These include DON’T NOD, Hooded Horse, Thunderful, Thunder Lotus, Serenity Forge, Skybound Entertainment, Raw Fury, Pathea, Wired Digital, poncle, and Cult Games. The appearing titles have yet to be confirmed, but we could see the likes of The Lonesome Guild and Aphelion, the former published by DON’T NOD and out later this month. The latter is developed by the same and launching in 2026.

Hooded Horse could showcase Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era, which was suddenly delayed to next year, while Serenity Forge may showcase its horror farming title, Fractured Blooms. How many of these will be available for Game Pass on day one? Time will tell, so stay tuned for more details.

In fact, the game has sold over three million units worldwide since its early access release, it has been announced. It sold a million units throughout its launch weekend last year, and had hit 2 million units in less than a month from that point. There have also been multiple major content updates since its launch – the most recent of which launched last month – which will doubtless have contributed to consistent sales as well.

Manor Lords is available in early access on PC. There’s no concrete word yet on when it will exit early access or whether ports are planned for other platforms.

Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse has announced that it has acquired the publishing rights for Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew across all platforms. Going forward, the game will be published, distributed, and handled in general by Hooded Horse.

“We are honored and humbled that Mimimi chose us to be a part of Shadow Gambit’s journey,” says Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender. “This game is the pinnacle of stealth strategy games, and we’re looking forward to helping it maintain the long-term success it deserves.”

“Shadow Gambit is in its final form, and we’re excited to be partnering with Hooded Horse for its ongoing commercial needs,” says Mimimi Co-Founder Johannes Roth. “We’re very impressed by their approach to indie publishing and are confident they will help the game reach even more players.”

In our review of Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew, we awarded it a score of 9/10, saying, “Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is an excellent game. With its wonderfully realized fantasy pirate setting, it instantly pulls you into its world, and with a combination of tight and perfectly implemented mechanics, excellently designed stealth sandboxes, and a colourful cast of characters that’s an absolute blast to play as, it delivers a consistently fun and inventive adventure where the stealth, tactics, and experimentation never lose any of their charm, right up until the credits roll.” Read the full review through here.

Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.

Its concurrent player count has also been impressive, peaking at 173,178 on April 28th, according to SteamDB. Of course, early access is only the beginning – the developer plans to add more content based on feedback alongside “additional polishing, balancing and bug fixing.” The first such patch is available now in Steam’s Beta Branch and buffs archers while nerfing several Trade Developments.

Though the core mechanics are present, Manor Lords will still spend “around a year” in early access. Once again, this could change depending on community feedback. Slavic Magic also might go for a price increase after adding more features and content.

Stay tuned for further updates, and in the meantime, check out our review of the early access version here. We gave it a 7 out of 10, praising the performance, visuals and overall mechanics, though there are still some rough edges to iron out.

Soaring past two million copies sold,
Lords and ladies rejoice!
April 26th marked the beginning,
Venturing into Early Access with great success.
Incredible achievements made possible by all of you.
Congratulations to @LordsManor from Hooded Horse! pic.twitter.com/m6hlcNflob

— Hooded Horse (@HoodedHorseInc) May 16, 2024

Some balance changes include your people picking random food instead of eating in a fixed order and merchants no longer spawning at the nearest trade point when establishing a trade route. The Trade Logistics development branch also now lowers new trade costs by 50 percent instead of capping them at 25. The ranged attack damage of war bows is increased from four to 12, and the retreat distances of AI are tuned to reduce “how often its archers get into the loop of attack-retreat.”

Check out some of the patch notes below and full details here, though remember that many of these could change further or not even make it in. Manor Lords is available for PC via Steam Early Access. Head here for our review, where we gave it a 7 out of 10.

Version 0.7.955>0.7.960

Major changes:

• The King’s Tax is now enabled (or Annual Royal Tax, can’t decide on the name)
  a) This tax is collected annually from all players (main player and AI) and goes to your liege. It’s counted per population and therefore should become a counterbalance for players who hoard huge wealth despite having nonoptimized economies.
  b) [WIP] For now the player can go in debt without consequence, but in the future the player will lose king’s favor and eventually the king’s army will show up as enemies for players who refuse to pay
• Global/Local trade switch for trading posts
  a) The player can now switch trade to “local only” in the trading post for each type of good if they want to use the trading post to exchange goods between their own regions but ignore the free merchants.
  b) For now 2 trading posts (both regions) are still required to make it work.
  c) Employed traders will prioritize to travel to the place with best prices to commence trade, and yes potentially including regions owned by other Lords. This can have interesting consequences in the future. For now I reduced the transport distance from the calculation in order to make it more predictable for the player where the traders will go (to the place with the best price).
  d) Regional wealth is still required for exchanging goods between regions with a trading post since I want to keep the regions as independent economic units which in my view a more realistic simulation of economy.

