The thing about this game is, that it's given me something a lot of games no longer manage to do: continued immersion. It pulls me in, makes me forget my surroundings and makes time fly by. And at the end, I feel relaxed, happy & fulfilled. There is no frustration, just pure bliss. The game manages to give me the emotions that got me into gaming 2 decades ago.
Literally feel more relaxed playing this game than actually getting full nights rest. I’d like to add, even when I fail or do something wrong I don’t mind starting from new and do it better my next run. While content wise it still lacks a lot, it is enough for me to learn the basics and get better. Often times these type of games include so many mechanics that it makes the learning curve so high that it becomes more stressful than relaxing.
Agreed. I mean - in what other city builder game can you go into first person and just walk around in the city you built? That feature doesn't have any gameplay purposes, it is there for immersion and I love it.
Strongly agree. People can bash and say there’s no content but the game is the content and it seems that people have forgotten that. I played all day Sunday. The game feels so natural and it’s simple enough to navigate that the immersion is not lost. Nothing like trying to navigate 16 different windows to try and get your townsfolk some drinking water. That seems to be eliminated with manor lords.
That last bit about the Hooded Horse bylaw is actually incredible. Shareholders have become nothing but leeches in todays world. Sucking up all the good out of a company/product and killing it for a short term dollar. We actually need more things like this in place, where are legal goal isn't to drain the life out of people for profit.
At the same time I expect this publisher will make money hand over fist in the longer term, just because they will draw in talented developers with their focus on quality, and gamers will have a lot of time for a publisher that's known to produce bangers without nickle and diming everyone.
@@fenix849 I own EVERY game hooded horse published, except for Terra Invicta (due to the devs actually scamming another developer and walking away from unfinished projects in the past), and the funny part is... I didn't even notice. Literally been collecting their output thinking "these are great games" and never really paid attention to the publisher. I mean I tend not to have any kind of brand loyalty, but it was kind of funny to realize that I seemed to have become a fan of a publisher on accident.
It's not the company's fault that consumers are rewarding it for giving them crap. If I had a company and people were giving me money for giving them crap, I would gladly serve them. It's their life.
This why you shouldn’t feel bad for people being fired from giant AAA studios. People should look at game development as a passion project not a way to make a living.
@@absurdh3rothose are people who are usually overworked, working overtime, "crunching" for months due to bad management, and paid way less than they would get in a software company. Everyone working in the game industry as a cog in the machine does it from passion, agreeing to lower wages, terrible (often unsustainable) work-life balance and worse treatment.
@@biggumstevens1784 What are you even on about? The game plays completely fine. There was some difficulty understanding processes for me, but overall. Building a successful little empire on the map was fun and attainable. No crashes, no pains in gameplay, nothing. I've seen reviews on steam that are a more detailed version of your comment, and I've simply not encountered these claims of the game "barely functioning". There definitely needs to be balancing and improvements, but claiming that the game is broken is sensational nonsense.
@@absurdh3ro What absolute nonsense. If people didn't make a career out of game development this game would never exist because the developer wouldn't have had the resources to make it. Do you think everyone who works for epic games is there for passion?
@@taturay So he says, but I am not sure I longer believe that. he has been getting great funding and support for quite some time, and he still claims he is working alone? I am just a bit confused by that.
@@_sky_3123 Isnt it the same for stardew valley tough ? Also getting more poeple in will also mean you lose some control. Edit watching the vid. He has stated that he has pulled in some pro's too help with some systems.
The game kinda sucks tho... It gets stale real quick and has little replayability compared to something like against the storm. I still don't regret buying manor lords because I'm a nut for Feudalism/Manorialism, but I think the game is a bit too pricey considering the lack of content.
I am a tester for Nebulous fleet command another game published by hooded horse and I can confirm they take a very hands off approach. The lead dev Mazer has done something very similar to greg having a couple other people do work on the 3d models, sfx and other things while he focuses on the core game design and balance, in fact hooded horse has taken on a UI designer that they are lending out to their developers saving them that expense. I have seen the conquest game mode be born day by day feature by feature with no impression of any external pressures.
Yes! For more context on this exactly point of a 'very hands off approach'. Clanfolks, another Hooded Horse game is also a solo developer, a developer who often completely diverts from the roadmap to incorporate a fans ideas. Apparently some fan said, "How about beavers?" So the dev diverted his time for a few days, showed some players, one of which said, "But don't you need rivers for beavers?", to which the dev diverted his time for about a fortnight to make not only rivers but the required bridges (and his son wanted to build on the bridges so he added that too) to show his players, one of which said, "But the banks of the river is looking a little bare", to which the dev took more time to improve that, including revamping the whole spawning of bushes and trees and basically all nature to look more natural, another fortnight off the program, then got another brain wave about weather, and diverted his course for another few weeks to add storms and lightning, which is probably going to add a whole new context to how people and nature respond to them. Apparently none of this was on the development program at all and took many weeks diversion from the original path, and mostly in response to his players. He posted community notices on Steam (anyone can read them - you don't have to own the game) which are REALLY interesting to read because he explains how all of it happened and how he dealt with the problems he encountered. A wonderful dev! The the point is that these improvements were HUGE and really added a LOT to the game, and were all complete impulses from his fans, and this took weeks of diversion from the roadmap and Hooded Horse is obviously quite happy for this guy to just run by the seat of his pants in making the game. He was supposed to be implementing a social conflict system (he was in the middle of implementing that when all this started), but we ended up with something wonderful, and we'll still get that social conflict system eventually. Isn't it just obvious that releasing a game with creativity driven by the players, and when the game is ready and playable is always going to make more money than releasing garbage?
