This is difficult for me, as I rarely write negative reviews. I'm the type of person who writes a review when I really enjoy a game; but I do feel like I have enough history/experience with this game to review it and having had so many friends ask me if it was worth a purchase in the recent Winter Sale, it's easier for me to put my thoughts down coherently rather than have to explain individually why the answer is no - even with the 40% discount. This is gonna get long, so I hope you like reading. Otherwise, you probably shouldn't be in the steam review section. Or you can just read the TL:DR. Start scrolling.


I bought this game in May 2013. This was back in the beginning days of Early Access, when we had little idea what to expect. I expected regular updates and what was advertised; but I think like many who bought the game back then, I was left sorely disappointed. The initial release was a bare bones poor excuse for a broken demo, with no ability to save, and a few hours of gameplay and little to no communication from the devs for the longest time.


I waited patiently, surveying patches as they came. These were incredibly slow to start with, but eventually - as the years, yes years - ticked by, as the game went on sale and I presume, as the developers obtained more funding, the game did shape up into something that's definitely playable. The game has come a long way, but even after 3.5 years of early access, it has a long long long way to go. It begins to beg the question how long is too long? What is unreasonable? On the one hand I appreciate developers not abandoning a game that clearly doesn't have the funding to be completed promptly - on the other, should they have taken my money in the first place without explaining how long a project was being funded?


But I don't think it's fair to rate a game positive or negative based on yesterday. I recently reinstalled after 6 months+ of not looking at it, and the rating of this review is based on what the game is today, in Alpha 29, as if I'd just purchased it and holy mega batman balls this game has CHANGED significantly from the beginning. Everything from the core design and artwork and writing - it looks like a completely different game. So I'm swallowing the bitter pill of 3.5 years of waiting and throwing myself into what is ultimately, my favourite genre, a game-starved genre that I will eagerly buy anything in. Psst, don't tell my husband I said that, he says I have too many games. How is 1050 too many, it's not even over 9000!


The surface allows you to real time build your village and set up supply chains. This is what I really love; my favourite genre. It's pretty standard to be honest for this sort of game. You chop wood and turn it into firewood, you catch fish and eat them, you shoot animals and build a butcher. You reap wheat and turn it into bread. The problem is, this is a very standard supply chain feature for a strategy game. It does not have even half the depth of for example, The Settlers series. It's very very simple, and currently, it seems incredibly easy. 30 minutes into a game I had hundreds and hundreds of fish mounting up every tick. My villagers were set forever. Even if you set them at max food for max happiness; the food chain supply is incredibly easy to overstock on.

The buildings can be upgraded and that's a neat feature; and you can research plans and upgrades, which does add a little depth to the overhead map. On the whole though, I see no advantage to playing this over The Settlers if you want a supply chain game. Yeah, even the most recent one (7) which wasn't amazing. I feel like people looking for this sort of genre are looking for a lot more challenge and depth to their strategy, and this light-version doesn't scratch my itch for that at all, but does have potential for the future, if the buildings were vastly expanded and balance was approached.


So you get story and quests in the campaign and you take your player controlled champions to various dungeons to fight and loot. You can equip a wide range of armor and weapons and there is a decent amount of enemies and environments currently implemented. This gives the game a really nice dual-aspect. You can level up and assign some basic stats, very RPG-lite but certainly an unusual feature in a building game. Strategy/management on the surface, and then action and loot in the dungeons. That's a great idea, but only if it's actually implemented well... yeah, you can see the next part coming can't you...

The Skill UI is impossible to use effectively. You have a party of heroes with unique abilities. These are pretty cool abilities, each champ is special and brings something new. But you can only select one. You can't pause, and you can't queue up abilities, and you can't switch between heroes effectively. So you basically have one character you can use, and the rest of the party is auto attacks. Why give us so many great abilities and then not give us the ability to switch between them in a meaningful way? The UI is also lacking. If it had a hotkey bar where you could set your skills it would be significantly improved. As it is you have to mouse click around the champion icon.