Gameplay & balance:

• [Experimental] When consuming food, people will now pick a random food resource instead of eating food in a specific order
• [Experimental] Fertility is no longer drained after crop growth reaches 100% so that always micromanaging early harvest is no longer a preferred strategy. Yield may still increase over 100% growth if max yield is not reached.
• [Experimental] When harvesting, the crops are directly added to the field inventory instead of the villager inventory. This was done to ensure that harvesting walk times aren’t the main bottleneck for farming, especially for large fields. [Side note: moving harvest season to August is also possible in a future patch if needed]
• [Experimental] Prioritized Oxen plowing over transporting resources back to the granary & warehouse to reduce the ox walking back and forth from the plowed field every time a new batch of resources is available for transport
• Plowing shed now adds 2 livestock worker slots
• Lowered the rate of the Baron claiming regions and adjusted it to better reflect the game settings
• Removed the worker camp upgrade it was meant for colony regions and will be readded when they are properly implemented
• Food producing residential plots no longer stock up on their produce before they share with the marketplace
• Increased sawpit log storage space to 5
• [Experimental] When establishing a trade route, the merchants will no longer all spawn in the nearest tradepoint. Instead, the game will distribute the merchants to circle between various tradepoints in order to make building trading posts right on the edge of the region less optimal.
• Increased warbows ranged attack from 4 to 12
• [Experimental] “Trade logistics” development branch now lowers the cost of new trade routes by 50% instead of clamping it at 25
• [Experimental] Cost of opening new trade routes now scales exponentially with every opened trade route
• [Experimental] Base cost of opening a trade route was increased from 12 to 20 (that is before the good value multiplier)
• [Experimental] When market is oversupplied, the player can still export stuff, although for much lower price
• [Experimental] The price multiplier for oversupplied goods is now 0.75x for oversupplied and 0.5x for critically oversupplied
• [Experimental] How fast market is oversupplied no longer depends on the value of goods because it punished having high value trade routes. Now the oversupply rates are equal for all good types.
• [Experimental] Better deals development branch reduces the foreign import tariff by 50% instead of removing it completely
• [Experimental] Reduced ale consumption by 75% (around 1/3 per family per month)
• [Experimental] Made the building placement steepness limits harsher cause the trading posts and churches often looked super janky on very sharp slopes
• Soldiers no longer trigger “unburied bodies” approval factor when corpses are in their proximity
• [Experimental] Hitching post is free again, to reduce chances of players getting stuck with no ox, no hitching post and no ability to order an ox

Minor changes:

• Applied the “mindfulness” system that was initially designed for the oxen to the free merchants. This system is used to reduce clumps and traffic jams.
• Moved the location of trades further off map to make sure there is some space for all the trade wagons even if the players place the trading post right on the edge of the map
• If a trading post is clogged, traders are allowed to make transactions without entering the shed, as long as they are within the general building bounds
• [Experimental] Changed default AA under DX11 to TAA
• Added a spatialization update call when recruits are sneakily teleported home when rallied to ensure collisions are properly calculated after teleportation
• Added a check for idle villagers to avoid hanging around the graveyard for random conversation since it looked weird
• Made “is close to camera” value update on setting follow mode to make sure the game doesn’t optimize animations or sound effects thinking the character is still far from the camera
• Disabled fire damage for people who have water buckets and are actively firefighting + redued the fire damage amount
• When all resource visualization slots are “filled”, villagers will transport to a random one instead of the first one found. This ensures less traffic jams for instance at the churchyard if all graves are “full” already.
• Firefighting villagers will now ignore anticlogging behavior (waiting their turn at narrow pathfinding points)
• Added a “mourning period left” UI element in the residential panel to display how many days of mourning are left until the burgage plot can bring in more family members again
• Added mourning icon to the building floater
• Made sure mourning period is properly added to save data
• After continuing the game after a victory the camera should go back to the player’s main region instead of levitating over the map edge
• [Experimental] Disabled the ability to quicksave during the game over / victory cinematic
• Disabled the ability to manual save the game after being defeated & added a tooltip explaining why saves are disabled
• Disabled quick save and autosave if game was lost
• When ox gathers a log, it will prioritize immediately bringing it to the sawpit before bringing it to the logging camp unless construction reserve forbids it
• Improved marketplace logistics efficiency and optimization
• Tuned the AI retreat distances in an attempt to reduce how often its archers get into the loop of attack-retreat
• Added the missing trading post building thumbnail
• Minor unit in-town pathfinding updates
• Swapped the old UE4 destructible system for a new, UE5 friendly, chaos based debris system. For now it’s just used for chopped firewood cutter logs.
• Further tweaks to properly choose the right default AA/upscaler during the first time launch correctly for specific GPUs (eg. RTX properly defaulting to DLSS)
• Added kings tax rate multiplier to the game setup settings
• Due to mismatch in global market supply stock values, old saves (from builds 0.7.9540.7.956) will have their market supply reset on loading
• [Experimental] Due to changes in how food is consumed, a popup “Food consumed” may no longer appear if a building is selected while a food is being consumed from inventory
• [Experimental] Made the sheep flock a bit more closely together to look more like a herd
• Steepness limits no longer apply when placing rally points
• Players can now rally their militia on fields and pastures
• Trading posts will now display a price range for imports in case they can buy it both from other regions AND from foreign trade sources
• Increased the sheep & lamb collision radius
• Capped the number of workers who supply a single market stall at the same time to 2 to reduce markets getting completely clogged with the new upped market supply frequency
• Further optimized the market supply functions to make late game towns run smoother
• Optimized the function that searches for a friend to do idle tasks with (like conversations)
• Optimized the door opening animations
• Increased the precision when checking whether a character is inside a building on fire and should take damage
• Unified the currency icon in the mercenary company panel to make it clearer that you’re paying with treasury and not regional wealth
• Added accommodation call after fire is started and turns people homeless so that they can be re-accommodated to other available burgage plots immediately
• Since almost all families have more than 1 family member, I made the “workplace/reassign” buttons aligned vertically instead of horizontally in the family list
• Fixed old fonts being used in the family entry widgets