Manor Lords is fantastic. Does it have bugs, yes. Does it have jank, yes. Is it incomplete, yes. Can it be frustrating when the Sawmill just stops making Planks which in turn blocks you from progressing, also yes. And with all of that I'm completely addicted to this game.
The planks thing happened to me last night, but it eventually just started working eventually. Took like 10 minutes, damn ox just never delivered any logs despite having nothing else to do.
I like Manor Lords, I think it has a lot of potential and I'm ok with it's progress so far with it being early access. Right now after 10 hours, don't know what else to do really, can't progress further and that's ok. I've had fun with it and will wait until it's developed more to jump back into it.
Yes, when the full mechanics come out, I think there will be more to chew on. The archers being completely nerfed makes me want to just stay on peace-mode. And I'm still enjoying it.
I have liked it after about the same time I have ran the game through, but like other games (squad for example) the updates still continue it's worthwhile if this guy updates regularly
10 hours seems to be the consensus for amount of content in Manor Lord's right now. I've currently got 91 minutes, but everywhere I've seen discussions, I've seen people say they ran out of things after 10-15 hours. I am looking forward to future support for it though as the time I've played was very satisfying
@@UrbanAgent423 I'm at about 20 hours in Manor Lords. I'm still discovering a lot of mechanics that I didn't notice before. This game is much deeper (already) than it looks in my opinion.
Hooded Horse really deserves the praise. We need those shining examples to set a new course for the future of gaming industry, exploitation has gone long enough.
Hooded Horse is definitely one of the few good guys in publishing. There's an interview with the founder on TH-cam that I recommend listening to. They take good care of the devs and they deserve every success.
Dude prepared a button that said "become millionaire" for 7 years, imagine the relief by the end of the launch day when he did indeed become suddenly a millionaire.
I'm glad for it, really. Gotta think about who i can gift this game to. I want hooded horse looking like scrooge mcduck and adding more content I want my whole retinue on horseback
@@VictorJapaXD hes easily a multi millionaire now dude lmao 1million copies plus the gamepass deal like hes stupid rich and has set his next 5 generations plus up for leisure living lol
this just shows that a game doesn't have to be a hyperactive multiplayer tryhard fest to succeed. And it makes me happpy as a singleplayer slow paced game enjoyer😊
a historian told me that the look of the buildings is very accurate for 14th century franconia. the economy isn't, obviously. most of the people back then were self-sufficient, they would go find their own firewood, make their own clothes, gather their own berries. Markets only took place once or twice a year in towns, not villages. But that would have made for a very dull game.
still, having houses farm vegetables or having chickens is completely correct. Also when tiering up having a specialisation linked to a house instead of a production facility is quite novel for this type of game. My only negative point is that i wish there would be a sandbox battle mode. I've played for 40 hours and have maybe 5 big battles. So I'm not that good at battles because of the great mechanic of losing battle = losing workers you only go to battle if you'"re quite sure you're gonna win.
@@olivierchristiaens8174 absolutely. however, in a medieval village everybody would have a vegetable garden AND chicken AND an orchard AND some goats or sheep or pigs. and this wouldn't stop if someone sets up a smithy. A smithy takes up only a few square meters and it will be used only occasionally, mostly in winter when agriculture stops. All the "industry" would be done additionally to farming. Also every peasant would have their own plot of farmland. The only communal job is the shepherd, he herds all animals of the village, but every sheep and every pig still belongs to a certain person.
@@olivierchristiaens8174 in fact few peasants were land owners. most land was owned by a "landlord", but every field was assigned to a certain family. There were families who had one or two or three fields assigned to them and there were families who had no fields and had to work on other people's land for money. But every person in a village or small town worked in agriculture to some degree. Even the priest had his own patch of land he worked on weekdays.
All correct except how often market days happened. Depending on the area and infrastructure, it might happen once a moon (month) or once a fortnight. For ancient towns that had some vestiges of Roman heritage, they could hold them more often, as there were dedicated buildings and squares built by the Romans in previous centuries. Roman roads also played a big part up to the 19th century when railroads started to come to stride. In Eastern and Northern Europe they happened less often due to distances, lack of Roman heritage and general social structure. There were usually dedicated market town that sometimes were open for business every single day.
I think more cred should be given to Hooded Horse as the other titles that have chosen to work with them have also been given creative freedom. It's so rare these days and it is proving itself time and time again. Software development happens best by humans who are comfortable, not stressed out.
I have noticed over the past year or so that gaming news (to which I'm a hard casual gamer) has become something I'm drawn to more and more. I am so glad that I stumbled upon this channel early on cause not only is the depth about the topics apparent, but explaining backround and build up to the subjects have helped give the full picture. Just very appreciative for the reporting. Thank you!
I am so glad of the way they handled the details in the game. Sure, some mechanics/research tree options are not available but it's mostly about balancing I think. Thanks for covering such a great game :)
A great win win for the developer and publisher. I like Hooded Horse. I also like Manor Lords. However I knew this game would do well and put my money towards another early access from Hooded Horse, Terra Invicta. This game needs more work on it as any early access game does, but it's another passion project and very much in-keeping with how Hooded Horse does business, it is steadily becoming a polished game which will get many repeat plays due to the effort of the developer. It's just a shame that there are not many Hooded Horse style publishers, rather more like 2K which will drop a secondary launch window on a pre bought game in order to data mine players. They are very different fish in the same pond.
