City building with epic battles in a game laying siege to Steam
NEED TO KNOW
RELEASE April 26
DEVELOPER Slavic Magic
PUBLISHER Hooded Horse
LINK manorlords.com
Ah, the life of a medieval central- European peasant. Untroubled by the taste of Doritos or the mental anguish over whether to buy a Steam Deck or not, their only cares in life were where their pigs had got to and the constant threat of dying in a thousand imaginatively grisly ways.
No wonder they’re such great fodder for videogames. ManorLordscontains many such peasants, doing wholesome things such as ploughing with oxen and planing trees down into timber, but also features spearmen, disease and the leading cause of death among the common people of the time: lords of the manor.
Despite its developer’s inspiration from actual historical events, Manor Lordsisn’t set in any particular time period. And in contrast to a certain other game in this magazine’s preview section this month, it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to take modern weapons with you into combat –although there’s always hope for the revival of that cheat code for the original AgeofEmpiresthat brought lasers and nuclear missiles to the party. What this does mean is that the brutality of medieval weapons will be to the fore, as will laying siege to castles.
YOU’LL BE ABLE TO ZOOM RIGHT IN WHILE PLAYING IT AS A CITY BUILDER
PLAYED IT
“Castles, sieges and siege engines are a fairly iconic part of the time period, and I have some grand plans for the implementation of these aspects,” says Greg Styczeń, the one-man dev team behind the game. “I’ve previously showcased how some of the systems might work, and some of them were even in-game for testing at various points of development. I’m not yet sure how much of it will be available to play with at launch, and how much will be added during the Early Access period instead.”
ManorLordsis releasing into Steam Early Access, GOG and Game Pass’ Game Preview in April, and currently stands at two million wish-listings on Valves’ service. “When we first launched the announcement trailer in 2020, my girlfriend said she expected me to get 7,000 wishlists,” says Styczeń. “I was more optimistic and said it would be more like 14,000 and that would be awesome. I did not expect the game to pick up so much interest and hit over two million.”
PEACE OUT
This unexpected popularity has brought a level of scrutiny to the game that it’s doing well to stand up to. The quality of its visuals, particularly in the motioncaptured battle scenes and Quixel megascan photogrammetry used for its buildings, means it stands out. Despite the battle scenes being viewed as if from a TotalWargame, you’ll be able to zoom right in while playing it as a city builder –and you don’t even need to do any fighting.
