At first glance, it was easy to label Bandle Tale as League of Legends' take on Stardew Valley. Laid back vibes, pixel art, and an emphasis on good food and good friends pointed directly to a Riot Games take on the quintessential life sim, but it's just a couple of minutes before you realize that Bandle Tale hides a level of complexity that puts it at the height of its genre.
Set in Bandle City, a whimsical pocket dimension housed within the broader League of Legends universe that's home to a squirrel-like race called Yordles, Bandle Tale breaks with tradition set by the rest of Riot's indie spin-offs by casting you not in the role of one of its established champions, but in a brand-new character. As an apprentice to a sage expert in knitting, your character has spent years in reclusive devotion to their craft when a series of unlikely events thrust them out into the world. With the portal network that ties Bandle City together busted and your friend lost somewhere inside, it's up to you to help restore the city.
If you think that already sounds quite a lot more intense than Stardew Valley, you'd be right, but Bandle Tale makes up for its slightly breathless twist on the traditionally gentle life sim genre by relying on the whimsy inherent in its setting. Magic suffuses this place, and the devs have made sure to find ways to combine mysticism and mundanity, lining up with the Yordles' Hobbit-like existence in League of Legends' more traditionally high-fantasy world.
Knitted together
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That means that nothing's quite as it seems. Gathering crops means contending with magical bananas, while fixing a busted bridge is a case of putting your knitting skills, not carpentry, to bear. One of the first characters you meet is a floating cat with a bad attitude, and your home is a backpack that can be carted round the world and set up wherever suits you best. Managing this world means coming to terms with a frankly dizzying array of abilities and a skill tree that feels more on-pace with an ARPG than a life sim.
That's partly because, in keeping with the rest of the League of Legends spin-off games, Bandle Tale is made by a team outside of Riot. In this case it's Lazy Bear Games, best known for Graveyard Keeper, an altogether different type of life sim, complete with a darker sense of humor and far more than six feet of depth. With its own complex skill tree and the same looping systems that take players far beyond the original pitch, you can see the influence of Graveyard Keeper throughout Bandle Tale, and while the former might not share much of a tone with the latter, it's fascinating to see the DNA of a leading indie rub off on one of my favorite franchises.
Unfortunately, that leads me to the sour note of Bandle Tale. Earlier this year, Riot announced that it would be discontinuing its Forge publishing label, meaning that this spin-off will be the last one it produces for the foreseeable future. While that doesn't affect the game itself, it does affect an indie landscape already struggling, and puts an end to what I always felt should have been seen as one of the bright spots in Riot's offering to the community - something it never had to offer, but chose to for the good of its industry and for the benefit of players who wanted more from its world.
That shouldn't - and doesn't - detract from the fact that Bandle Tale seems like an excellent swansong for these games. In taking this mystical part of the LoL universe and bringing it to life in a way that feels so authentic in spite of how little we know about it - all within a genre that's such a perfect fit for its setting, while steering so deliberately away from League of Legends itself - Lazy Bear Games has created something that encapsulates what all of these games were supposed to be about. Perhaps it's bittersweet, but in a world as delightful as Bandle City, I think it's simply better to focus on the sweet.
Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is out now on PC and Switch. See what other indie gems we've been enjoying in our Indie Spotlight series, or get your wishlists ready with our roundup of upcoming indie games.
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