The idea is fantastic; the current implementation is frustrating.


The game needs a pause. It needs it desperately. Even when you are on the build menu, the game does not pause. Your villages are doing things, including getting attacked and dying, whilst you scroll through a menu trying to decide what to upgrade, research or build. We're in management. Just pause it! How can you have real time management with no ability to manage constructively when stuff is happening.


The writing is tongue in cheek sarcastic. It attempts to be witty, but honestly, it's tiresome. At first I thought the tutorial was entertaining, but the truth is after the first few instructions about Bob, it became eye-rolling. The entire game is written in a very light hearted fantasy-trope manner. And I guess that's okay, it's a certain style, and certainly some of the writing is very witty and sarcastic. But it also detracts from immersion when it's constant. I do think this type of writing is better when peppered in with seriousness; such as The Stanley Parable or Portal 2 - games that managed a witty and sarcastic sense of narration and humour but also built character and depth to the story. This is all surface waffle in exactly the same style throughout.

It's not a bad story though at it's core, I just think that the style should be used more sparingly and the game should try and take itself a bit more seriously to give the humour more impact. Personal preference, perhaps others will love the goofy writing.

Okay, I think that explains why when my friends ask me if they should purchase in the sale; my answer is still no.


Note: I do update early access game reviews. I will come back to this game, although likely not for another 6 months, and we'll see where we are then. In the past I have completely rewritten reviews, and I'll keep an open mind for the future... but developers should be aware that people who have supported this game for 3.5 years may not posess an unlimited amount of patience.

This is from the developer of the game:

"Hi Folks, We're picking up way too many negative reviews, and I don't think we deserve it.
...
If you want Folk Tale to fail, vote with a negative review.
If you want Folk Tale to succeed, vote with a positive review."

http://steamcommunity.com/app/224440/discussions/0/135510148090438876/

If you want to support a dev that blames their customers for making the game fail and blatantly asks them to rig the review system, then by all means give these guys your money.

As for the actual negative reviews, mostly of them have to do with the game being in early access for FOUR years now during which time it's gone from a 0.2 alpha to a 0.5 alpha. At this rate there will be a beta in 2022 followed by the full release in 2030, so clearly all the downvotes about this game taking too long are undeserved.

I've had this game dusting away in my steam library for two years just waiting for the release announcement after the initial play to see how it looked. First impressions were very positive with good contrasts, interesting visuals for the animations and I've always generally liked this genre.

Well after two years I decided to give it another go and quite honestly there have been very little improvements I truly wish there was but there hasn't been. The interface is still just as awkward, the villagers are about as smart as a brick, the camera is slow, the amount of control you have feels very little and lack luster and overall it's just a big let-down on what I had imagined it would of become by now.

Now before someone throws the "It's an Early Access Game" I will say that I know this, I got it on it's initial release to Early Access and I had high hopes for it but within the two years, there hasn't been much in the way of progress. I'm quite tired of seeing games with this big blue sticker being slapped on them "Early Access Game" as if to be a kind of selling point like "We'll get better soon, promise!" but for it to never actually happen.

In it's current state the game is not worth it and if I knew how slow or none existant the effort to improve and develop this game would be, I wouldn't of bought it at all because it's just a wasted space in my steam library and money from my pocket that could of been spent on things much better.

Don't listen to the "Positive Reviews" all being spammed because they've all been encouraged to do it and it's really dishonest and terrible marketing on the developers part so please spend your money else where if you actually want a game.