Installed it a few days ago and I'm frankly SHOCKED how good it runs on my potato of a rig. 16GB Ram, 1060TI - and I can easily play it. Sure, no RT and only 1080p, but it still runs, looks good and plays smoothly - a far cry from some of the games back in the '90s which played at 2 FPS if you didn't have the hottest processor or graphics card. :)
Its takes place in a time and setting of another favorite game of mine Kingdom Come Deliverance (another superbly detailed but focused game with narrow scope.) TH-cam constantly pushed a let's player who was always playing a pre release copy -but skylines 2 soured me on any hype for anything not released. I purposely ignored it until your 'its not total war' video. Dev has a level head. Publishers recent moves have been impressive too.
Hooded horse has realized that finding devs that care is what success really is. Ive been a fan of WRSR for 3 years now and HH just wants their people to be happy and know the money will follow
i put 20 hours in already and all i can say is the game has an amazing foundation and vision. Give it a few years and hopefully some content rich updates and it will be the absolute best medieval city builder to date.
MVP vs MPP vs MOP Min. Viable: "what's the most complete product we can reach in the shortest time?" Min. Possible: "how can we make this as bare-bones as we can feasibly get away with?" Min. Optimal: "what's the BEST version we can make without getting sucked into iteration hell?"
Imagine being a “Triple AAA” suit seeing percentage gains like this from a team of 1 that had a little help here and there 😂. And they will NEVER understand why lololol
@@IWillYeah and out of the 1 million copies sold how much do you think he owed to the “army of artists”. Is it 125 million budget of a team of 3,000 staff? He hired artist here and there throughout the 7 years he developed the game and got help towards the mid-end to help his mostly solo effort. The percentage he made in a single day versus the amount he spent is what these greedy triple A studios can only dream for.
I think the critical differences between a buggy EA Manor Lords and a buggy EA triple-A title is presentation and gameplay cohesion. By "presentation", I'm talking about marketing and developer transparency. The Manor Lords dev has been upfront and honest about what the game is, what it isn't, and what to expect. In my option, he's actually been humble about what he's been able to achieve. Most triple-A POS releases are the opposite: they promise a complete experience, they promise revolutionary new gameplay and mechanics, they go way over-the-top only to under-deliver. Then they blame *us*, the players, for not shelling out for an unfinished, useless excuse of a game. By "cohesion", I'm talking about how well different aspects of the game work together to build a cohesive, possibly immersive, experience. Every piece of Manor Lords development serves the purpose of adding depth to a medieval European city builder, whereas a lot of the triple-A garbage being peddled these days feel like Cronenberg-esque amalgamation of several different genres and themes. There are clear pieces which were shoe-horned into place that detract from the collective experience, and others which would have helped if they hadn't been so clearly abandoned by the dev team. I think this is why, in addition to being shameless cash-grabs, microtransactions feel so _bad_ in games. In what experience, save for the most tedious portions of real life, are you stopped in the middle of what you're doing and asked to pay money for something? At what point during anything has there been an option for you to pay more money in order to "enhance" your experience? Forcing you to consider the option of paying real money, with real-life implications is like pulling the ripcord on the immersion and throwing you, aggressively, back into reality, shattering the entire experience. Could you imagine if book companies started printing ads in the *middle* of books? How terrible would that reading experience be? This is also likely why watching anything on cable (or on any steaming service with ads) varies from being "kinda lame" to "completely infuriating": it breaks your immersion, un-suspends your disbelief, and thrusts you, rudely, back into your mortal, corporeal form all for the purpose of... asking you to buy some detergent, or a lootbox, or some in-game currency. I think this all culminates in delivering different fundamental experiences. Games like Manor Lords make you *feel* like a Manor Lords, like these people are under your protection and their prosperity is your prosperity. While games with microtransactions and game passes ultimately deliver the experience that nobody but corporate wants: you get the experience of giving them money, poorly disguised as a unique interactive experience, with some gameplay elements sprinkled, randomly, on top.
This game is like Caesar 3 but in 2024 - bigger and harder. And I did adore Caesar 3. My husbans plays this game since it appeared in Steam. And now I've got my copy. It's time to return to childhood and play a good RTS :)
As far as I could tell, Hooded Horse has been a class act. When the makers of Workers and Resources got themselves into trouble because their business acumen was not strong (their game developing skills are outstanding) Hooded Horse came in and seems to have put that company in strong standing to have a great launch. As a big fan of Old World, again, I see Hooded Horse as being helpful to the developers and not rushing to get a profit at gamers' expenses.
I appreciate how the bird sounds change with the seasons. In the spring/summer there are red-winged blackbirds and indigo buntings. In the winter it’s woodpeckers and crows.
One thing that the dev/published has really done well for the game is gave the game out to influencers, a release copy and allowed to stream / show it off. Which really helped to show just how polished the game is.
I can’t believe that this early access has given me more immersion than any other game in a long time. It allows me to switch off, to immerse myself in the life of a middle age village. It allows me to map out my road and buildings the way I want it, to shape things I want them but in a more organic way. The flexible plot building is something I have been dreaming about for a long time. I thought CO will do something like that for CS2 but it seems like an indie, one team developer can innovate more than a tripleA studio. Manor Lords is still in early access but it already given me more game time and content than those so called “completed” games and for half the price I might add. I can’t wait to see where this game is going and I’m so happy to support this project, you can clearly see there is so much passion and dedication in this.
Was playing for free on PC Game Pass but as planned bought it on Steam today. Proud to support this developer. When something dies it fertilizes the ground for the next thing. Thank you Paradox and Cities Skylines 2.
