impressions on the early version of Fabledom, a fairy tale city builder that I felt was full of promise. Since then, lots of development has gone into the project, and after a full year in early access, Fabledom is finally ready to release. The developers have given me the chance to see just how far the game has come and share my thoughts on how the game has improved.

Fabledom takes the familiar city builder genre and absolutely doses it in a fantastic fairy tale paint job. As a prince or princess sent to a faraway land, you’re challenged to build a thriving city in a fantastical land full of creatures and colors you’d find at home in the picture-filled pages of a storybook. Suffice it to say that Fabledom’s presentation is already enough to set it apart from many other games in the genre.

Something I immediately noticed about Fabledom’s full release that wasn’t present in the Early Access version before (or at least not that I had seen) was the game’s wit.

“Have you heard the tale of the unicorn that could? He couldn’t. I don’t want to spoil the tale, but it’s not a happy ending.” It was just one of several little dry, witty comedic lines the narrator spoke as I idled on the create-a-game menu. I found it so charming that I ended up sitting there for about fifteen minutes, just listening to the lines he cycled through (and there were a surprising lot of them.)

This witty little humor continues throughout the game, like a love letter and mild parody of fables and storybooks you’d read as a child. Pigs with wings, witches, dragons, and other fantastical fableian aesthetics make their way into the game and its aesthetics, which goes a long way in separating Fabledom from your average city builder. You can even grow the giant beanstalk in the middle of your settlement and deal with all of the repercussions of doing so.

And I do mean repercussions. You don’t imagine living in a fairy tale world can come with many challenges until a local witch turns your entire population into skeletons—which, to be fair, my poor food production was already in the process of doing.

During its time in early access, Fabledom expanded upon what I saw as its most appealing mechanic: diplomacy.

Diplomacy is arguably the most important part of Fabledom. You are not the only prince or princess building a kingdom in this strange new land, and interacting with your neighbors is paramount to surviving and thriving as a young ruler. Far more than just fighting to defend your lands and invade your neighbors, however, Fabledom uniquely adds marriage to the grand strategy of the game.

It is a strategic choice, as your marriage match will give you certain benefits and require specific investments of resources on your behalf, depending on who you go for. Far beyond the loveless portrayal you’d see in games like Crusader Kings, however, Fabledom gives your marriage candidates tons of personality and sparks in a romantic flavor to everything, incentivizing a bit of a dating game-type feel on top of your city management.

Something else Fabledom has expanded on since my time with it is the resource management aspect of city building. Initially, I complained that Fabledom was too easy, that you could shut your brain off and ignore your citizens without worry. The strategic aspect of managing your population has definitely come far, to the point where I found myself building myself into a corner several times and having to restart completely. Your citizens will starve and die, and if you aren’t careful, you can find yourself in a hole where you don’t produce enough raw resources to fuel your industry.

If I were to really complain about any aspect of Fabledom, it would simply be the game’s somewhat lackluster resource tracking.

Put yourself in my shoes momentarily: the warrior princess (which, if I had to pick a favorite of the game’s marriage options, there she is) wants to court my prince, opening up a path to marriage pretty early in the game. To court her back, I must produce a lot of coal to send gifts. I immediately put my Fablelings towards creating a coal-producing industry to accomplish this goal.

The issue is that at different intervals in the game, my community uses more coal than I can feasibly produce, putting my community in the negative. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t allow you to see what is using up your resources or how much. You just get a flat graph showing your production and consumption over a period of time. This makes it harder for you to manage the production and consumption of resources accurately and makes things a bit of a guessing game.

The hero aspect of Fabledom is probably one of my favorites. In addition to an army, your kingdom gets its own Hero, a fairy tale protagonist who can go on quests and defend your kingdom from dangerous foes. You get to customize the equipment of this hero, and they level up from combat, adding a little bit of an RPG element to the game as well.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in our Game Reviews page! Fabledom is available on Steam and PlayStation.