:: Edit ::

I decided to indulge the comments about me apparently saying things that are untrue and sat down for a full two hour session to see the differences. Things they've added short list:

Upgradable buildings but they don't work even when you have necassary resources
More buildings that some are simply filler and the rest are extra for "needs"
More worker roles that are all equally slow at their given tasks
Diseases are a thing and the villagers are too stupid to use medicine you have stocked

I understand they reworked the game but the bare bones of the game from the original early access is still all there. Things the same short list:

Your NPC's are still as dense as a brick
No adjustable camera speed just slow and mildly faster by holding shift
Your militia are still generally very ineffective
Resources are painfully slow to gather
Amount of control still feels short in contrast to what it should be
Gameplay feels unengaging and lack luster just waiting on resources
Day - Night cycle still doesn't seem to change anything

Summary: It feels like a game that had high hopes in a lot of ways yet lives up to very little of them so I still don't recommend it.

P.S Everyones entitled to their opinion, don't try force feed your own to others.

-----FOLK TALE REVIEW ANNUAL UPDATE BONANZA 2017-----

I bought Folk Tale within about the first week that it was available on Steam. I thought it looked like a cool concept, and I had no idea that the trailer was actually the entire scope of the game back then. In the time that this game's been in Early Access, I:

* Finished a Master's Degree
* Moved to a new city
* Moved to another new city
* Held three different jobs (CORRECTION: 4 AND I KINDA LIKE MY NEW ONE)
* Witnessed the birth of four children among my friends' families
* Developed a hernia
* Had enough time for the hernia to heal without surgery
* Bought a new computer (CORRECTION: AND UPGRADED MY VIDEO CARD TWICE)
* Beat The Witcher 3
* Beat The Witcher 3 AGAIN (CORRECTION: INCLUDING ALL DLC)
* Read 14 different books (CORRECTION: 15) (CORRECTED CORRECTION: 29)
* Watched approximately 1000 sunsets (CORRECTION: 1400)
* Deleted 20 duplicates of some crazy French stalker's comments on this review. Mon Dieu!
* Went from nonproficiency to intermediate/advanced proficiency with the violin
* Learned to read Classical Chinese
* Drank approximately 1000 liters of generic cola
* Happily witnessed 10 other Early Access games I purchased reaching completion

Pro Tip: Wait for them to finish it, then maybe take another look. (CORRECTION: RUN AWAY!)


Edit: (May 2015)

To be clear, before anyone throws the other obvious argument at me... Yes, I have played the game since those early weeks and, yes, it has advanced since then. But progress has been limited, and at this pace Folk Tale is more likely to die a slow death than ever realize the charming vision it had when it first came to Steam.

I've already paid for it, so I'll certainly give it another look from time to time to see if anything ever becomes of it, but the whole premise of this review is that this game's a terrible risk compared to most other Early Access titles. What exists right now is still a bit of a mess, and not worth the price, and there's a very good chance that that's all you'll ever get for your money. Anyone who doesn't already have money riding on it should definitely wait.

I'm not wishing doom on Games Foundry, and I'll eat my own words if they ever manage to turn this ship around, but... don't put money on that, either.

Edit #2: (June 2016)

In my continued drive to live at 3.82x the speed of Early Access development, I just finished another book..... "A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain" by Marc Morris. Lots of fascinating historical anecdotes, and Morris is also an incredible narrator.

Edit #3: (July 2016)

Three of Folk Tale's most loyal minions went through and downvoted... every single review I've ever written, even ones that no one had ever voted on before. I would like to thank these brave heroes for taking the time to read my previously-unnoticed reviews.

Edit #4: (July 2017)

TEH PROPHECY IS FULFILLED! Nothing more to see here, ladies and gents--just gotta avert our eyes for 6 months while they "try" to restart development (read: rebrand their studio and/or flee the country).

Sometimes I hate being right. In this case I'd say I feel pretty good.

Edit #5: (January 2020)

Back by popular demand! Somehow, this game review's lifespan has been about twice as long as the actual game.

So what'm I doing now? Well, I'm currently in Stockholm, bouncing around Europe and moving from one hostel to the next while I live like a hobo and keep working on writing my own video game and a series of novels. I can say that the game is measurably better than Folk Tale ever was, because even though it's not finished I had the good sense not to release it yet.

