Manor Lords is the real deal for strategy fans

But Early Access feels like another tease

Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

Manor Lords is the most-wishlisted game on Steam. Its visuals and concept have captivated so many gamers’ imaginations who aren’t really into strategy games otherwise that it has a chance of becoming something truly special. Getting your hands on something you’ve been wanting for years is always a great moment, but also fraught with danger – did you get too hyped? Did your anticipation warp your expectations? Is it going to be like you imagined at all?

After spending some time with Manor Lords ahead of its Early Access release on April 26, 2024, I can summarize it with just a few words: Yes, it’s the real deal – but it’s far from complete.

If you’re out of the loop: Manor Lords is a historical city-builder with RTS elements developed by a one-man development studio called Slavic Magic. Imagine a more realistic-looking The Settlers having a baby with Banished that was adopted by Total War and RimWorld – that’s Manor Lords.

You start with a handful of families, a single ox belonging to the community, and some land you own – and from there, you need to build a flourishing settlement that can not only withstand the tough winters of these lands, but also the greed of bandits and jealousy of rival lords. Naturally, the royal family will want its taxes as well, so you’ve really got your work cut out for you.

Lifestock is crucial to your settlement's wellbeing. / Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

Every crafting process is simulated in Manor Lords, each good is tracked – what’s more, heavy resources like logs need to be pulled by livestock. This means planning your city with logistics in mind is a must right from the start. A villager will need to make their way from their home to their workplace, transport resources from there to the warehouse or the marketplace, and go home again – optimizing their travel distance cuts down on wasted time and ensures that the flow of goods is smooth.

You may laugh, but one of the things that immediately charmed me about the game is the way its residential buildings work. Unlike in most other city-builders, you don’t just plop down houses for families to live in. Instead, you draw plots – and depending on their size and shape, your houses will have different upgrade options later. A broad plot will enable you to build a second house on it, enabling another family to live there. A long plot with a sizable backyard will allow you to build things like vegetable gardens, goat pens, or workshops on the plot, enabling the owners to get additional food on the table or specialize in certain professions to craft advanced products, either for export or use in the settlement. 

Houses can double-up as workshops or provide additional resource production. / Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

It’s such a simple thing – and yet it speaks volumes about the developer’s passion for history and his drive to authentically represent the lives of medieval villagers in his game’s mechanics. And I don’t know what it is about multipurpose buildings in strategy games, but I always really like them, so it’s a double-win in my book.

In general, each family will be assigned to one production building. Management is super easy – at most it takes three clicks to assign or unassign jobs. You can, of course, optimize things by micromanaging. You probably won’t need a family to work as farmers over the winter, as they’re just going to sit on their boney peasant butts, so while snow is covering the land you may want to have them produce leather from the hides that have been gathered over the previous months or get your trading post stocked up with goods.

Building a church is an important milestone in the grwoth of your town. / Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

Contending with a lack of manpower by cleverly assigning families to different jobs at the right time is one of the early game challenges of Manor Lords. Your town will grow by providing empty residential buildings (which also gives a possibility to stop growth whenever you want, which is crucial in order to avoid overextending) and having a positive approval rating – food variety will be your chief source of that at the start. As your population grows and you upgrade houses, its needs will inevitably become more demanding – but higher tier people will pay taxes and be able to equip better gear in case of war.

Speaking of which: You can call your militia to arms to fend off bandits, destroy their camps, or go and fight other nobles. In addition, mercenaries and your personal retinue – which is fully customizable when it comes to looks and gear – are at your command. Battles are inspired by the Total War series with blocky formations and shield walls crashing into each other. Units have a morale counter – which is influenced by their approval of you – and their effectiveness varies depending on the terrain, their fatigue, and the cohesiveness of their formation. Every militiamen is a real villager from your town, so they won't produce things while they're on duty and them dying will leave a hole in your economy. Again, all of this is easy to see and manage in the UI, making it quite a simple amalgamation of systems, but is true to history.

Each member of your militia is a valuable citizen of your village, so losses in battle hurt a lot. / Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

In Early Access, you can expect the city-building part of the game to be the most complete – lots of production chains are present and waiting to be explored. The system of development points and policies, which is used to upgrade and specialize your settlements, is still lacking a good deal of content, but gives a glimpse at what will be possible through it – and that’s actually a lot. Unlocking apiaries gives access to honey and wax, while going in a more farming-oriented direction unlocks game-changers like the heavy plow or apple orchards. Even in its incomplete state, there are various ways to play the game.

What you’ll have to be even more patient for still are the combat and diplomacy – though you can go out and fight bandits or the armies of other lords after laying claim to their lands, developing AI villages are not really a thing yet. For the most part, you’ll focus on your own possessions.

Though there is only one map to start with, it features random resource distribution and start positions, so there’s some variety to be had. Aside from the standard scenario and an ultra-hard version of it, a peaceful mode where you can completely focus on city-building is included.

Performance-wise, the title has been buttery smooth with very few bugs or text typos. The UI is fantastic overall and could really only be made better by implementing nested tooltips – it would be great, for example, if you could hover over goods and be shown the production chain behind them. Overall, though, Manor Lords is very polished for an Early Access title. Visuals and sound are so immersive, you can just lose yourself in the hustle and bustle of your town.

Manor Lords’ Early Access is easily the best and worst thing at the same time Hooded Horse has ever done to me: I’m in love with it and fully see its immense potential to become a truly incredible game, but now I can’t wait for the finished thing and the road to 1.0 will be a tortuous one. Bow your peasant heads to Slavic Magic and let the man cook!