Don't sleep on this gorgeous fantasy city builder launching next month

A fantasy village — (Image credit: Dear Villagers)

April is a monster month for city builders, with the Frostpunk 2 beta having arrived this week, top wishlist pick Manor Lords launching next week, and the arrival of several other city building games like Vertical Kingdom, Laysara: Summit Kingdom, and Of Life And Land.

But keep your eyes peeled because when it comes to city builders, May is no slouch either. One of my favorite city builders, Fabledom, is leaving early access with version 1.0 on May 13. Peep the short but sweet trailer below.

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If you haven't played Fabledom, it's an enchanting sim in more ways than one. It's a fantasy city builder where you do the typical mayoral stuff like build houses and farms, harvest resources, and manage the economy… but there are also evil curses, mighty heroes, magic beanstalks, and friendly talking trees. If you've ever wanted to build and manage a city that would feel right at home in a fairytale, this is the place to do it. You can also attempt to woo princes or princesses from other realms, and even invite them to visit your city.

During the year it's spent in early access, lots of new features have been added like a bartering system, weddings, quests, mythical creatures, military buildings and soldiers, and more. Fabledom's 1.0 release packs even more fantasy into your storybook city, with troll invasions, new rulers in neighboring realms, and "fantastical disasters," which is only described as "events that will bring new fantastical creatures to your realm." The screenshots showing dragons and witches soaring over your city might hint at what's causing these disasters.

I haven't played Fabledom in a while, but I'm excited to dive back in when it launches on May 13. Here's a bunch of lovely screenshots so you can start planning how to build your own fairytale city.

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.