Botany Manor might look cozy, but it hides a streamlined complexity

Between Palworld, Helldivers 2, and now Manor Lords, it’s been a year of games coming out of left field and achieving runaway success.

The "Why Not Both?" meme is more than a little overused when it comes to decisions between two good things, but it's the perfect answer to the question of whether you should use a controller or a mouse to play your favorite games.

Depending on when you read this, Steam Family sharing is either in beta or finally released to the public. Either way, if you're going to share your Steam library with family members after years of building your library, you might want to limit which games they can actually see!

I don't have a lot of interest in VR these days, but I do have an interest in the beautifully realised miniature doings of your villagers in Manor Lords, the city builder that is currently rather popular on noted purveyor of ye finest interactive entertainments Steam - and which now has unofficial VR support care of Flat2VR and Praydog's UEVR.

Manor Lords developer Slavic Magic, aka Greg Styczeń, has laid out the broad strokes of the game's first proper patch in early access. This follows a boisterous opening weekend that has seen the new city builder top purchase charts on Steam, causing Valve's mighty servers to crumble under the strain like overloaded oxen.

Manor Lords entered early access and quickly achieved a major sales milestone in a single day, selling over 1 million copies. After topping Steam's wishlist, Manor Lords proved it wasn't just a flash in the pan and has been attracting more and more players.

“Given the opportunity, players will become a merciless egg baron and sit chuckling on a throne of shells while medieval Europe cowers beneath their imperious yolk,” is what I assume Soren Jonson once said, and it looks like Manor Lords is proving this timeless adage right once more. Despite shifting over a million units and hitting the highest concurrent player count of any ‘city builder’ on Steam, creator Greg ‘Slavic Magic’ Styczeń is already looking to the future of how the building game handles trade.

A piece of artwork in the Halo subreddit from a user named ToastyGhostey, titled «WARTHOG RUN,» has sparked discussions among fellow fans due to its resemblance to a classic Star Wars show. Long-time Halo fans are reminded of the style of renowned animator Genndy Tartakovsky, the creator of «Samurai Jack» and animator of The Clone Wars, after seeing the fan art.

isn't content to just be an average, everyday city-builder, and the game's commitment to doing something unique goes beyond its central concept. The obvious thing that makes different from other games in the genre is its blend of tactical battles into the mix, which gives it an extra dose of appeal. This isn't the only feature that's hard to find elsewhere, however, and another fairly unique addition also contributes to making its medieval settlements feel more like real places with real people.

There's not a lot of information about whatdeveloper Larian Studios is working on next, but based on the little that's known, there's good reason to believe the studio is headed in a substantially different direction. Considering the striking success that has found since its release, pivoting to something different might seem like a dangerous choice that could alienate an enormous fan community. Depending on the approach, however, it's possible that what Larian is cooking up at the moment could be a more exciting prospect than another game like would be.

, the upcoming indie city-building and brutal medieval strategy game, has been picking up steam as it quickly approaches its Early Access release date of April 26. In addition to melding together aspects of various genres like city-building, social simulation, and RTS-like tactical battles into a single title, the independent developer Slavic Magic is taking another unique approach, this time relating to future updates.

While Manor Lords may at first glance seem similar to the Total War series, its developer has said the upcoming strategy game should not be seen as a competitor.