Fabledom is worth the $15

Fabledom developed by Grenna Games released with early access yesterday on Steam for only $15.  It is a city builder game with a cartoonish bent set in a land of fairytales. You can pick to be a prince or a princess to govern a small. Throughout the game, you will have random events that add a little fairy tale flavor that ranges from additional quests that involve giving away some of your resources to enduring spells from evil witches. Keep in mind, the game is still unfinished but offers a bit of playthrough and I spent a solid 8 hours on it. It has a very relaxing feel to it that is similar to cities skylines and as you grow your settlement, you can annex neighboring aras.

You start out with 4 peasants and have a series of tutorial quests that involve building livnig quarters (homsteads), farms and workshops (laborers huts). These are used by the populace to live. Lumber camps and stone camps employ the populace and are used to gather resources which can be turned into buildings or higher tier resources.

The game has seasonal and weather cycles which add a nice twist to the game. Crops take time to grow and there are boom and busts cycles of resource gathering which must be taken advantage of in spring and summer so that you may last through the winter. It's a nice refreshing take on a well established genre.

The set up screen has a random seed generator that is well appreciated in this style of game where you are dependant on map resources.

The game has diplomacy as well as combat however the combat system does not appear to be implemented yet, and the diplomacy focuses mainly on fairytale romance at the moment. However the backbone of the game is in place for what appears to be a rich environment for NPC interaction.

The game has the makings in place for a military campagin however as of the early access, it does not appear to be in the game. There are Heros that can be built that have gear with damage modifiers on them. Barracks and archery grounds appear to be in the game but not yet enabled which would enable you to build swordsmen and archers. Defensive buildings including walls and watch towers are in the game but not worth building as of yet.

Heroes can be sent to target locations as per a quest or you can incidentally discover things on the map to send your hero. It's a nice bit of RPG twist in an otherwise city builder game.

Income in the game is made primarily through taxation. So the bigger population the more you get. There are various types of population, peasants, commoners and noblemen. The peasants do more of the labor that the commoners will not do. The noblemen are not yet implemented from what I can see, however I surmise they will be more related to military and more efficiently running the businesses, such can have several population assigned to a building. The twist is that population growth is not through reproduction but from having ocassional travellers that visit your settlement and decide to stay based on how happy your population is. Not a bad twist and keeps things realistic and on a smaller scale. I found that with fewer units overall, I was more invested in them and their growth.

Progression through the game is based on population and the rewards unleashed at each stage of city size: Hamlet, Small Village, Village, Big Village, Small town, Town, Small City and City. The game ended at samll city with a population of 120 and a little message saying they have not implemented it yet.  The next milestone was 150 for City.

Some improvements I'd love to see in the game include improved auto-assignment of peasants and commoners to jobs that are open and in need to be filled, additional music along the same relaxing lines. Perhaps a way to use your accumulated gold to speed up improvement building. Additionally a better explanation on management of food through the winter as I frequently had population starvation cycles. However, I suspect this to be due to just pure growth.

All in all, quite an enjoyable "chill," game that would be amazing on a Sunday afternoon with a bowl of chili... and for only $15.