After months of silence, we've got a new update on Manor Lords, the hit city builder from Slavic Magic. It brings a new Beta for players to try out, featuring some considerable improvements, as well as an explanation for the lack of communication from the team.
The last we heard from Manor Lords was in July, where we got a development blog on a number of incoming changes and uplifts. Since then, not much has happened, and today's news opens with an apology, citing a misalignment of priorities as the team expanded.
"Sorry for taking so long this time," begins Grzegorz 'Greg' Styczeń, the creator and solo-dev behind the game prior to the studio's growth. "I am rethinking what went wrong to ensure it won’t happen again. I focused on expanding the developer team and tackled way too many issues at once.
"Right now, on the left of my screen in the engine window, is a graveyard full of perks that didn't work out and were all eventually discarded," he continues. "I needed to align visions with the new designers, and the new programmers learning the codebase (that was basically a giant solo dev spaghetti) also led to a bunch of problems."
He mentions the roadmap, as it were, is for smaller, more regular changes, rather than larger rollouts. In meantime, he outlines the current Beta, where you'll find new maps, better AI-controlled players and towns, and a revamped progression system, among other goodies.
The other leaders operated by the AI can't attack you just yet, but the townships they make are now more polished and natural feeling. Progression has become more "thematic," with an indication the choices will be trickier and less cut and dry.
In general, the project has just gotten deeper across the board. There are increased population types, resources are broken down to disparate parts, and there are more tools for tracking your growth. These come on top of a plethora of quality-of-life improvements.
It's an impressive rollout, and the assertion we'll see more in the weeks and months ahead is exciting. Manor Lords continues to be an impressive game that's worth keeping an eye on.
Manor Lords came about partly because of a classic 1994 medieval strategy game and "raising sheep"
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