City Tales - Medieval Era

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Unleash your creativity and be the leader that your people need, in City Tales – Medieval Era. Developed by Irregular Shapes and published by Firesquid, this game is a medieval themed city builder that released on Steam on January 29th.

A City Builder that is actually Chill?

“Waaah, I am unhappy. My house is not studded with diamonds and my caviar is not covered in pure gold.” Let’s be real. We all played a city builder that feels like that. No matter what you do, your people are just so whiny and unhappy, even if they are well taken care of. Not in this game though! City Tales – Medieval Era puts a fresh, chill spin on the genre that both strategists and cosy gamers can enjoy.

two little districts are next to each other. A shelter is selected, it lists what items are needed to upgrade it to its next tier. — A shack is better than nothing!

Gameplay

City Tales – Medieval Era is a very relaxing city builder that does not pressure you to improve at a rapid rate, or leave you stressed about your citizens starving the second you look away. While the core loop of resource collection, refining, construction, and questing follows the same blueprint as other games in the genre, there are some fine but important details that really set this one apart from the rest.

Your citizens’ houses are grouped into districts that you create by drawing a custom outline, with the area’s size determining how many buildings can fit inside. You can keep things simple for a while, but you will eventually need to upgrade the basic shelters into proper houses, and potentially even big manors down the line. Your people may not be too picky, but they do really care about their “civic buildings”. Churches, wells, theatres, and other things may be necessary to upgrade a house to a home. They take up quite a bit of space though, and you are limited to two per district, but if you’re smart and group your districts close together, those buildings can influence multiple neighbourhoods at once!

Since upgrading houses is your main way to earn gold, you definitely want to stay on top of it! But you don’t need to rush for progress. Your villagers can not starve or become unhappy. It’s a refreshingly chill experience with no rush and no pressure.

Processing and Progression

Resource management involves placing collection buildings near outcrops and using processing facilities to get things moving. If you have played a city building game before, you know the drill. You will need to assign one of your companions to oversee each building at first, but after a while, they become efficient enough to be autonomous. As your companions work in different facilities, they gain experience and level up their skills, like farming, processing, or gathering, which lets them improve the efficiency of production cycles even further! Just keep in mind that most of the processing facilities also need nearby civic buildings to operate, so you will want to save some space in your districts. (Or, y’know, just kick out a couple of people who live there. I’m sure they will be fine).

In order to progress through the story and unlock new structures, you will need to fulfil various requests and complete quests for your advisor and your companions. While they can get a bit grindy down the line, requiring special buildings or a ton of resources, they always give you something to do and to work towards. If push comes to shove, you can always AFK a little and let the game just do its thing, as there aren’t any consequences for idling or running low on resources.

Game UI. A quest has been completed. A notification window in the middle of the screen displays several rewards for completing the quest. — Time to upgrade!

Graphics & Audio

City Tales – Medieval Era features a very colourful and stylized aesthetic, with a lot of vibrant tones and building designs that blend a medieval look with a mild fantasy flair. You can tell that a lot of work went into the art direction of the game. From the nice character portraits to the clean, easy-to-navigate UI, which is always a major plus in my book.

The background music is chill and relaxing, fitting the game’s setting and playstyle nicely. The ambience is a nice touch as well. You’ve got birds chirping and buildings make little production noises when you click on them. The characters even have a few voice lines, which adds a fun extra layer to the overall atmosphere.

Screenshot from City Tales - Medieval Era showing a larger village with a few dozen buildings. — Coming along nicely!

Longevity

The games longevity is pretty decent if you ask me. I hit the endgame around the 10-hour mark, but there is still a ton of room to keep tweaking and improving your city after that. It definitely gets a little grindy down the road, but never to a point where it feels boring or tedious.
As for replayability, it’s the kind of game you could jump back into with a fresh save file in a few months, though your experience will likely be very similar between playthroughs.

Final Thoughts

Overall, City Tales – Medieval Era is a great game for anyone who enjoys the city-building and management genre but wants a stress-free experience. It’s also an excellent start into the genre if you have not played similar games before and don’t want to be thrown into the cold water straight away. Even though the endgame does drag a little, and I’d honestly like a faster speed-up button, I’ve had a blast playing. I’m absolutely going to keep grinding for the last few achievements.

All in all, I am giving City Tales – Medieval Era the Thumb Culture Gold Award!