Review: Fabledom gives a modern makeover to a nostalgic game genre

Quick Verdict: Fabledom is pretty standard as far as colony-building sims go. It’s guided enough that you don’t have to be aware of everything, but you still need a strategic mindset when playing it to keep all resources stocked and your villagers happy.

The cozy score merely reflects how relaxing a game is and does not impact the review score.

Game:	Fabledom
Developer(s):	Grenaa Games
Publisher:	Dear Villagers, Doyoyo Games, Plug In Digital, and Merge Games
Review Score:	8
Cozy Score:	7
Price:	$20.99 on Steam \| $24.99 on consoles
Pros:	The tasks help to keep you guided, the voice acting is fun, and the graphics are nostalgically charming.
Cons:	You have to be mindful when you’re building something, some things require you to build foundations or extra bits to get them fully running. It’s pretty easy to think you’ve got something going and to have missed a step. The price points between consoles and PC are different.
Platforms:	PC, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch
Genres:	Strategy, Colony Sim, City builder

A code was provided for Fabledom by the publisher and it was played on PC.

Fabledom is a colony sim at heart but with a cute fairytale twist to it. Like all colony sims, you start from nothing and you slowly build up to a flourishing town.

When you open up the game, you get quite a bit of say in how the game runs. Your land, most assuredly, is going to be entirely different from anyone else’s simply because the game runs off “seeds”. Seeds are randomly generated lands, so even if you decide to play again, you’re not going to get the same land unless you’re copying your seed code and regenerating the same specifics.

When choosing your land, you’re shown a map of different countries that have varying degrees of statistics. Some areas have more forests, hills, or access to the ocean. I mostly saw large and medium areas, but I’m sure smaller lands exist as well.

Not only can you decide where and what your land consists of, but you can choose your own coat of arms too. You can play as a lord, lady, or highness (for those who don’t like gender-conforming titles) and you’ll be able to pick who you want the favor of when it comes to romance events.

If you’ve never played a tycoon or colony sim-type game, you may not be familiar by what an event means. While you have free reign to build what you want and place it where you like, you don’t have control over the rest of the world other than accepting or denying the requests.

You’ll get letters from romantically interested NPCs, requests for aid, missions to fulfill certain orders, and so on. They’re random and you can’t control when they pop up or what they’ll say.

They certainly bring some interest to Fabledom, but they’re not really your focus upfront.

Fabledom, like most colony sims, is a very guided gameplay experience. While strategy certainly plays a part, you’re basically told exactly what you need to be doing every step of the way by completing tasks. When those tasks are done, you’re given some kind of reward whether it be monetary or experience.

You’ll build up your settlement one improvement at a time. You’ll build farms, homesteads, lumber mills, stone quarries, inns – and the list goes on and on. The strategy comes in by juggling resources and food.

There’s a system that has to be delicately balanced. In order to build up your town, you need villagers, for villagers you need homes, but to keep them they need food. You have to make sure that you’re not building beyond your means.

Some buildings make your patrons happy to have around, others upset them. Pretty much everything has an area of effect, so there has to be some mindfulness in how you design your village.

Once you build up enough, you’ll be able to buy more land and expand your kingdom. When you branch out to absorb more territory, you’ll find that you can stretch in the four cardinal directions and each plot will offer different things.

So, if you didn’t have access to a river, you may want to prioritize buying land that has one. Or, if you’re like me, you can’t stay away from all the magical encounters that may exist somewhere. Encounters, in Fabledom, generally refer to magical objects or situations. On my first upgrade, I went for the magical tree and a lost slipper, but I couldn’t do anything with them until I had a hero.

Honestly, Fabledom can feel very overwhelming at the start because there are a lot of things to juggle and think about. But, if you follow the tasks set out, you’ll eventually get everything you need.

If you’ve run out of tasks, you’ve gone too far.

If you’re a fan of colony-building sim games, then you’ll want to grab Fabledom on Steam for $20.99 or PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch for $24.99.

I have no clue why it’s more expensive on console. Personally, I think it’ll be a superior play on PC anyway. The way you need the cursor to move across the screen doesn’t seem like it would feel natural or fluid with a controller.

Hell, you can’t even use a controller on the Steam version because it’s not compatible. So, save some money and spare yourself a headache by going the PC route.

If you’d like to see one of our other reviews, you can check out the one we did for Caravan SandWitch.