If you’re following the development of Manor Lords, a medieval city builder from Slavic Magic, in its current Early Access stage, you may have noticed that the pace of updates we’ve been getting recently has significantly slowed down.
Not to worry, though; rest assured, the project is not abandoned and the developers are still working hard to bring us new features.
What’s New?
On July 3rd, Grzegorz Styczeń announced that there’s a big patch coming soon, and he was kind enough to give us a glimpse of what we can expect to see.
The most important feature seems to be the Affinity System, but developers hinted that there will also be new shop fronts and artisan workstations, a new map, a see-through fortifications system, and a new visual style for perk cards.
Developers also noted in a closing statement that it’s just a part of what’s currently being worked on, and there’s more.
Affinity System
The upcoming Manor Lords update aims to introduce a new system that changes how building a prosperous medieval village will work and emphasizes the medieval simulation aspect of the title.
With Affinity System, the game will rely on various environmental types that will affect the performance of related buildings constructed in their vicinity. So far, developers said they have Meadow, Woodland, Farmland, Rural, and Urban environments, each bringing their own unique effects to certain buildings.
For example, Apiaries will benefit from large Woodlands, encouraging players to place their beehives in that kind of environment for the best results. This will undoubtedly make gameplay deeper as you’ll be facing choices such as whether to chop down nearby trees or not; changing the environment may yield unfavorable outcomes.
Developers are also experimenting with something akin to production chains, where certain buildings will affect the affinities of other buildings.
A New Map – “Divided”
There’s not much known about the upcoming Divided map, other than the fact that it will consist of two sides, East and West, divided by a mountain range.
At this moment, the game features three different maps, so having one extra will surely add to the game’s replayability value and will allow players to employ new strategies through new kinds of environmental interactions that weren’t possible before.
Future Plans for Manor Lords
The developers announced that they’d like to get back to smaller, more frequent updates, and that’s what we can expect after the upcoming megapatch drops. The team wants it to be done before moving on with smaller patches, as this update touches on a lot of existing game systems and mechanics, making the entire code very fragile until everything is finished.
Slavic Magic doesn’t want to risk breaking the game by interfering with the ongoing development process, so let’s give them some more time, and then we should be back to getting more updates again.