There've also been a lot of inquiries about my sex life and whether or not I'm doing OK there. I may be getting married this year, so that's either gonna be really good for it or really bad, although it seems like she's down for a good time. But wives can be like Early Access games, ya know? You think they're gonna turn out one way, and then 5 years later they're something else but you're already stuck with them.

Thanks to everyone for your concern. If there's one great thing we CAN say about Folk Tale, it's that it has an incredibly supportive community.

Stay out of Early Access, and take care! I'm sure we'll meet again... eventually... maybe...

early access my ass never going to be developed more likely dont buy it its a waste of money development has been so slow that you might see flying cars as normal transportation before this is done.

Having bought access to this BETA close to a year ago, I'm disapointed there have been no news about a full release. So I'm thinking what I have acturlly bought is a 20 euro demo, but I was promised a full game.

I am very disapointed!

I have now waited for a year to get something other than a freaking tutorial and still there is nothing this game is the biggest joke ever

This game is a mess and I'm going to tell you why, in detail. Unlike the forum fans and positive reviewers, none of whom dare talk specifics, I'm not going to blow smoke up your ass about the game's potential, tell you lies, or make emotional pleas to continue supporting a game that effectively failed 2 years ago. The game was a good idea. That IDEA had potential. This game never had any. It was always doomed to failure due to incompetence and dishonesty. Also, this game was never a scam, just a failure - an utter failure.

This is Folk Tale as of July 2 2018, after 5 years of alpha and 7 total years of development:

MAP DESIGN:
No random map generator, no plans to add one. Replayability relies on tons of people buying the game and using the map editor to upload maps. Out of the 100k+ people that own this game, only 3 have bothered to upload anything to the workshop in the editor's ~2 years of life, creating only 9 workshop items. The max map size is also tiny.

After 5 years, there's only 3 sandbox maps in the game. All are tiny, all scripted. You and everything else spawn onto them in exactly the same spot everytime and you're restricted to a very small area of them, i.e., even so-called sandbox mode is exactly the same every time you play it. Building area is restricted because: A. building footprints are huge and you can only build on 100% flat ground, B. map designs are awful and outside your spawn point there's almost nowhere that's flat enough to build, and C. respawning map creeps will destroy everything you build outside of your little spot so it wouldn't matter anyway.

2 of the entire 3 sandbox maps are useless because every tree you replant on them explodes, running you out of wood to build and make firewood with.

AI:
Broken and always has been. Your villagers may or may not fight back when they get attacked by something. Usually they just stand there and get killed.

Soldiers will fight if you set them to aggressive but only if they're attacked or a mob gets in very close proximity to them. Other than that, they only stand there, even if a villager is getting killed 5 feet away from them. You can't assign patrols to them either. They just stand there and putting archers in towers is useless. You can put 4 of them in a tower and a single wolf will kill villagers, one after another, right in front of them and they will do NOTHING! This is the typical behavior.

Any villager with a job that makes them roam will walk up to any mob on the map like it's not there and ignore it while it attacks them. They don't even try to run away.

LEVEL SCALING:
Map creeps are designed to level with your hero, so if you're off doing stuff with them the mobs level as they do. This makes all the mobs way over the level of your regular villagers. A single spider can walk into your town and kill every person in it with just 1 or 2 hits. Even if you have 200 people in it, that 1 mob will kill them all if you don't get your hero or a pack of military units there to stop it. Why? Because it's level 10 but all your townies, including your military units, are 1-4.

MANAGEMENT:
You build buildings and assign people to them but there'ss no way to quickly determine who works where or how many are doing this or that job. You have to click on each building to find this out and then do the math yourself.

People are almost impossible to see and even harder to select. If you want to move one person for whatever reason, more often than not you grab half a dozen others along with them because it's far easier to just drag a box over them than trying to click on one singly. There are control groups for military units but no way to locate them quickly once you select one.

