Is this game a masterpiece? No, but it is a city builder with a few unique cool twists. Become the ruler of a fantasy kingdom! Build up your small empire right from the start by erecting the first building with a few settlers on a meadow and then adding newer and better buildings and connecting them all with roads. If necessary, your people can also walk across the grass, but it's quicker on paved roads. The more attractive your city is, the more new inhabitants (called Fablelings) will come to live and work here. So not much has changed in the essential game principle since the great-grandfather of the genre, Sim City (Maxis, 1989). What has changed, however, is the graphics. Today, the graphics are in 3D, can be zoomed in and viewed from all sides. It looks good, but my computer's fans are roaring like in Cities: Skylines II, even though my RTX 3060 graphics card is well above the minimum requirement (GTX 1060 / RX 580).

First, we build a small farmstead and assign a head of family. Heads of families make sure that the inhabitants of the individual villages have everything they need to be happy (especially food). Add to this a well that supplies the entire immediate area with water, and the first new Fablelings arrive in our developing village. Basically, new Fablelings arrive every eight days as long as you have enough living space and your kingdom appears attractive to new settlers. You then always have to decide whether you want to accept them or not. If you don't have a residential building, you will have to turn them away. As soon as you have a farm, you can decide what you want to grow there. The first industrial plants will soon be added, starting with a logging camp. So far, Fabledom plays like one of the usual city-building simulations.

One of the special features of Fabeldom that you won't find in any of the other city-building simulations are the princesses (or princes...) who would like to get to know you better so that they can rule your country together with you. In the beginning you are single, and as the game progresses you can marry a suitable partner. Of course, you can also organize a lavish fairytale wedding in your town.

Keep track of a variety of different buildings required for production chains, build the necessary infrastructure (especially a tavern) so that your fabulous people are happy and pay taxes well. With enough tax money, you can continue to expand your settlement and build a circus or a huge theater. Military buildings are also a must, because if your settlement is doing too well, there will soon be enemies who want to share in your wealth. Just building a wall around your territory will not be enough to fend off the riff-raff or vicious fantasy monsters. The administration soon becomes quite complex - many inhabitants, buildings and a balance of the necessary resources (vegetables, wood, stones, coal, money, grain) have to be managed. Fortunately, there is a very useful overview menu that shows you your inhabitants and buildings at a glance. With a little money you can buy neighboring regions, which you can then also colonize. A special resource in the game is your nobility, which you receive for particularly noble deeds (e.g. donations).

Conclusion:
Cozy city-building simulation. Build your village and watch the lovingly animated inhabitants go about their daily work, construct new buildings and manage complex economic cycles. Defend yourselves against attacking monsters, watch out for mean witches and employ noble heroes. Establish diplomatic relations with neighboring kingdoms to trade. You are king in your fantasy realm, and in addition to managing the realm, you must also take care of your own love affairs. Fabledom plays like a mixture of Sim City and Die Sieder 2 with a few dating sim elements. Suitable for players who just want to settle and build in a relaxed way, as well as for fans of more challenging city-building simulations.

Imagine a friend shows you a painting they are working on. It looks like it's almost done. You can tell a lot of work went into it. You can see all sorts of potential for what it could end up being if they keep at it. You're excited to see what it will become! And then your friend says it's finished. And now all that potential means nothing because it will never be realized.

That's Fabledom. It's so close, so, so, close. But it stopped short. The lack of finish is mostly apparent to me with the third stage of gameplay and the lack of variety with the random events and NPCs, most of which only become apparently after two very nice and cozy early stages of the game.

Fabledom has three stages of population growth. You start with peasants, build up enough resources to support commoners, then build up enough resources to support nobility. The first two tiers of this function perfectly fine. You manage your resources and population and build things up with no real pressure. These phases work just fine as a cozy builder. In fact they work so well that it's quite disappointing it doesn't build up to anything nearly as good in the endgame.

The lack of polish really shines in the third stage. The main goal of the story is to woo and marry your love. There are six to choose from, some of which have more exacting demands than others. The third stage of population is the nobility which unlock the ability to throw a royal marriage celebration and thus win the game. However, unlike recruiting peasants and commoners (which just happens every so often if you have housing space), recruiting nobility depends on random events which give you tasks to accomplish to attract nobles. The range in tedium is extreme, some are almost automatic, some will take you quite awhile to accomplish. This creates a really jarring effect on the otherwise very chill experience. Also, you only need a few of them so you never really have a reason to build up the huge lovely palaces you see in the promo screenshots. You can if you want, but there's not much of a point to it. Having played through the whole thing six times for the achievements the endgame for me was mostly just waiting for nobles to show up and then waiting for nobles to get things done. It just isn't fun or engaging.

There are also a smattering of NPCs based on folkore that show up throughout the game in the map. Once you find them you'll be able to interact with them in certain ways. Simply put there just aren't enough of these. With the entirety of European fairy tales to draw from having a half dozen or so just isn't enough variety and the interactions with them are extremely simple and practically the same every game. There was so much room to grow and expand this that just wasn't done. Even what is there feels half-baked. You can build an army and a mystic mine and fight trolls but there's no reason to (other than to keep yourself occupied as you wait for nobles I suppose). You can stockpile magic siege weapons to fight a dragon that will attack you but you can also just pay him to go away. It all feels quite empty.

Another year or so of development and these things could definitely have been addressed, but the (very small) dev team decided to just put a bow on it and call it finished. Obviously it's their game and they can do what they like with it, but since these issues are going to exist forever I can't recommend it. It really is a shame as this could have been something special - but reviews aren't based on what could have been.

Get this, having to see the game add things that gives you possibility to grow your kingdom, and I thought that you could do so much more when it comes to other kingdoms, like stealing, having alliances, dealing with wars.. It can still be cozy game with those stuff added, I waited for so long for proper game updates. Very little content and now told that there will possibly be no new content. Game did promise so much more and did not deliver.