Great shout out to Farthest frontier, that's another fantastic village builder. My favourite so far. Hold on, the guy who made this video is also a game developer? I thought at some point he alluded to that. Is there a link or something to his game?
i honestly feel the main reasons for the succes of this game are (a) there is a market gap for a settler 3 style experience that focuses on modeling your supply chains and you basically "chicken watching" (b) it looks great and is a chill time and (c) the game doesnt bullshit you. I think its mainly the first bit. I don't think its because people are unhappy with their total war games and map painters but more so that there hasnt been a real supply line focused 'watcher' game in ages. To me this game feels very Anno 1800 and that is a great game too. This is for me Anno 1800 on a much smaller scale, without the systems spam and with a bit more interesting combat. One parallel you can draw is in Anno 1800 you can build a zoo with dozens of animals to collec and almost every animal is modelled and you can watch it. This type of joy you really cant get from a lot of games. (theres a bunch of other system level parallels like teching being tied to pop tier upgrades).
It's a fantastic unfinished product and it will suffer similar to how other single developer titles suffer, the masses will all scream they want something different and change will come slow, people will stop playing and forget this gem. I recommend everyone who likes city builders get this game, but I also recommend waiting a year or two so the experience you get when you do play is a bit more fleshed out.
Games journalists were complaining that with all the layoffs at AAA studio's there would be a shortage of "quality titles" int he future, but clearly they never play indie titles or games from mid sized and small publishers. All the big hist this year have been from them and not the AAA studios.
As a Workers and Resources player, I am happy to see all these positive things about Hooded Horse. I was initially sceptical when they came into the picture a while back. I sincerely hope they can help bring the game to a wider audience - it's more than worthy of it.
I just finally achieved a happy metropolis achievement. After my first 5 failed attempts, 3 days playing. I finally got the hang of things and had an amazing start. Got my starting city absolutely thriving. Now with over 200 houses and more than 100 of them being level 3. and like you said, it vampired my time so well. 😁 I started playing at about 10:00 O'clock am yesterday and next thing I know it was 6:00 pm. This game is so fun and satisfying, and definitely takes a bit to fully understand as it is very in-depth. But certainly worth the time.
When I saw the trailers before I shrugged and said "really want more of a city builder, not an RTS" your last video on it is why I ended up buying it (though I haven't had time to do anything besides get it downloaded yet). I spent waaaaaay to many hours in Banished back in the day. So I'm looking forward to spending some time on this.
Incredible game so far with immense potential. Love the Dev and how he has approached all of this. He has earned my trust with that and until something happens to change that I will support the game. The next 6 months will be interesting to see. The hate I have seen in forums has been a bit over the top given the state of aaa gaming... Guess nothing should surprise anymore...
I've played Manor Lords for 20 hour so far and all of it has been in normal time. I've been enjoying the ambiance and looks and feel of the whole thing. Yes, the game still needs a bit of work in places, but I have enjoyed every minute of it, just watching the world go by, the sunrises and sunsets and the weather, it is very relaxing and it will only get better. Very well done to Greg and Hooded Horse for releasing games properly.
The city building in this game reminds me so much of Lionhead's Black and White games. I'm addicted, like being a kid again. Excited to see the dev add more.
This game is actually crazy. I don't like RTS or city builders. Games that require a lot of management but really is a lot of staring at the screen and watching things happen. But it was on Game Pass so I was like, you know what? Let's give it a look. The XBOX app says I have 15 hours in it. I don't know where the time went, and I'm absolutely shocked that a game this polished is being developed by one guy. There are AAA game studios that can't make an interface this polished, gameplay this interesting, and all running this smoothly. Can you imagine pouring 7 years of time into a project as a solo developer, and then shifting a MILLION copies still in early access? Mind. Blown. The game has a warning about bugs on startup, but besides some sort of odd behaviour when trying to place down burgages it has so far run flawlessly.
I am enjoying it and looking forward to more patches. A little bored by mid game but more to come early. I just love how the Dev said out loud its not what people expect. He outlined what the game is exactly and what to expect and if you dont like it thats ok. Massive respect and makes me want to support it.
There are quite a bunch of people that have worked on Manorlords, that "1 Dev" thing is missleading at best. You clear that missunderstanding up halfway through, but still lead with it into the video. Doesn't take away from it being a great game though.
to think this was made by one person when you have companies with hundreds of people that cant even get close to it its mind blowing, grats to the dev Greg, passion project indeed
@@IWillYeah what do you want, that the guy learned the lute to make the soundtrack himself too? For all intents and purposes this is a 1dev game. He got help sure, from people he searched himself, he guided them himself and told them how to use their talents the best to adhere to his vision.
@@olivierchristiaens8174 1) the artists did from concept art onwards, so no not his vision. 2) it's disingenuous to actual solo devs solo who don't hire a slew of devs thoughtout an extended period, from programming to art, etc. the credits are HUGE. 3) This isn't as simple as using an asset pack, these *other* employees and contractors act as *key* members of his *Team* which drive the project forward. 4) there's a key difference between the hiring though, ML's was extensive over an extensive period over a range of fields, requiring a funding incompatible with a solo dev's first release budget. This is NOT a solo dev title, merely a (smart) marketing gimmick.
@@IWillYeah Did he do everyting himself? No, nobody refutes the fact that he hired good help. But like an old painting you can say it is the work of the sole artist. Not the man who makes the paints, nor the model, nor the apprentice who does some sketch work ...
