In a mysterious land fill with walking and talking lizards, Naigye is taking her niece, Cally, for a trip to the castle!
Farnham Fables is a short, old-school inspired point-and-click game. You’ll start by joining Naigye and Cally on their trip to Farnham Castle. At the castle, Cally will run off and run right into the king who tells her and her aunt a story! It seems he was recently sick with a terrible fever and his sons went off to get medicine to save him. You’ll then play as those sons and follow their adventure to get the medicine and help out a local.
As I said, Farnham Fables is short. Depending on how much reading of the descriptions you do, you’ll likely finish the game in under 30 minutes. This roughly 30-minute adventure wasn’t a very exciting one, at least not for me. Given that the game is only $1 you aren’t really losing out on much in terms of length of the game for the cost, but there are quite a few other issues with the game beyond that.
The music in Farnham Fables is… not very good. It does successfully capture the old-school feel, but that isn’t the issue here. The issue is the fact that the music loop is very short and has a very poor transition into the loop. I see (hear) a lot of indie games doing this and it’s something that goes to show a poor attention to detail.
The art style in Farnham Fables does capture the old-school feel as well. Much like with the music, this has its share of issues as well. One of the biggest being that there is no warning female nudity within (there’s also male nudity but nothing is visible). Sure, it’s lizard breasts, but there’s still definitely nudity there with absolutely no warning or age gate. Another issue is the fact that Frederick looks exactly like Graham from King’s Quest.
Given the style of the game, the writing is decently done. I did spot a fair number of issues with the grammar, at least a fair number relative to the length of the game. There was a lot of misplaced commas all over the game, as well as a few misspelled words. Oh, and at one point they refer to the lizards as “rats”. There’s also quite a bit implied when it comes to the girl and mother you help in the village.
While Farnham Fables does successfully capture the old-school feel, the other issues the game faces drag the game down a lot. I was disappointed in the fact that there was suddenly female nudity involved. I don’t have an issue with nudity in games, I just prefer there to be proper age gating and warnings on the store page. The fact one of the character’s is a direct rip off of King’s Quest’s Graham really doesn’t help matters much either. Add on the music looping and grammar issues that are present, I am unable to recommend this game. If these issues could be cleared up then the game would definitely be an interesting little point-and-click title that is on the cheaper side.
Farnham Fables Review Score
2/5
I would like to thank the publisher for providing me with a key for review purposes.
