Folded Fables has found a new home for some very old treasures

Like most people, I’ve noticed the influx of tidying and sorting games, and I actually find them weirdly therapeutic. My chaotic ADHD mind finds great relief in taking a chaotic scene and restoring order to it, but even I’ve started to grow weary of the many, many versions of what is basically the same game. And that’s saying something, because my limits are notoriously hard to push. 

However, and I know you saw that coming, there’s one sorting game that manages to stand out from the disorganized pile: Folded Fables: Tidy Up the Dragon Hoard. 

Folded Fables, developed by Codename Entertainment, is a pretty standard tidying game that presents an at-first-overwhelming pile of stuff that needs to be categorized and organized onto the shelves. But what stands out about Folded Fables for me is that, at least visually, the game is an exercise in recycling. Codename Entertainment took assets from their previous games, thought, “Why not use them again?” and threw them into a pile for us to sort, and it is glorious. 

Familiar in most ways

Look, I’m not going to go into great detail about the gameplay, because we all know this genre by now: you pick up items, you find the right shelf, you put them back. That’s it. Some upgrades make things easier and quicker, and there’s an element of incrementalism there too. Folded Fables doesn’t break the mould in that sense, and it doesn’t pretend that it’s trying. The magic of Folded Fables lies more in how it was made than what has been produced.

Here’s the thing: this is not Codename Entertainment’s first rodeo when it comes to game development. Crusaders of the Lost Idols was released in 2015, so they’re a decade in at this point, and it’s safe to say they probably know what they’re doing. That first game is very different from Folded Fables, but it’s there that most of the items in Folded Fables made their debut appearances. 

The dragon’s hoard in Folded Fables is filled with fantasy-inspired items that come directly from Crusaders of the Lost Idols (along with Bush Whacker 2), from axes to potions, magic orbs to books. This is a game borne out of a desire to reuse assets that may otherwise be lost in the Steam archive of 10-year-old games and may otherwise never see the light of day again, and I absolutely approve of that.

Papercraft always gets me

I love the papercraft aesthetic. Like many of my age, I grew up with Paper Mario as a staple in my gaming experience, and that seems to have given me a love for games that adopt the style. In Folded Fables, everything is made of cardboard: the items, the location, even the players. There’s an added level of difficulty when everything is flat unless you’re looking directly at it; from a distance, any mid-size item could be either an axe or a book, and you won’t know until you’re right on top of it. 

Playing with others also takes on a comedic edge when you watch their 2D character hopping around the 3D scene like a paper doll controlled by a child with way too much imagination and a love for chaos. 

Honestly, while it does add a touch of “wtf am I even looking at,” the papercraft style is mostly aesthetic and allows for those 2D assets to be reused in a way that maintains their original visual style. Plus, having them all on cardboard also adds to the theme of sustainability, which may or may not have been intentional on the developer’s part, but it definitely stood out to me. 

Something new, something old

I’d never claim that Folded Fables is doing something new and drastic to change up the format of the still-evolving tidying genre, but it does feel new, and that’s worth noting. It doesn’t do anything remarkably different from the rest aside from the reuse of assets, but perhaps that’s all it takes to make it stand out. It feels sustainable and smart, rather than another hastily assembled clone of a familiar formula with a different theme slapped on top. 

I love that this can be a solo marathon of tidying, or you can rope your friends in to help with the task. Things definitely get more fun when you add friends and family into the mix, with discussions about who’s doing what and the occasional teleportation mishap, such as my daughter inexplicably managing to throw herself through the walls while trying to teleport to my side. Maybe that’s a bug, but I hope they never remove it. It adds to the magic if nothing else. 

If you already love the tidying genre, Folded Fables: Tidy Up the Dragon Hoard is an absolute must for your Steam library, but it’s worth giving a chance even if you’re not usually a fan of the gameplay loop. It was released on October 15, 2026.