Fabledom Early Access Preview

Preview code used, with many thanks to Plan of Attack. 

If you are a frequent visitor to LadiesGamers, you may remember I played the demo of Fabledom in February during the Steam Next Fest. Finally, Fabledom, a city builder simulation, is available on Steam in Early Access.

Fantasy Fairy Tale

Fabledom has a fantasy fairy tale setting reminiscent of Disney and Pixar movies. The fairy tale setting can be seen everywhere, from the enthusiastic narrator to the game’s opening scene, presented in fairy tale book fashion. The fairy tale look continues right down to the NPCs and the buildings.

Since Fabledom is in Early Access, some of the game mechanics are still to be implemented. However, at the moment, there are roughly eight to ten hours of gameplay to get a feel for how the game will be when it comes out of Early Access.

Fabledom not only has you building a city, but also it’s a game where you can interact with the neighbouring territories. Moreover, eventually, you can flirt with and marry a far-off prince or princess. This mechanism still needs to be fully integrated into the game, but it holds promise.

Build Your kingdom

The king and queen, your parents, have sent you to claim your land and establish your kingdom. You begin with only a few peasants. But first, you must construct a labour hut, housing, roads and essential food production to entice more folk to join your fledgling kingdom.

Your kingdom starts small, and every ten days, if you have built enough houses, more fablings will arrive to join your kingdom. Eventually, you will have a thriving kingdom with stone masons, foresters, a bakery and more. In addition, you can expand your territory by buying adjacent plots of land.

Build Homes and Gardens

Building the Kingdom in Fabledom is pretty similar to other simulation games. It follows the standard format for these types of games except for building homes. When you build a home, you don’t just place the house but also a tiny garden, which I love. This also adds visual variety to your kingdom, as only some of the homes look the same, and it is excellent at making you feel engaged with the town’s growth. You must also assign a head of household for each house in your Kingdom. 

As the prince or princess of your new Kingdom, you also get to manage employment. So you must assign jobs manually, changing the workforce according to the village’s needs. Everything is well set out in the UI and menu, and assigning jobs is easy. What needs to be added in the game is the ability for the player to know which buildings are not fully staffed. To find out which building hasn’t any staff, you have to click on each building which is not very user-friendly.

Watch out for Witches

The fairytale theming, which I love, is light but ever-present throughout the game. Your village can suffer some dreadful fate, such as being cursed by a witch, which happened while I was playing.

All my villagers turned into skeletons for ten in-game days and consumed 10% more food than usual. Lucky for me, this didn’t happen in the dead of winter when the snow was on the ground and food production grinds to a halt. The curse was manageable, and my villagers soon returned to their former selves.

Build Condominiums

Once your village has grown in size you can build condominiums for commoners and people of higher status. These buildings must be constructed with a courtyard in the middle and drainage and sewage. Again this adds variety to the gameplay and makes each building look different from the rest of your kingdom.

That’s about it for Fabledom. Once you start adding condominiums to your kingdom, there is little gameplay left to do, which I did find disappointing.

The developers plan to add different classes of fablings, fishing resources, fighting with your hero and establishing a castle, and more throughout the game’s time in Early Access.

Final Thoughts

While Fabledom is a lot of fun to play, it doesn’t challenge the player much. I built a large town with ease within a couple of hours of playtime. The NPCs seem to be a little daft as they will complain there isn’t any food, and they are hungry, even though storage is overflowing with food.

Fabledom is playable, and enjoyment can be had with the game, but there is still a lot of development to be completed. You can find the Fabledom Steam page here.