We literally broke Steam when this released, it was impossible for the servers to keep up with the demand. I was in work at the time and set up remote downloads for the first time, leaft my PC on all day, and started to download it before I got home so that I could jump straight on. The hype for this game has been literally unrivaled and you know what - for EA it's delivered exceptionally well!
sure bro, Steam didn't broke with Palworld's millions of people playing at the same time, but it broke with 170k :))))) the game is great, but it's not the second coming of sliced bread, especially now in it's EA form.
The game is so good that I'm clued to my screen as when I was 12 or so playing Age of Empires for way too long. My eyes are bloodshot and I've barely slept for the past 4days and I would love to play more and make diff layouts and managed to hit over 1k city yesterdayday night jeez. It really draws you in it's insane, such good work
For not being historically accurate, there are a lot of fine details that are accurate. Like, the tavern has benches _outside_ the building - that _is_ historically accurate. It costs too much money, resources, and time to build a whole structure to build a roof large enough for every customer. Anyone who's played/watched a historic or fantasy game/show always sees taverns as sports bars without the TV's all over the walls. The part that isn't is historically accurate: Usually the brewery and the alehouse were one and the same. It was someone's home and they both made and sold the alcohol on site. Taverns sold wines.
I find this game to be stunning. It is relaxing, challenging but recoverable, and has room for growth. Wow, this is a history maker, a marker in the gaming industry.
Dude sounds like a born leader and entrepreneur. Knows how and when to delegate, but ultimately retains control of the vision which focuses everyone. Look forward to games he develops in the future.
I've made myself a proud village, but I'm still struggling. Most fun I've had with a game in ages. Honestly, I've probably spent as much time in just the coat-of-arms creator than the rest of the game. It's just so fun. Do wish there was some more functionality with it (adjusting the location of the symbols slightly for example, or adding multiple, or some missing formats), because I want to make some specific flags - the very medieval-y flag of my province and of my family's clan - but it's still so good regardless.
I’ve played another game by hooded horse, Soviet republics workers and resources. It has similarities in game play and video. I like both. They seem to have a good take on creating games with creators. Not just cut and paste with different graphics.
As a developer and gamer myself, Hooded Horse is one of the publisher i think have the balance between devs and players that EVERYONE wants to achieve. I hope they grow larger to get a better industry and better games.
Have fun and hope you enjoy it! I came in with not much expectations just based on the building animations. Now my sleeping schedule is all messed up but I have zero regrets 😂
@@G3rmanhenry yeah. I don’t know what to expect. I was playing Age of Empires prior to this game’s release, but I think this game is a whole different dynamic so I’ll see, but I like civ building games.
Manor Lords... A good lil' game. With very similar production/manpower mechanics to the game 'Banished' it does go further with immersion, graphic and sound design as well as nice, chilled music. I have played it over the weekend and it is a pleasure to play and it does have good potential. Now I am off to finish my wheat fields and bakery to get bread ready for the peasants to eat through the winter. ;-)
People keep saying Total War, this game is more like Rimworld than it is Total War. The 'burgages' are your colonizers and you have to keep them happy. Resource management is heavy, combat is an after thought but still enjoyable enough.
Im so happy to see this game being most wishlisted after the obvious hype disaster that was: "The day before" this game shows how it should be done, at least so far with the game up front with core mechanics and gameplay in place with no smoke and mirrors or insane overpromises, the day before didn't spend 7 years but around 5 i think but they also had a much bigger team in general so they should have probably been able to produce even more with the experience in the genre etc.
Played for over thirty hours. I've love gaming and played since the days of Atari and commodore 64. The game has a feel to it of the games of old. Lords of the realm, Sierra's original robin hood and power monger. I haven't felt so immersed in a game for a long time. The original Rome total war and medieval did this but money seems to ruin gaming. I hope and look forward to Manor lords improving and getting even better.
I have a game pass, but I still got it on Steam as it really looks like a good game even if it's not completely finished, after many videos watching and playing myself one of best "releases" in quite a few years :)
I love this game so far. Would like to note some of the bad reviews are just dumb 'it's not a finished game yet' - 'this is a beta test, not a finished game' I mean the clue is in the EARLY ACCESS part I would have thought.
One of the first pc games I ever played was age of empires. After that it’s been fps and the like I forgot how good these kind of games are. Manor lords brings me so much nostalgia, I’m hooked!
It hits the same spot as rimworld for me, you can sit down to play for a bit and then realize its been 5 hours because theres always that one more thing you want to do really quick. Its also very satisfying to set up road systems with trade and have crop rotations going. Almost everything in game is super intuitive too, its easy to figure stuff out for the most part and I rarely had to look up how to do something in the 20 or so hours ive put into the game already.
I'm playing it with my Xbox game pass so imagine all the people on that. Amazing city builder, and the combat is the best I've seen, I wish he makes a combat game or mods put that in later because its the best. Total War can absolutely learn something form Slavic Magic, maybe he can license his code to them.
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Did you say ‘decently major’?
fucking python, want a career learn PHP + Javascript.
@@chrismcintosh2286 Especially the application they try to sell their course with.. Python and Backend... seriously? xDDD
The thing about this game is, that it's given me something a lot of games no longer manage to do: continued immersion. It pulls me in, makes me forget my surroundings and makes time fly by. And at the end, I feel relaxed, happy & fulfilled. There is no frustration, just pure bliss. The game manages to give me the emotions that got me into gaming 2 decades ago.
I put in two hours and it only felt like 20 minutes, that's how engrossing this game is so far for me.