Crashfixes:

• Fixed a crash when doing a sequence of livestock import, export and import, because “home” wasn’t cleared properly during export and the same animal was reimported
• Fixed a rare crash if a handcart fails to spawn, probably if the trading post was build so that part of it crosses the map edge
• Fix crash on startup if OpenXr sdk is installed

"Your village will slowly expand and attract other villagers, requiring more housing, a proper marketplace to distribute different types of food and necessities, clothing and even amusement."

Though set during the 14th century and even sports some real-world locations, Manor Lords doesn’t conform to any period of history or dive too deep into historical conflicts. Dirt and a single camp of settlers is your inheritance; that customized coat of arms represents no standing army (forget the non-existent coffers and treasury). Upon this humble rock, you must build your settlement, construct housing for your people, and secure food and fuel supplies. Other lords tend to their business, and you can either engage in trade, declare war or ignore them completely.

Manor Lords eases you into the role of would-be ruler pretty decently, explaining the benefits of connecting roads and cattle (like how they assist in faster transport of materials and construction) or how to set up gathering, hunting and storage facilities. I could have used a better explanation for growing crops – leaving the soil fallow and restoring some of its fertility made sense, but waiting several months and not seeing a shred of wheat harvested didn’t.

Your village will slowly expand and attract other villagers, requiring more housing, a proper marketplace to distribute different types of food and necessities, clothing and even amusement. More nuanced options also become available, like adding backyard facilities to specific houses, enabling a surplus of eggs or hides.

However, simply constructing houses left and right isn’t the best solution if there aren’t enough supplies. Pushing your gatherers and hunters may also seem like the best solution, but so is being careful to not overload the storage, since excess resources can become spoiled from rain and other environmental conditions or cause animals to migrate, thus wiping out a stable source of food.

Then again, worrying about the variety of foods available is also important to fulfill your citizens’ needs (which trade can mitigate to an extent). Approval is surprisingly lenient initially, though not catering to the people means you can’t upgrade their housing and thus receive passive income. It’s much easier than it seems to railroad yourself, stagnating the growth of the village and any available forces. Occupying another territory to avail its resources is easier said than done since you need to build up influence, which feels a little too high at present, or utilize the King’s Favor.

Choosing your starting region isn’t much of a hassle since they each have the same resources, but you can’t select the position of your starting camp. It could be near essential food sources or not, which became annoying when the animals migrated and I suddenly needed to gather berries from across the map.

"Progress can seem slow at times, but it affords more opportunities to appreciate the little things. The mild hustle and bustle as your villagers go about their daily activities and the lilting soundtrack bring the medieval village to life."

Progress can seem slow at times, but it affords more opportunities to appreciate the little things. The mild hustle and bustle as your villagers go about their daily activities and the lilting soundtrack bring the medieval village to life. An experimental third-person camera further increases immersion, allowing you to roam among the citizenry on the ground level. Despite being a work-in-progress, it works surprisingly well (outside of that one building being a black void), offering a new perspective as you watch villagers clean clothes, drop off supplies in the marketplace, and so on.

