Manor Lords too realistic or grimy for you? Try cosy survival townbuilder Diluvian Winds, out today

Manor Lords is the most wish-listed game on Steam at the time of this writing, and from my early impressions, it’s an excellent medieval village management simulator. It’s like Banished, but taken up a notch. But as impressive and fun as it is already, it’s still an Early Access game, which means getting it to run at its best requires a little finesse with the settings.

was released into Early Access as the most wishlisted game on Steam. Although it pulled in over 100,000 concurrent players, it definitely doesn't have the feeling of a fully finished game just yet. However, there are plenty of city builders available that can help fill in the time between updates for as it continues to be developed during Early Access.

is a city-building and real-time strategy game that allows the player to act as the ruler of a humble fief, which can expand into large swaths of territory. In, money is divided into regional wealth and treasury. Both kinds of wealth are essential, both in defending the original plot the player is allotted and in expanding to new lands.

In, the player's initial territory is a small village that can gradually turn into a sprawling town. As the town begins to grow through trade, commerce, and even invasion, the roads need to grow to match. Thankfully, roads are not permanent and can be removed just as soon as they are placed.Roads are not mandatory to place in, but the resource helps villagers with pathfinding immensely.

is extremely complex even for a city builder, and there are a few things players should know before getting started. Slavic Magic’s medieval city sim doesn’t feature much in the way of a tutorial, so you’ll have to learn as you play. However, learning a few key pointers can help you take your first steps and set up your settlement for long-term success.

is a real-time strategy game and city-builder where you need to manage and defend all the functions of your settlement. In either the Restoring the Peace or On the Edge scenarios, raising an army to defeat nearby lords and bandits is essential to reach the eventual win condition. For offensive or defensive purposes, crafting builds to construct weapons and armor is imperative.

One of the core resources you can get in is Influence, which can help you press Claims for more land and negotiate with other settlements through Diplomacy. Having high Influence gives you a better chance to expand and let your settlement grow. However, you need to gather enough of the right resources to raise this aspect of your community through specific locations.

It's happening again. A small indie developer comes out of nowhere and has everyone flipping their lid over some revolutionary new game, and you can buy it for half the price of a traditional AAA game. Except this time, there isn't some post-launch slow burn as super-streamer after super-streamer gets their chat cults all riled up. Nope, this go-around, medieval city builder Manor Lordsarrived at its Early Access launch with a wishlist army over three million strong, reaching 170,000+ concurrent players on Steam multiple times during launch weekend. But with many of its features still unfinished, Manor Lords may be just a flash in the pan, at least for now.

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

Medieval city builder Manor Lords was Steam's most-wishlisted game prior to release, and has now managed the feat of transmuting that anticipation into broad enthusiasm and very healthy sales. Not too shabby, considering that it's mostly the work of just one person, Grzegorz Styczeń of Slavic Magic, who has hopefully found time to sleep now and then between fielding bug reports and preparing the game's first patches.

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.