Literally feel more relaxed playing this game than actually getting full nights rest. I’d like to add, even when I fail or do something wrong I don’t mind starting from new and do it better my next run.
While content wise it still lacks a lot, it is enough for me to learn the basics and get better. Often times these type of games include so many mechanics that it makes the learning curve so high that it becomes more stressful than relaxing.
Agreed. I mean - in what other city builder game can you go into first person and just walk around in the city you built? That feature doesn't have any gameplay purposes, it is there for immersion and I love it.
Strongly agree. People can bash and say there’s no content but the game is the content and it seems that people have forgotten that. I played all day Sunday. The game feels so natural and it’s simple enough to navigate that the immersion is not lost. Nothing like trying to navigate 16 different windows to try and get your townsfolk some drinking water. That seems to be eliminated with manor lords.
100%
That last bit about the Hooded Horse bylaw is actually incredible. Shareholders have become nothing but leeches in todays world. Sucking up all the good out of a company/product and killing it for a short term dollar. We actually need more things like this in place, where are legal goal isn't to drain the life out of people for profit.
At the same time I expect this publisher will make money hand over fist in the longer term, just because they will draw in talented developers with their focus on quality, and gamers will have a lot of time for a publisher that's known to produce bangers without nickle and diming everyone.
@@fenix849 I own EVERY game hooded horse published, except for Terra Invicta (due to the devs actually scamming another developer and walking away from unfinished projects in the past), and the funny part is... I didn't even notice. Literally been collecting their output thinking "these are great games" and never really paid attention to the publisher.
I mean I tend not to have any kind of brand loyalty, but it was kind of funny to realize that I seemed to have become a fan of a publisher on accident.
It's not the company's fault that consumers are rewarding it for giving them crap.
If I had a company and people were giving me money for giving them crap, I would gladly serve them. It's their life.
Manor Lords is the perfect example that size doesn't matter, it only needs to be good.
This why you shouldn’t feel bad for people being fired from giant AAA studios. People should look at game development as a passion project not a way to make a living.
but that is the problem, its not that good. I looks good, it has a great idea, but its currently barely functional
@@absurdh3rothose are people who are usually overworked, working overtime, "crunching" for months due to bad management, and paid way less than they would get in a software company. Everyone working in the game industry as a cog in the machine does it from passion, agreeing to lower wages, terrible (often unsustainable) work-life balance and worse treatment.
@@biggumstevens1784 What are you even on about? The game plays completely fine. There was some difficulty understanding processes for me, but overall. Building a successful little empire on the map was fun and attainable. No crashes, no pains in gameplay, nothing. I've seen reviews on steam that are a more detailed version of your comment, and I've simply not encountered these claims of the game "barely functioning". There definitely needs to be balancing and improvements, but claiming that the game is broken is sensational nonsense.
@@absurdh3ro What absolute nonsense. If people didn't make a career out of game development this game would never exist because the developer wouldn't have had the resources to make it. Do you think everyone who works for epic games is there for passion?
The fact that these small teams are able to out perform AAA multi media conglomerates is just *chef's kiss
No team, one person.
@@taturay So he says, but I am not sure I longer believe that. he has been getting great funding and support for quite some time, and he still claims he is working alone? I am just a bit confused by that.
@@_sky_3123 Isnt it the same for stardew valley tough ?
Also getting more poeple in will also mean you lose some control.
Edit watching the vid. He has stated that he has pulled in some pro's too help with some systems.
@@taturay one man vision and work further continued by team and publisher. that is right situation
The game kinda sucks tho... It gets stale real quick and has little replayability compared to something like against the storm. I still don't regret buying manor lords because I'm a nut for Feudalism/Manorialism, but I think the game is a bit too pricey considering the lack of content.
I am a tester for Nebulous fleet command another game published by hooded horse and I can confirm they take a very hands off approach. The lead dev Mazer has done something very similar to greg having a couple other people do work on the 3d models, sfx and other things while he focuses on the core game design and balance, in fact hooded horse has taken on a UI designer that they are lending out to their developers saving them that expense. I have seen the conquest game mode be born day by day feature by feature with no impression of any external pressures.
Wait... they're adding a conquest mode? With a turn based navigable galaxy map?
@@mrbork7218 star system but yes
Nebulous is REALLY good
Yes! For more context on this exactly point of a 'very hands off approach'. Clanfolks, another Hooded Horse game is also a solo developer, a developer who often completely diverts from the roadmap to incorporate a fans ideas. Apparently some fan said, "How about beavers?" So the dev diverted his time for a few days, showed some players, one of which said, "But don't you need rivers for beavers?", to which the dev diverted his time for about a fortnight to make not only rivers but the required bridges (and his son wanted to build on the bridges so he added that too) to show his players, one of which said, "But the banks of the river is looking a little bare", to which the dev took more time to improve that, including revamping the whole spawning of bushes and trees and basically all nature to look more natural, another fortnight off the program, then got another brain wave about weather, and diverted his course for another few weeks to add storms and lightning, which is probably going to add a whole new context to how people and nature respond to them.
Apparently none of this was on the development program at all and took many weeks diversion from the original path, and mostly in response to his players. He posted community notices on Steam (anyone can read them - you don't have to own the game) which are REALLY interesting to read because he explains how all of it happened and how he dealt with the problems he encountered. A wonderful dev!
