Manor Lords Team Sets Expectations for Steam's Most Wishlisted Game

Manor Lords from developer Slavic Magic has very comfortably been enjoying a top spot amid Steam's most wishlisted games these past few weeks even with things like Hades 2 and more competing to take its title. The medieval strategy game is due out in just under a week with a Steam release set for April 26th, and ahead of that release, Slavic Magic shared a new post on the game's Steam page to better set expectations for not only what the game will be, but also what it won't be seeing how it's attracted so many comparisons to other games recently.

Greg Styczeńj, the developer behind Manor Lords, penned the post on Steam listing several different games as examples of ones people might think of when looking at Manor Lords alongside explanations for why those games aren't this. Manor Lords is not "a Total War competitor," he said, nor is it a empire builder like a Civilization game, nor is it an RPG like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, nor is it an RTS like Age of Empires. The game shares some similarities with those given that it does involve building and managing cities, battling, and some on-the-ground exploration of what you've built, but it's not squarely a competitor to any of the games mentioned previously.

What Is Manor Lords?

"It's not a competitive, fast paced RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft," he said to address one specific comparison. "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."

For those who've been keeping up with the game, this next part shouldn't be news, but for those who've only held a cursory interest in Manor Lords, Styczeńj clarified that the game will indeed be an early access launch. That means that it obviously won't be perfect right at release, but he said he hopes the development process moving forward will be a back-and-forth between the developers and the community since players will probably ask him to change some things anyway.

"Yes, it must be disappointing, but I think it's the right choice. It's my first serious game and not only some stuff is still unfinished, but I bet you guys will ask me 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)."

A common release associated with early access launches is a roadmap spelling out the next steps, but don't expect one of those either. Slavic Magic will still be collecting feedback from the community about what to do next, but the developer explained he didn't want to be restricted to a roadmap when things could very easily change.