Slavic Magic’s Manor Lords, a medieval strategy city-builder with battles, has garnered much attention recently, with an impressive two million Steam wishlists on Steam as of January 18th. Ahead of early access, however, it wanted to clarify a few things and set expectations ahead of the same.
It first noted that this isn’t a competitor to Total War but a city-builder with battles. “Yes, battles are there, but not as huge or as frequent as some of you might expect. The majority of gameplay is focused on city building and management.” They also noted that it’s not a grand strategy title where you manage an empire. “The map has regions, but you won’t be able to conquer the whole of Europe, nor have marriages or anything like that. The game is designed to play at a much smaller scale.”
Those who enjoyed Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Mount and Blade shouldn’t expect a role-playing game experience either. “There is a visit mode in Manor Lords which allows you to walk around your town, but it’s an experimental, cosmetic bonus feature. The game is meant to be played from the ‘bird’s eye’ perspective, like a strategy game (almost always) should. There won’t be any first-person gameplay.”
Finally, Manor Lords isn’t something for competitive-minded real-time strategy players versed in Age of Empires or StarCraft. Instead, much of the mechanics are about your town’s aesthetics, while resources “take some time to be transported around the map. This results mostly in a more relaxed experience, with high-intensity moments spicing up atmospheric city building rather than the game being at high intensity all the time.”
Furthermore, it felt that early access is the right choice, not only because the game is unfinished but because players may ask “to change some things you don’t necessarily like. But I want to pursue an open development strategy of a back-and-forth between me and you. I think it worked great for the game so far (I’m comparing to times where there wasn’t even a testing group and I was developing in a bubble).”
Thus far, the response has been “super positive”, which Slavic Magic is grateful for. They also feel that “the game should find a way into the hearts of players who expected Manor Lords to be what it is – a realistic, organic, authentic city builder with real-time battles.”
Manor Lords launches on April 26th for PC via Steam Early Access. Stay tuned for more details en route to launch.