The the point is that these improvements were HUGE and really added a LOT to the game, and were all complete impulses from his fans, and this took weeks of diversion from the roadmap and Hooded Horse is obviously quite happy for this guy to just run by the seat of his pants in making the game. He was supposed to be implementing a social conflict system (he was in the middle of implementing that when all this started), but we ended up with something wonderful, and we'll still get that social conflict system eventually. Isn't it just obvious that releasing a game with creativity driven by the players, and when the game is ready and playable is always going to make more money than releasing garbage?
Manor Lords is fantastic. Does it have bugs, yes. Does it have jank, yes. Is it incomplete, yes. Can it be frustrating when the Sawmill just stops making Planks which in turn blocks you from progressing, also yes. And with all of that I'm completely addicted to this game.
The planks and market place have me rolling lol
The planks thing happened to me last night, but it eventually just started working eventually. Took like 10 minutes, damn ox just never delivered any logs despite having nothing else to do.
I put an ox permanently on sawmill and that fixed it for me
My fletchers were taking all my planks. I paused some of them and my plank production sky rocketed.
@@mikemindyabusiness104 I over saturated the market with Bows. Ahahaha
I like Manor Lords, I think it has a lot of potential and I'm ok with it's progress so far with it being early access. Right now after 10 hours, don't know what else to do really, can't progress further and that's ok. I've had fun with it and will wait until it's developed more to jump back into it.
Yes, when the full mechanics come out, I think there will be more to chew on. The archers being completely nerfed makes me want to just stay on peace-mode. And I'm still enjoying it.
I have liked it after about the same time I have ran the game through, but like other games (squad for example) the updates still continue it's worthwhile if this guy updates regularly
If you're looking for something similar in the meantime, try Farthest Frontier.
10 hours seems to be the consensus for amount of content in Manor Lord's right now. I've currently got 91 minutes, but everywhere I've seen discussions, I've seen people say they ran out of things after 10-15 hours. I am looking forward to future support for it though as the time I've played was very satisfying
@@UrbanAgent423 I'm at about 20 hours in Manor Lords. I'm still discovering a lot of mechanics that I didn't notice before. This game is much deeper (already) than it looks in my opinion.
Hooded Horse really deserves the praise. We need those shining examples to set a new course for the future of gaming industry, exploitation has gone long enough.
Hooded Horse is definitely one of the few good guys in publishing. There's an interview with the founder on TH-cam that I recommend listening to. They take good care of the devs and they deserve every success.
Dude prepared a button that said "become millionaire" for 7 years, imagine the relief by the end of the launch day when he did indeed become suddenly a millionaire.
I'm glad for it, really. Gotta think about who i can gift this game to. I want hooded horse looking like scrooge mcduck and adding more content
I want my whole retinue on horseback
Not really, the pubisher will get a cut and steam get a big cut too. Unless he sold way more than 1 million
I mean if he sells 1.5million at $30 thats 45 million in income. Hard to see how he couldnt break a million in profit from that. @VictorJapaXD
@@VictorJapaXD hes easily a multi millionaire now dude lmao 1million copies plus the gamepass deal like hes stupid rich and has set his next 5 generations plus up for leisure living lol
He did not knew that thou
this just shows that a game doesn't have to be a hyperactive multiplayer tryhard fest to succeed. And it makes me happpy as a singleplayer slow paced game enjoyer😊
a historian told me that the look of the buildings is very accurate for 14th century franconia. the economy isn't, obviously. most of the people back then were self-sufficient, they would go find their own firewood, make their own clothes, gather their own berries. Markets only took place once or twice a year in towns, not villages. But that would have made for a very dull game.
still, having houses farm vegetables or having chickens is completely correct. Also when tiering up having a specialisation linked to a house instead of a production facility is quite novel for this type of game. My only negative point is that i wish there would be a sandbox battle mode. I've played for 40 hours and have maybe 5 big battles. So I'm not that good at battles because of the great mechanic of losing battle = losing workers you only go to battle if you'"re quite sure you're gonna win.
@@olivierchristiaens8174 absolutely. however, in a medieval village everybody would have a vegetable garden AND chicken AND an orchard AND some goats or sheep or pigs. and this wouldn't stop if someone sets up a smithy. A smithy takes up only a few square meters and it will be used only occasionally, mostly in winter when agriculture stops.
All the "industry" would be done additionally to farming. Also every peasant would have their own plot of farmland. The only communal job is the shepherd, he herds all animals of the village, but every sheep and every pig still belongs to a certain person.
@@monikadeinbeck4760 mostly true but not every peasant was a land owner and some crafts really were a single person.
@@olivierchristiaens8174 in fact few peasants were land owners. most land was owned by a "landlord", but every field was assigned to a certain family. There were families who had one or two or three fields assigned to them and there were families who had no fields and had to work on other people's land for money. But every person in a village or small town worked in agriculture to some degree. Even the priest had his own patch of land he worked on weekdays.
All correct except how often market days happened. Depending on the area and infrastructure, it might happen once a moon (month) or once a fortnight. For ancient towns that had some vestiges of Roman heritage, they could hold them more often, as there were dedicated buildings and squares built by the Romans in previous centuries. Roman roads also played a big part up to the 19th century when railroads started to come to stride.
In Eastern and Northern Europe they happened less often due to distances, lack of Roman heritage and general social structure. There were usually dedicated market town that sometimes were open for business every single day.
I think more cred should be given to Hooded Horse as the other titles that have chosen to work with them have also been given creative freedom. It's so rare these days and it is proving itself time and time again. Software development happens best by humans who are comfortable, not stressed out.
Yeah, it's like publishers forgot that restricting creativity makes for worse games... or they just hate money...or good games, or both.
