Manor Lords, which has long been the most-wishlisted city builder on Steam as well as one of the most-wanted games overall, just behind Hades 2 and Hollow Knight Silksong, is coming to PC in early access on April 26, 2024, with a console release date "to be revealed at a later time."
Publisher Hooded Horse dropped the long-awaited news at today's Xbox Partner showcase. The PC launch covers Steam, GOG, and PC Game Pass day-one. The trailer reckons the city builder is coming to console "soon," but we don't have any sort of launch window to go on yet. With the PC launch still months away, spring or more likely summer 2024 feels like a reasonable estimate for the console debut, which may or may not be Xbox-only. A press release does notably specify "consoles and Xbox Game Pass," with consoles plural perhaps implying a multiplatform release.
Manor Lords is a medieval strategy game about building cities and defending them through large-scale battles. It's a proudly historical game, entrenched in social challenges, resource management, political disputes, and all-out warfare. It's not enough to build navigable roads and houses that don't fall over. As a medieval lord fending off a traitorous baron, you'll also need to manage crops, raise armies, assign homes to residents, prevent plagues and natural disasters, and take charge in real-time battles while minimizing losses to reduce the impact on your workforce.
It's an incredibly dense game, in other words, which makes it all the more impressive that it started as a solo dev's passion project. It certainly looks the part in the latest trailer. Building and residential zoning looks slick, and from the music to the early Renaissance art, the medieval vibes are immaculate. As evidenced by those wishlists, the extremely nitty-gritty granularity of Manor Lords has been catnip to city builder, management sim, and strategy fans alike, propelling it to almost unheard-of popularity for a debut game.
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