A cozy League of Legends game? Bandle Tale is a cute crafting RPG about knitting and parties

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SHOULD I PLAY BANDLE TALE?

Play it if you like cozy games and don’t mind a title that’s a little more structured. Bandle Tale takes place in the League of Legends universe, but you won’t find intense action and competition here. It’s a laid-back, adorable crafting game set in a world powered by yarn and parties. The early segments were a little too on rails for my liking, but Bandle Tale is undeniably charming, and the game does open up later on.

TIME PLAYED

In total, I played around nine hours of Bandle Tale. I spent most of that time tackling story quests, but I did have a chance to redecorate my house, throw a few impromptu food festivals, and even teach a college class! I also managed to open up portals and gain access to a few more parts of the world. Bandle Tale is about thirty to forty hours long in total, so there are still plenty of things left for me to see and do.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT BANDLE TALE?

• Gorgeous visuals and setting. Bandle Tale’s world is a pixelated visual feast. Rushing waterfalls flowed alongside me as I walked across a bridge. Sometimes I’d spot another character hidden just out of sight, doing something like peering through a telescope or stretching while hanging upside down. These little background details made the world feel vibrant and alive.

• Fantastic character design. Speaking of characters, Bandle Tale really hit it out of the park with its character models. I met a wide range of characters during my playthrough, and every single one had a distinct personality. Not only do the characters have charming designs, but they have adorable dance animations that you can see during parties. Your player character has a knitted leg, and even doing something as simple as watching them walk around was an absolute delight.

• Detailed skill tree. Bandle Tree didn’t just give me one skill tree; there are several different trees I could put points into. Every tree offers a wide assortment of upgrades, and I even unlocked additional trees as I progressed through the game. Some upgrades are locked behind story quests, but I could still scroll through each tree and check out the skills I’d be able to acquire in the future. Bandle Tale makes it easy to grind for skill points, so I spent a lot of time unlocking abilities and testing out my new skills.

• Tons of customization options. In Bandle Tale, my backpack was also my home, and I was able to decorate it to my heart’s content. The game gave me access to both indoor and outdoor decorating options, so I was really able to make my space feel like my own. There are tons of furniture and building sets to unlock, which really motivated me to keep playing. Character creation is slightly less detailed than home decor, but there are still plenty of options, and I was able to create a character I loved.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT BANDLE TALE?

• It’s too linear. I didn’t have much freedom in the early hours of Bandle Tale, and I found that to be a little frustrating. The game shuttled me from one story quest to the next, and that made it hard to focus on the parts of the game I was most interested in. It became a lot less restrictive after the first few hours, but the focus on completing certain objectives made the game less relaxing than I wanted it to be.

• There’s a lot of waiting. Nearly every task in Bandle Tale takes time to complete. I had to wait for bugs to crawl into my traps, for items to finish crafting, and for essential crafting materials to respawn. These kinds of time limits are pretty common for crafting games, but because Bandle Tale feels so guided, they wound up feeling like roadblocks to my progress. There were a few times when I put my Steam Deck down for a few minutes while I waited for everything to finish up.

• Gameplay elements are poorly explained. Bandle Tale has lots of tutorials, but these guides don’t always do a great job of expressing how these systems actually work. There are a lot of unusual gameplay mechanics in Bandle Tale, which is great, but these systems aren’t always intuitive, and sometimes it took me a while to figure out what I needed to do to progress, even after I referenced the tutorials. I like complex systems, but I don’t usually find myself stumped when I’m playing a cozy game.

At times, Bandle Tale’s systems were so confusing that I thought there might be an issue with my game. On a few occasions, I found myself unable to move my backpack after placing it somewhere mid-quest. The only solution I found was to load in an earlier save. It’s possible that this was a bug, but Bandle Tale’s disorienting mechanics made it hard to get to the bottom of the problem. Like the linearity and the long waits, this is less of an issue later on, but it definitely made it hard to get into Bandle Tale at the start.

PLATFORM TESTED

PC via Steam.