"Please restrain yourself": Dev of Steam-topping city builder Manor Lords asks players to hold back on game-breaking town walls until a "proper" tool is added later

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There's no stopping early access ingenuity

Manor Lords
(Image credit: Slavic Magic)

As press and content creators go hands-on with Steam wishlist-topping city builder Manor Lords ahead of its April 26 early access launch – Jasmine played it for us, and it blew her mind a bit – developer Slavic Magic has asked the hungry player base to hold back on potentially game-breaking DIY workarounds for features that will get "proper" versions in the near future.

"I just saw one press review try to cheese their way and build town walls with the castle planner tool," the game's official Twitter account flagged, "please restrain yourself from doing so. I'll add a *proper* town wall tool in one of the updates and the castle planner is meant for manors/castles. Should've locked it for now."

The cheese wall in question seems to have been discovered, or at least widely shared, by One Proud Bavarian, who put a spotlight on a method to "build a city wall without ruining your save game." You wouldn't think "ruining your save game" would be a potential consequence to simply building a wall in a city builder, but this reflects the current limitations of Manor Lords' early access build. 

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As the developer noted, the castle planner that One Proud Bavarian used to rough out structures that at least look like city walls is actually intended for, well, planning castles. Cosmetically, you can use it to achieve fence and wall-like structures, but things can get gunked up in the game's layered structural system, so the method risks throwing a monkey wrench in your whole build or campaign. 

One viewer joked that people are "already breaking the game," and the developer quickly admitted that "it's not too hard since it's not finished." Such is the way of early access. 

Before it can even launch, Steam's most-anticipated city-builder is forced to patch an economy-busting 'exploit' by hard-nerfing sheep.

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.