Villagers without jobs only stand in packs in front of their houses. They have no use other than being spider food. They don't contribute anything or even wander. They occasionally go get some firewood or something but that's it. They're supposed to put out fires but they almost never do.

DESIGN CONCEPTS:
You want to plant carrots? You need a windmill. Why? IDK! There's no farmers in Folk Tale, only millers, and all fields are restricted to a circular radius around a windmill, weaver or herbalist hut.

Woodcutters chop trees, make firewood and cut planks. You can't control these outputs. They also replant trees but they do it at a 1:5 ratio so they constantly run out of trees and just stand stand around doing nothing. This is a chronic problem.

Resource ticks constantly float up from every building and person in the game. Your screen will be filled with it all the time. It's pointless and looks awful.

Things like village raids and abandonment have been a problem for years and the developer has been unable to fix them so they've added checkboxes (gameplay customization... LMAO!) in the settings to turn these mechanics off completely.

The minimap shows each individual townie and map creep, turning the entire thing into a useless blue blob in the corner of your screen.

COMBAT:
Boring, amateur, poorly implemented. Nothing else to say about it.

RESEARCH:
Only tier 1 is implemented for anything and that's only like a few +1 outputs and a radius expansion. Some buildings are still lacking even tier 1.

CRAFTING:
Only trivial implementation.

DEVELOPMENT PROGRESS:
Hit EA in 2013 with an expected release in 2014, 2015, 2016, then 2017. Now it's 2018 and it's now an abandoned, still broken ALPHA! Development of this game has been a circus act from day 1. When it hit the store it didn't even exist and the developer was selling an old tech demo of a completely different concept they abandoned before EA release. By the developer's own admission, they were still making the tools they needed to make the game a year after they'd already began selling copies of it. The years that followed were ripe with stupid ideas implemented then removed, community manipulation, and plenty of lies.

THE DEVELOPER HIMSELF:
Not good. He listens to a small handful of people that tell him what he wants to hear and that's it. Tell them they're going to slow or something is bad and he lets his fans all pile in to shout you down. Refuse to be and you get banned.

Repeatedly threatened buyers with game failure if they didn't give him positive reviews. He did this for years with a series of forum threads begging for positive reviews or else the game will fail and it's the only thing that got it's rating out of the red. Shortly before the game was abandoned he directly blamed negative reviewers for it's impending failure, basically stating that reviews were an up or down vote for the game's success and that it's success would be determined by them.

He never had any vision for this game, as evidenced by his willingness to completely change it based on a poll of random internet nobodies, or any idea how to do the things he's trying to do, which is more than evident by playing the mess it's taken so long to deliver.

Finally, Games Foundry is now Hawkesmith Ltd. Stay far away from anything this man is involved in.

Its in early access! Keep that in mind. But the ideas and what have already been implented are of high quality and im sure it will turn out to be a big unique game in the end. Defently gets my thumbs up!

TLDR: okay game, 4 years after buying still in alpha, probably never be finished. hope it's done before I have kids.

Bought this in 2013 under the premise of a simple city builder with light RTS and RPG elements.
4 years later I'm to understand it's still in alpha and no longer a city builder, but more of a settlers style RTS. I suppose I should be happy they're still supporting it. But, after doing an entire Degree in the time it took this game to reach alpha 30, I doubt It will ever be complete. I mean it's been 4 years... for alpha 30, Please just stop adding new concepts, get what's there to a 70-80% polish and add a campaign so i can sit down and build a empire before I have kids.

Being honest avoid this, you may find some enjoyment but you'll have the buyers remorse after it finally enters beta in 2021.

Edit: 6/8/2017: Dev's have 9 months.
Edit: 6/3/2023: My daughter is now five years old, I have lived through a plague, the world is on the precipice of World War 3, and yet folktale never came.