During this year’s Gamescom, I was fortunate enough to play an early demo of RAEV as well as speak to 2 of the Developers of the game during the 30-minute showcase.
RAEV is a City builder and Strategy game set in a fantasy world with Kingdoms and monsters. The main goal of a playthrough is to start your own Kingdom and take over the entire land. Each map is a 2km by 2km square that is procedurally generated, meaning no two playthroughs will ever be the same.
This is definitely one of the more unique city builder games I have played. The start allows you to pick between different starting biomes. For instance, you may choose between a forest surrounded by mountains, which offers easy access to a lot of wood but may lack other resources. I chose the Savanna starting area, which has a lot fewer trees but offers lots of stone and other minerals. During my run in this biome, I came across a dust storm. This is when the devs let me know that different weather events can affect gameplay, and these events are completely random. Each biome has a unique set of events that can occur, which mixes up how you proceed. A fun twist as you progress will be learning all the different types of events that can occur.
Resources like trees are not infinite; eventually, a tree will no longer have any wood to give you, forcing you to keep expanding your territory and eventually discover new lands outside of your starting 2km by 2km area you can explore new biomes and even build an army to take over other Kingdoms in these new areas but be careful not to send out all your troops for Battle as if you leave your Kindom unprotected you too can be attacked and yes when people in your village die, they are dead forever. People are a resource just like wood and stone. Ensuring that you keep the people of your Kingdom protected is a must!
At this point, the devs showed me a save file for a more advanced playthrough, which was several hours into the game, a lot of the first region of the map was taken over and owned by the player, and they showed what getting attacked by monsters looks like. I was extremely impressed with the systems currently in place, and the devs made many remarks about how they planned to improve them even further. I can’t even begin to describe the great passion from these devs as they want to make the best possible game they can. Noting that once the game finally releases in 2026, they’ll be working with the community to focus on the aspects that players feel need more work, and they don’t plan on ending development once the game is out, the game will keep evolving with player feedback to become the best it can be.
So if you are a fan of City builders or strategy games, heck, even if you aren’t, RAEV is a game everyone should try out when it releases later in 2026, and if you have any interest, make sure to show your support with a wishlist on Steam. I know I will be playing RAEV when it releases.
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