I never know the audience I gather here: gamers? Wrestling fans? crafters? All of the above? I know that when I started reviewing Folded Fables: Tidy Up the Dragon Hoard, I was immediately reminded of sitting and looking at a pile of crafting supplies, puzzle pieces, or Lego. You stand at the opening of the room, and there are piles and piles everywhere. I don’t know how to explain the thoughts that went through my head when I saw ‘endless’ items that looked like pure chaos, but ‘oh, what did I get myself into?’ was part of it.
There is, of course, not an endless number of items. There are ‘only’ 5,648 papercraft treasures to sort into their proper places. These items include multiples of over 500 unique items, each drawn by one of the artists from Codename Entertainment over 14 years. They use art from two of their games: Crusaders of the Lost Idols and Bush Whacker 2. You’ll find no Gen AI here.
Like other sorting games, there is a loose story. You enter the Dragon’s lair, and once you are discovered, you are given an offer to avoid being eaten. Clean up the mess caused by the previous looters. They took everything off the walls, and it’s strewn about, including piles they made to hide under. You are tasked with sorting through everything, putting it back in its designated places, and perhaps they will let you live. The constant presence of the dragon was a new component to sorting games I’ve experienced, and although the game is relatively stress-free, with no timers, I felt a constant eye on me.
All the items can be separated into categories, the typical things you’d expect in a medieval type of game. Weapons, armour, jewelry, potions, coins, art, gems, etc. All shelves are clearly marked and labelled in the massive space. There is a map in the lair as well as one in the menu, but it is easy to just look around and see where you need to go.
Once you shelve an item, you’ll get a label on it. This not only has its name and value, but also the number of them that you need to find. It will be clear if you put an item in the incorrect spot, so you can easily see if it needs to be removed and relocated.
Each time you complete a full shelf of an item, you will earn a skill point, or a dragon favour that you can use to unlock helpful skills to use during your clean-up. Some of these skills include highlighting matching items or category shelves, expanding your carrying capacity or improving your speed. Some of the Dragon Favours include cooldown reductions for the skill perks or extra skill duration. Before long, sorting through over 5000 items won’t seem so daunting. Each time I earned a Dragon Favour, I felt like I was doing a good job.
Keep a lookout for the 6 dragon eggs hidden around the lair as well. Return them to the dragon for even more rewards.
Graphically, Folded Fables had me hooked at first glance. I loved the papercraft style 2D items in a 3D world. The items you are sorting look like they’ve been cut out of a book, lying flat or hanging on the walls. The stack nice and neat. Also well done was how menacing a papercraft dragon could be. I was instantly reminded of Lord of the Rings while I was rummaging around the dragon’s treasures.
Of note, many of the in-game pieces (like the pop-up book intro) started out as physical paper models before being recreated digitally for the game. Even the logo was hand-folded before being photographed and used. I love those little tidbits.
The soft music loops through the background, enough to set the scene and feeling but not enough to stand out too much or distract from the cozy experience of sorting. Sound effects like the thud of dropping a stack of paper made the papercrafts seem more real when dropping them on the ground or stacking them on shelves and racks. I also loved hearing the dragon ‘growl’ and paper shifting as it followed me around the room.
I played using a controller and found the experience to be a good one. Much easier than keyboard and mouse for me. Although I did use the mouse on occasion for power-ups, as I found it faster. I played through my first 100% in just over 10hours, taking my time. You may see a discrepancy in items available versus items I placed. I had some co op help to test out the co op play for a bit.
Folded Fables: Tidy Up the Dragon Hoard does a lot of things right, and it’s a nice unique entry in the genre. A cozy sorting game that can be played solo or online co-op supporting up to 32 players. It has a nice combination of a unique setting and papercraft style with some great skills to help make the task of sorting over 5000 items less stressful. There are some achievements for completing the game without using any skills, and one for completing the game under 4 hours, meaning you can challenge yourself if you really want to, or just take your time.
Until next time…be good to yourself and be good to each other.
**Special thanks to Codename Entertainment Inc. for the review code**
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