Summary
I didn’t feel like going out and being social this weekend – it was too hot and humid in my tropical home country of Singapore to leave the house without sweating buckets, so I opted to stay in and spend an afternoon playingManor Lordsfor the first time. I’ve been getting very into city-builders since Ipreviewedupcoming survival city-builderFrostpunk 2last month, and Manor Lords has garnered praise from critics across the board,including our own Harry Alston.
Manor Lords Is Hard To Get To Grips With
My first swing at the game was rough. I started my game over, and over, and over, learning from my mistakes and trying to do better the next time around. The way I structured my city changed according to what I learned from my previous attempts, and I began to group homes and markets together, separated from buildings where the crafting and refining of materials took place. I started to leave space for things I knew I would have to build later, like churches and taverns. I started to prioritise different things, making it a point to establish trade routes and a steady flow of food sources into my town before I started throwing up buildings.
But I kept running into obstacles, and because the game is in early access, I’m not holding it against the developer. It’s hard to tell now if I’m dealing with bugs, being hindered by a skill issue, or if I’m just misunderstanding basic mechanics and strategies because of a lack of information. For example, no matter how hard I try, I simply can’t get enough types of food into the marketplace to upgrade my village to the next level. Whatever the reason, I’m hitting a wall.
Manor Lords doesn’t hold your hand through its scenarios, and though it does have some tutorial popups that point you in the right direction, it doesn’t really tell you how to play either. As the game is right now, you just have to dive in headfirst and figure out what every tool and building does the hard way.
Manor Lords Deserves Time To Become What It Wants To Be
Manor Lords is already a very fun game, even though it’s in early access and shows very obvious signs of not being complete. I often see file names of assets instead of their actual in-game labels, and some things just didn’t work right – for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to get my sheep to move from my livestock trading building to my sheep farming building. There aren’t a lot of features or content just yet, but whatisthere is detailed and extremely compelling. Plus, it looks great.
It will take a long time for Manor Lords to become what its development team wants it to be, especially since that development team is essentially a single person. It could take months before we see a new update, and it will definitely be years before it exits early access and is launched as a complete game.Games take a long time to make, especially now. Everybody knows that. The hype will die down, and the number of active players will drop, but Manor Lords will keep trucking on until it’s ready. That’s what early access entails.
Tim Bender, CEO of Manor Lords’ publisher Hooded Horse, recently responded toa LinkedIn postmade by Raphael van Lierop, CEO ofThe Long Darkdeveloper Hinterland Studio, which said that Manor Lords is “a pretty interesting case study in the pitfalls of Early Access development”. van Lierop said that because the game can’t scale up quickly enough to meet demand, the number of concurrent players has plummeted since launch, and “the developer should have been better prepared” to update the game frequently enough to keep players interested.
He continued to say that the developer should have had its “next major content expansion pretty much in the queue” and advises other early access developers to “have a clear content plan for the first three months of post-launch development”, and to “release [two to three] major updates with new content and features” within that time frame.
That LinkedIn post has since been replaced with a statement from van Lierop apologising for the way his feedback was framed, clarifying that he is “firmly pro-developer” and “anti-crunch”, and wishing the Manor Lords team luck. van Lierop has posted a screenshot of the original post in the comments to “avoid the impression that I’m trying to avoid accountability for my original words”.
Let Manor Lords Grow At Its Own Pace
Bender responded in a linked post that he’d told Manor Lords’ developer to ignore criticism about “missed opportunities because he failed to grow as fast as they wanted, and judging the game a failure by some kind of expectation they formed”. He emphasised that the developer should “focus on his core vision for the game, and to keep in mind that the Early Access road is long and that he should not feel any sense of pressure from the expectations of others”. Chasing numbers leads to burnout, and burnout is bad for creativity.
Bender is right – for the industry to be sustainable, we need to move away from the pressure to keep players fed with constant content and focus on creativity and vision. Independent developers are already so beholden to the whims of players that they end upturning single-player experiences into pseudo live-service games, a practice that harms developers for the benefit of players who feel entitled to a steady stream of content.
We’ve seen so many incredible games come out of the slow cooker that is early access.HadesandBaldur’s Gate 3are the two most obvious examples, and you’ll find thatmanyof TheGamer’s staffagreethat early access isan important tool for developers, even ifthey don’t personally want to play games that are still in early access.
Manor Lords deserves to be allowed to develop at its own pace, and not treated as a cash cow right from the jump. I’m sure when it eventually reaches completion, it’ll make tons of money. For now, I’m happy to stick to dipping in every couple of months when there’s something new to explore.
Manor Lords
WHERE TO PLAY
Manor Lords is a strategy game that has you roleplaying a Medieval lord. You’re the one calling the shots as you send your soldiers into huge battles while also maintaining the social balance back behind your walls.
