Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story
WHERE TO PLAY
Bandle Tale is the full package — a fully realised world with a brain-tickling gameplay loop and fantastic visual design. It’s one of the best ‘cosy’ games out there.
Bandle Tale is the latest (and final) offering from Riot Forge, a wing of the multiplayer giant that handpicks independent studios to create games within theLeague of Legendsuniverse. Bandle Tale comes to us courtesy of Lazy Bear Games, a studio known for whimsical management sims like Graveyard Keeper. That isn’t quite how I’d describe Bandle Tale, though. It’s a narrative-driven crafting game in the vein of Stardew Valley.
The plot sees the player take the role of an apprentice knitter (knitting is a big thing in Bandle City) who is unwillingly forced into action after a childhood friend becomes trapped in an alternate realm. To save her, you’ll need to visit each of Bandle City’s distinct islands, solving local problems and recruiting Bandle City’s best and brightest to aid you in your quest.
Stardew LoLley
Usually, a quest requires a certain item and to get this item you’ll need to do various other actions to upgrade an array of crafting benches and aura generators. It’s a means of forced progression, you naturally move further along your skill trees to meet the needs of the narrative.
For example, you might need clay bricks to build something. Well, first you’ll have to advance far enough in the engineering tree to build clay pumps. These pumps will need to be placed on clay deposits, and you’ll need to research a foundry workbench to eventually smelt the brick. This workbench will need to be powered by heat aura, so you’ll also need a heat conductor. This is sort of how it goes in Bandle Tale, you’ll need to bring together a lot of moving parts to acquire the items you need.
It’s set in the eponymous Bandle City, the home of League of Legends’ furry Yordles. League’s lore is very diverse, both in substance and tone. Tonally, lore involving Bandle City and its Yordles is lighthearted and amusing. The most dangerous person in Bandle City isn’t a serial killer or mass-murdering general, but a mildly annoying magician with delusions of grandeur.
10 Best Cozy Games, Ranked
When you’re in the mood for a pleasant, relaxing experience, you’ll have to check out one of these great cozy games.
With this in mind, the Bandle City that Lazy Bear has crafted is quaint, with an atmosphere reminiscent of Tolkien’s Shire. The Yordles like to eat, drink, party and concern themselves with passion projects, rather than any type of hard graft. This prevailing attitude is reflected in the characters you meet throughout Bandle City, they always tend to be involved in some kind of hare-brained scheme that urgently requires your attention.
Each district of Bandle City has a core identity. For instance, Greensprout Grove is inhabited by farmers and gardeners so the area has a lot of greenery and natural themes. A lot of love has gone into the design of these areas, and they all feel unique as a result. Bandle Tale’s environments ooze charm, making them a joy to explore. This experience is aided by the slanted camera angle, which allows you to fully appreciate the Escherian layout of the maps. You gradually unlock different parts of these islands to access new locations for throwing festivals, to meet plot-critical characters and so on. This most often involves crafting an item, like making durable rope to repair a bridge.
The art style is a candy-coloured joy to behold; every surface is soft, and everything looks like it would be a dream to lay your head on. The textures are cloudy and floaty, and everything in Bandle City is rounded and inviting. This is all synergistic with the tone of Bandle Tale, everything is breezy, and relaxed and there’s nothing to stress about.
You have four RPG-lite skill trees: knitting, engineering, nature and magic. You acquire branches of these trees with Emotions - points that are accrued by throwing festivals, gathering and crafting items and so on. By far the most efficient way of gathering Emotion is the festival system, which allows you to customise decor, music, lighting and guest lists depending on where you’re throwing it and what the overall theme is. This system is also one of the drivers of the plot because, after all, Yordles love to party. You’ll find yourself solving quite a lot of problems via all-night ragers, like helping a group of creatives overcome their artist’s block, or re-igniting a passion for exploration among a group of burned-out scouts.
It’s gratifying to see your workshop and garden expand, becoming more efficient and versatile as you level up your skills.
The food stand system is also neat. It’s a sort of mini-game reminiscent of Overcooked, in which you have to select a menu and remember recipes that become increasingly more complicated the further you progress in the game. The more extravagant the menu, the more you’re rewarded. It’s the only semi-stressful aspect of Bandle Tale, but the rhythmic efficiency of it can become quite engrossing. You’ll find yourself second-guessing your knowledge: were you supposed to cook that glowana or throw it in the mixer? Or both?
Craft And Chill
This ties in quite nicely with the rest of your portable backpack, which is a portable house in reality. The backpack is your mobile base, you place it down in designated spots around Bandle City. There are several carpets attached to the exterior of your backpack, each one with a different function. Your production carpet has all your crafting benches, the festival carpet is where you tweak your party decor and so on. Inside, you’re able to place down doors that add additional rooms, also with specific purposes, like an indoor workshop and garden.
10 Best Cozy Farming Games, Ranked
Looking forward to playing some cozy game where you can explore the field while farming? Well, here are some of the best options.
This loop defines Bandle Tale; you’re always progressing as you advance through the game’s quests. It’s gratifying to see your workshop and garden expand, becoming more efficient and versatile as you level up your skills. It’s difficult to put the controller down at times; you complete one task and immediately feel the need to move on to the next.
It’s a repetition that fans of management sims, survival-crafting games and everything in between will be familiar with. You have a constantly evolving checklist of tasks and even though a new task immediately replaces a completed one, you still get a burst of gratification for having checked something off. It doesn’t sound glamorous, but honestly, it’s quite rewarding.
One of the few criticisms I have of Bandle Tale is that its quest system can feel clunky at times. Once you reach the mid-game, you’ll find that almost every one of your quests redirects to another quest. In other words, you can’t complete X quest without completing Y quest first. This isn’t quite a problem in and of itself, but occasionally you’re not given a reason why you can’t progress along that quest line. An inaccessible area will suddenly become accessible after completing unrelated tasks. It’s a small peeve but it stands out in a game that’s otherwise very well put-together and polished.
It’s difficult to put the controller down at times, you complete one task and immediately feel the need to move on to the next.
As an avid League of Legends player, I always get a little gleeful when I witness the predictable appearances of the universe’s characters. Bandle Tale features all of the Yordles you’d expect, and plenty of new characters, too. I’m not going to pretend the characterisation is robust, but it doesn’t have to be. The writing is clever and tongue-in-cheek, playing up the personality tropes of the established characters and giving some of the new ones memorable characteristics. I appreciate that effort has been put into giving every character something that defines them, whether it’s Rumble’s undying love for Tristana or Teemo’s unwavering adherence to the Scout’s Code.
A Legendary Tale
Bandle Tale is cohesive, every design choice contributes to a laid-back, visually interesting experience. It captures that brain-tickling gameplay loop of survival crafting games and combines it with engaging RPG mechanics, all taking place in interesting and well-designed environments. The team at Lazy Bear has produced a wonderfully crafted cosy game that’s worthy of kicking back with the best in the genre.
It’s a shame that Riot Forge is being discontinued following Riot’s recent layoffs, as every game created through the initiative has been of a high quality. At the very least, I think the last game released through Riot Forge is the best yet.
10 Best City Builders On Mobile
City builders are not hard to come by, but if you’re looking for something to play on the go, these are the best options!
