Manor Lords
As of this writing, one game leads the pack when it comes to Steam’s most-wishlisted games.
Manor Lords has been wishlisted an estimated 4 million times and counting as of this writing, far-surpassing any other game out there including highly-anticipated titles like Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades II.
The game is a city-builder with some fun twists. You’ll grow your manor and surrounding countryside and villages, engage in large-scale tactical battles against rivals and manage changing seasons, weather and more. It’s not a grand strategy game, however. Rather, you focus primarily on your estate and managing your lands. The experience is designed to be more chill than a lot of other games in the genre. Here’s a trailer:
Manor Lords launches into Early Access today on Steam and is free day-one on PC with Xbox Game Pass. In a note from the developer, Greg Styczeń of the one-person studio Slavic Magic—yes, the most-wishlisted game on Steam is being made by a single person—lays out what to expect, and what not to expect from the game.
He lists out a few things that gamers should not expect:
-Manor Lords is not a Total War competitor. It’s a citybuilder 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 citybuilding and management.
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-It’s not a Empire Management style Grand Strategy game either. The map has regions, but you won’t be able to conquer the whole Europe, nor have marriages or anything like that. The game is designed to play at a much smaller scale.
-It’s not an RPG either. If you played KCD or Mount&Blade, ML is a different type of game. 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 really 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.
-It’s not a competitive, fast paced RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft. A lot of the game mechanics focus on aesthetics of your town and resources take some time to be transported around the map. This results mostly in a more of a relaxed experience, with high intensity moments spicing up atmospheric citybuilding rather than the game being at high intensity all the time.
Styczeń also reminds players that the game is Early Access. It’s not finished. It’s going to be buggy. He’s not publishing a roadmap, either, noting “I want to adopt the philosophy of ‘listen, verify, implement’” in order to avoid promising features that don’t end up making it into the game.
Manor Lords is being published by Hooded Horse. You can check out its Steam page here.