RAEV: Kingdom on the Distant Shores preview – An ambitious fantasy 4X city-builder with RPG elements

From the ambitious The Expanse: Osirin Reborn over the grimdark sequels Dawn of War 4 and Mechanicus 2 to the masterful Anno 117, Gamescom 2025 had tons of fantastic games to offer — but what’s probably my favorite title of the show came to me in the form of RAEV. 

Ravine Games’ upcoming strategy game is hard to sum up, which is partly why it’s so enticing to me. It’s a city-builder with complex production chains and the ability to construct majestic towns. It’s also a 4X strategy game, allowing you to explore and conquer entire continents, building up an empire. It’s also an RPG, having you form parties of heroes to explore the darkest depths of dungeons to earn treasure. And, somehow, all of these elements work together to create one of the most immersive strategy titles I’ve seen. 

“For simplicity’s sake, we’re defining it as a kingdom-builder rather than a city-builder,” the devs tell me at their booth on the showfloor.

RAEV’s visuals spread the same cozy vibes as titles like Pioneers of Pagonia or Fabledom and its plentitude of difficulty modifiers allow for correspondingly peaceful gameplay. The challenge level is not the only customizable thing at the start of the game, though. Your starting biome, for example, is of prime importance. At Early Access launch, the game will offer six biomes, which are far more than a color swap: Each environment comes with unique resources, challenges, and terrain generation rules, making for totally different experiences.

A mountainous forest usually has plenty of positions that can be fortified against attacks, giving you a choke point to funnel enemies into. A savannah is naturally much more open, but contains plateaus that only become accessible once you can build elevators later in the game. Getting a sustainable amount of food and water will be more difficult in such a dry region as well. In short: The strategy kicks off right from the start as you weigh the risks and rewards of each option — or opt for a specific environment because you have a certain theme in mind.

Every campaign follows a main story (the corresponding dialogs can be disabled for subsequent runs) that sees your initial settlers shipwreck in unfamiliar lands. As is typical for city-builders, it’s your job to build homes, establish a thriving economy, and fulfill the needs of your population to unlock higher building tiers.

RAEV features a fairly free building system that incorporates a similar modular add-on style as Fabledom and Manor Lords. With each settlement map being two by two kilometers in size, the player has plenty of options on where to build.

“We really want the player to enjoy playing with the terrain,” the developers say. Cities built on the side of a cliff, coiling up a mountain, or nesting inside a giant chasm are all something the developers want to enable, which greatly strengthens the game’s fantasy vibes. The ability to construct stairs, ramps, bridges, tunnels, and elevators helps with creating functional towns in such environments. Resources aren’t magically teleported around, but need to be transported from A to B, so logistics are very much relevant.

Right from the start, though, the light RPG elements come into play. Every inhabitant of your town has personal likes and dislikes, which affects the jobs they can do efficiently. Someone with passion for their occupation will not only be more productive, but also level up in a much more efficient manner. This is vital, because there are advanced jobs which require people to have some experience in lower tier versions of the position.

“Let’s say you want to make a mighty Paladin,” the developers explain. “You can’t just throw any random person into it. What you need to do is take a citizen, make them a soldier and rank them up to be a veteran soldier and then a veteran knight. Then you give them a couple of levels as a cleric and now they can be a Paladin.”

Investing all that time and effort into developing a single Paladin should give you a hint at how valuable single units can become in this game — a hero like that isn’t easily replaced. Not only does this entire system flow well with the whole fantasy theme the game has going on, it’s a wonderful way to create connections and attachments between the player and their kingdom, making the build-up and management very personal without being overwhelming. You don’t need to know everyone in your realm, but important members of society will stay in sight.

Additionally, this system is the thread that binds together the city-building and kingdom-building layers. See, your starting city isn’t the only settlement you can build. There is an overworld map, where you can see cities, resources, landmarks, and armies, like in a 4X game. Any city you put down on this map is a city you have to build in city-builder mode (at least until it’s self-sufficient, after which it can manage itself through a governor).

“You can theoretically claim the entire map and become the unquestioned ruler of the world,” the developers say. That would likely cost you 100 hours of your life, of course, but it’s possible. And that’s one of the attractive things about RAEV. You can have different experiences as part of a single campaign: You can focus on city-building and optimizing production chains or wage large-scale wars or oversee a party of adventurers as it clears nearby dungeons or escorts the caravans moving resources between your cities, all in the same world and all affecting each other.

Mechanics like alliances and trading between kingdoms are in the works as well, adding more depth to this layer of the game. “It’s a ‘Crusader Kings light’ approach,” the developers say of these plans.

If Crusader Kings, The Settlers, and Age of Wonders having a baby sounds great to you, then RAEV is the game to put on top of your wishlist.

RAEV is planned to come to PC in 2026.

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