Unfortunately, keeping closer tabs on them from a bird’s eye is slightly more challenging. While hitting Tab showcases which buildings have people in them, so you know if facilities like the forge or mining pits are currently running, no list showcases what everyone is doing at a single glance.

Since you need to unassign citizens from tasks to aid in construction or even have them tackle different jobs to curry up materials for trading, there’s some furtive clicking involved. A singular list to assign and unassign individuals would be an excellent quality-of-life feature. Tracking the progress of resources gained and lost with some graphs would also be helpful.

As your village grows, you can invest in different developments, unlocking benefits that make ploughing fields faster or provide passive incomes of bread and firewood. You can also enact policies for some double-edged benefits, but Policies are underdeveloped right now, so it should be interesting to see what other options emerge during early access.

As for combat, it’s a spectacle, as you deploy your troops and can either have them engage the enemy full force, bait them in or stand their ground. It’s easy to manage, and there was at least one opportunity where a unit kept some raiders distracted while another picked their flank apart. Of course, there’s not much to do against sheer numbers, and it felt somewhat unfair to see a raiding party roughly three times the size of my army beeline from across the map to destroy it.

Since the villagers constitute your standing army, losing even a few can be rough; having them wiped out so decisively means a quick restart and pondering what I could have done differently (like having the means to bring on Mercenaries earlier).

"As for combat, it’s a spectacle, as you deploy your troops and can either have them engage the enemy full force, bait them in or stand their ground."

"Whether or not it caters to others’ expectations and offers this sweeping medieval playground or a peaceful city-builder that makes you ponder each decision carefully, Manor Lords is an all-around solid title."

Don’t get me wrong – I like that aspect of citizens turning warriors since it makes the people feel much more important rather than just passive resource income. It’s just that the negatives – like potentially losing my workforce – far outweigh the positives, namely some influence and bandits’ corpses.

There are other areas where Manor Lords could stand to improve, like adding random events and occurrences to assuage some of the boredom between long waits. While there’s still a lot to be done, be it in terms of promised features, inherent systems or overall polish, Slavic Magic has something special. It runs great, and I experienced very few technical issues like the camera occasionally slingshotting to a different part of the map or some placeholder text.

For what early access has to offer, it’s worth trying, especially with its different scenario objectives, ranging from peaceful to outright domination and difficulty sliders to customize your experience. Whether or not it caters to others’ expectations and offers this sweeping medieval playground or a peaceful city-builder that makes you ponder each decision carefully, Manor Lords is an all-around solid title. Albeit one that needs more time to grow, yet equipped with its own charm and engaging gameplay loop right out of the gate.

This game was reviewed on PC.

Taking to Twitter, publisher Hooded Horse has revealed that Manor Lords has already sold over 1 million units since its release on Friday. Meanwhile, the game has also hit a peak of over 170,000 concurrent players on Steam, which is the highest CCU count a city builder has seen on Steam to date. According to Hooded Horse, no games in similar genres like grand strategy games, 4x strategy games, and colony simulators have ever seen a higher concurrent user peak on Steam either.

Manor Lords is currently available on Steam in early access. Developer Slavic Magic has previously said the current plan is to remain in early access for a year. The game is also in development for Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One.

Since yesterday's launch Manor Lords has already sold over 1 million copies & hit a peak Steam concurrent player count of 170k – highest ever for a city builder (or for other different genres like GSG/4x/colony sim). Congrats @LordsManor, we're honored to serve as your publisher! pic.twitter.com/559uGRp1NO

— Hooded Horse (@HoodedHorseInc) April 27, 2024

As per SteamDB, the game has already hit a peak of 159,701 players on Steam, an impressive figure that’s likely to climb higher over the coming weekend. Meanwhile, at the time of writing, the game is being played by over 141,000 players concurrently.

Currently available only on PC as an early access title, Manor Lords will also release for Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One down the line, though there’s no word yet on when exactly that will happen.

In a press release, Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender stated, “Slavic Magic has done amazing work. We’re honored and glad to be his publisher and help him realize his dream.” Developed by Greg Styczeń, a “(mostly) solo developer”, Manor Lords is a mix of real-time strategy and city-building in the 14th century.

As a royal leader, your job is to build up a settlement and lead its people, improving their lives and amassing an army. You can also delve into trade, hire mercenary groups to fight for you, take out bandit camps and claim nearby lands for your burgeoning kingdom. Of course, there are leaders with the same objective, and whether you co-exist with or declare war on them is up to you.

Manor Lords enters early access on April 26th for PC players. Slavic Magic recently set expectations for the title, revealing how it’s not like Mount and Blade, Age of Empires, Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Total War. Head here for more details.

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.