Folk Tale

Genre: Strategy, RPG, Indie, Simulation

Developer: Games Foundry

Publisher: Games Foundry

System: Windows, Mac

 

I have returned!

And with my return I bring you news from a far away land, where mist rises like steam, shrouding the treacherous peaks of volcanic isles.

I was recently browsing Steam’s strategy games and came across a little golden nugget that snagged my attention with its name alone

‘Folk Tale’ ::wave hands mystically::

 This was literally the best image I could get.

I am all about the folk thing. Peter, Paul and Mary? Yeah, I like those guys.

Anyway, I decided to dig further down this shaft in hopes that I might unearth some greater treasure. I clicked the Folk Tale link.

“Hmm,” I said aloud to no one, “it would seem this game can run on both Mac and Windows*. And it seems to cover every genre except FPS. I am most intrigued.”

It would appear I had stumbled onto something. Reflecting the beam of my helmet lamp it glowed faintly in the warm, damp dirt and streaked like lightning across the face of the limestone wall. But I wasn’t about to invest $20.00 in an operation that would yield no profit so I watched the trailers and read the descriptions that were available.

“Hmm,” I said to the broken wall clock that lay on my desk, “it would seem this game was recently Greenlit on Steam and is only in its alpha test stage.” Plans of future updates made me think of one thing, Minecraft.

I staked my claim. Within a few minutes I had downloaded it onto my laptop and was ready to go, but I had been too hasty in my greed. My laptop didn’t quite meet the needs of the game. For one small moment the shining vein was before me and then suddenly darkness.

But I had not given up hope. I had my desktop and that would surely be able to run such a puny game. Unfortunately, as a result of having recently moved, I did not yet have internet (this would not be resolved until a week of waiting and three phone calls to the cable company). Much like the Klondike, I would not be able to bring the heavy machinery over the mountains until a later date. I had to press on with what I had.

I booted up the game for the second time and my laptop chugged like a steam engine to haul this cart to the surface and I have been reading a lot of mining articles on Wikipedia. And it strikes me just now that the whole mining metaphor doesn’t really work for this game. Though you do technically do some mining, it isn’t really a central theme. However, I am too lazy to go back and change this so I’ll just move on with the review from here.

Folk Tale ::wave hands mystically:: is at its heart a Real Time Strategy game. That’s how it’s built anyway. It has the classic “god” view and you are in charge of building a settlement and telling your townsfolk what to do. I mentioned earlier that it’s only in its alpha stage so currently there is only the tutorial and you cannot save, but from what I’ve viewed it seems like the tutorial may be rather extensive. Hurray!

The thing that really sets Folk Tale ::wave hands mystically:: apart from other RTS games is that it’s also part roleplaying/adventure game, I guess? What I mean by this is that every soldier you have can be given items to make them more powerful: magic rings, swords, armor, etc. You can also loot your fallen enemies for gear and other useful items. On top of that, each of your soldiers has several abilities that he can use. This is something that I have never seen in an RTS before, which is good, but I see the need for a ton of micromanaging, which is bad. Regardless, if seems like you are able to sort of make your own heroes and that’s pretty neat.

But I do have my complaints about Folk Tale ::wave hands mystically::.

“Gee,” I said to the empty Pepsi can in my hand, “why are all the female characters in this game essentially useless?” My boss gave me an odd look as he walked by. But I felt I had made a rather astute observation. There are an awful lot of women-folk in this cutting edge game, but they don’t seem to do a whole lot. Sure, they’ll help build things, they can fight, and if something catches fire they are solely responsible for fetching water to put them out. Brave and strong is great and all, but they are not capable of holding down any of the other assignments in the game. You literally cannot make a female character a farmer, a metal smith, a stone worker, a monk, or a warrior (even though as previously mentioned they can fight). This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me and furthermore, in my opinion, comes off as kind of sexist. Just sayin’.

And the game tries very hard to have a sense of humor. While some of this works, a fair amount of it is rather weak. I love that the basic story is your people are fleeing from an oppressive government that won’t let them eat toast, but the joke about the main character caring more about saving the farmer than his wife from the goblins doesn’t really pan out as well as they probably hoped. Some of this could be a voice acting issue, which is an issue, because some of the characters have English accents and some are southern American accents as though they couldn’t make up their minds, but the jokes themselves could be stronger.

Happy Thoughts: This game has a lot of potential for those of us that like to play god.

  

Sad Thoughts: Sexism and weak jokes could be a potential problem. It hasn’t been so bad that I can’t play the game, but it could be a slippery slope.

The Bottom Line: I have a love/hate relationship with this game right now. I mean there are things I love about it and there are things I hate about it. I don’t think I can make that any clearer.

*I hate the term PC, because isn’t every computer that you own personally a personal computer? I just don’t think the term “PC” is particularly PC. And yes, I did just make the PC/PC joke. Deal with it.