Cities Skylines in the Middle Ages – Preview

There are games that become very popular before anyone has even had a chance to play them for a second. This is usually the result of well-oiled marketing machines. After all, major publishers have been pleasing their followers for months or even years with all kinds of updates and thus effectively draw attention to their games. Manor Lords is not that kind of game. Manor Lords does not have a major publisher behind it and certainly no major developer. In fact, development studio Slavic Magic actually only consists of one person. Greg Styczeń largely worked alone for Manor Lords, although he also outsourced things to others. After all, few are able to design, develop, program and so on all facets of a game themselves. Yet Styczeń did most of it solo. He has repeatedly declined collaborations with major publishers or investors and only two years ago joined publisher Hooded Horse, which published Terra Invicta and Sons of Valhalla, among others.

That start immediately makes Manor Lords quite unique. It’s a passion project from someone who wanted to make the game he envisioned, without making concessions to any partners or developers with a different opinion. This immediately gives Manor Lords an advantage for many people, which is also evident from the number of times the game has been ‘wishlisted’ on Steam. More than three million gamers put the game on their wishlist and within days of the early access release, tens of thousands of user reviews were already on the platform. At a time when major publishers dominate the gaming world with efficiency in production, marketing and conversion, Manor Lords feels like a breath of fresh air.

However, the game will still have to prove itself. Now, but also in the coming months or even years. In early access, the game is more of a ‘proof of concept’ in various respects than it is a full-fledged game. You see the philosophy of the maker and can already play with a large number of ideas that go with it, but at the same time there is still a lot missing and not everything works as it should. As a result, the game quickly loses its appeal after the opening phase. There is no real endgame yet, something that will really endanger your thriving empire after a while. That’s not a problem, partly because Slavic Magic is also honest about that. The game will go into early access to give gamers the opportunity to get started, but those gamers should not expect to receive a fully finished product.

The emphasis is on building

Those gamers should also not expect this to be some kind of mix between Age of Empires, Total War and Cities Skylines or something along those lines. The comparison ‘Cities Skylines in the Middle Ages’ comes closest. Manor Lords is primarily about building your own medieval villages and towns, not about building gigantic armies to wipe your enemies off the map. Fighting certainly plays a role, but that role is much smaller than that of building and managing your village. Your biggest enemy is a shortage of food or firewood, not the bandits that pop up every now and then or the armies of a rival baron that sometimes stroll by.

In fact, Manor Lords is so focused on city building that you can choose to focus solely on that. Before you start a game, you can choose from several game modes, which determine how much you will be harassed during your construction. If you don’t feel like it, you can turn it all off. I chose a middle path where some robbers passed by from time to time and I ultimately had to own more territories than the rival Baron, but where that never felt like the main thing. Every now and then there was a fight, but then I was able to quickly return to looking at where I wanted to build my next house block or which raw materials I wanted to import or export through my trading house.