I have noticed over the past year or so that gaming news (to which I'm a hard casual gamer) has become something I'm drawn to more and more. I am so glad that I stumbled upon this channel early on cause not only is the depth about the topics apparent, but explaining backround and build up to the subjects have helped give the full picture. Just very appreciative for the reporting. Thank you!
This is the way.
most cozy and atmospheric game i ever played. so chill
I am so glad of the way they handled the details in the game. Sure, some mechanics/research tree options are not available but it's mostly about balancing I think.
Thanks for covering such a great game :)
A great win win for the developer and publisher. I like Hooded Horse. I also like Manor Lords. However I knew this game would do well and put my money towards another early access from Hooded Horse, Terra Invicta. This game needs more work on it as any early access game does, but it's another passion project and very much in-keeping with how Hooded Horse does business, it is steadily becoming a polished game which will get many repeat plays due to the effort of the developer. It's just a shame that there are not many Hooded Horse style publishers, rather more like 2K which will drop a secondary launch window on a pre bought game in order to data mine players. They are very different fish in the same pond.
Ok, I never thought I'd actually love a publisher but Hooded Horse sounds awesome.
They have some amazing games they published.
Installed it a few days ago and I'm frankly SHOCKED how good it runs on my potato of a rig. 16GB Ram, 1060TI - and I can easily play it. Sure, no RT and only 1080p, but it still runs, looks good and plays smoothly - a far cry from some of the games back in the '90s which played at 2 FPS if you didn't have the hottest processor or graphics card. :)
Its takes place in a time and setting of another favorite game of mine Kingdom Come Deliverance (another superbly detailed but focused game with narrow scope.) TH-cam constantly pushed a let's player who was always playing a pre release copy -but skylines 2 soured me on any hype for anything not released. I purposely ignored it until your 'its not total war' video. Dev has a level head. Publishers recent moves have been impressive too.
Hooded horse has realized that finding devs that care is what success really is. Ive been a fan of WRSR for 3 years now and HH just wants their people to be happy and know the money will follow
i put 20 hours in already and all i can say is the game has an amazing foundation and vision. Give it a few years and hopefully some content rich updates and it will be the absolute best medieval city builder to date.
MVP vs MPP vs MOP
Min. Viable: "what's the most complete product we can reach in the shortest time?"
Min. Possible: "how can we make this as bare-bones as we can feasibly get away with?"
Min. Optimal: "what's the BEST version we can make without getting sucked into iteration hell?"
Imagine being a “Triple AAA” suit seeing percentage gains like this from a team of 1 that had a little help here and there 😂.
And they will NEVER understand why lololol
lmap. There are two programmers credited and the main dev hired an army of artists throughout the years.
@@IWillYeah and out of the 1 million copies sold how much do you think he owed to the “army of artists”. Is it 125 million budget of a team of 3,000 staff?
He hired artist here and there throughout the 7 years he developed the game and got help towards the mid-end to help his mostly solo effort.
The percentage he made in a single day versus the amount he spent is what these greedy triple A studios can only dream for.
Because they do not play games themselves. I believe most of them see games even as waste of time
Major studios need to actually care about the art
@@aahzmandiaz2767 I agree those suits see gamers as cattle and are blind for the incredible art that is out there to be experienced.
I think the critical differences between a buggy EA Manor Lords and a buggy EA triple-A title is presentation and gameplay cohesion.
By "presentation", I'm talking about marketing and developer transparency. The Manor Lords dev has been upfront and honest about what the game is, what it isn't, and what to expect. In my option, he's actually been humble about what he's been able to achieve. Most triple-A POS releases are the opposite: they promise a complete experience, they promise revolutionary new gameplay and mechanics, they go way over-the-top only to under-deliver. Then they blame *us*, the players, for not shelling out for an unfinished, useless excuse of a game.
By "cohesion", I'm talking about how well different aspects of the game work together to build a cohesive, possibly immersive, experience. Every piece of Manor Lords development serves the purpose of adding depth to a medieval European city builder, whereas a lot of the triple-A garbage being peddled these days feel like Cronenberg-esque amalgamation of several different genres and themes. There are clear pieces which were shoe-horned into place that detract from the collective experience, and others which would have helped if they hadn't been so clearly abandoned by the dev team. I think this is why, in addition to being shameless cash-grabs, microtransactions feel so _bad_ in games. In what experience, save for the most tedious portions of real life, are you stopped in the middle of what you're doing and asked to pay money for something? At what point during anything has there been an option for you to pay more money in order to "enhance" your experience? Forcing you to consider the option of paying real money, with real-life implications is like pulling the ripcord on the immersion and throwing you, aggressively, back into reality, shattering the entire experience. Could you imagine if book companies started printing ads in the *middle* of books? How terrible would that reading experience be? This is also likely why watching anything on cable (or on any steaming service with ads) varies from being "kinda lame" to "completely infuriating": it breaks your immersion, un-suspends your disbelief, and thrusts you, rudely, back into your mortal, corporeal form all for the purpose of... asking you to buy some detergent, or a lootbox, or some in-game currency.
I think this all culminates in delivering different fundamental experiences. Games like Manor Lords make you *feel* like a Manor Lords, like these people are under your protection and their prosperity is your prosperity. While games with microtransactions and game passes ultimately deliver the experience that nobody but corporate wants: you get the experience of giving them money, poorly disguised as a unique interactive experience, with some gameplay elements sprinkled, randomly, on top.
Always exciting when indie devs shows everyone how to make good games.
This game is like Caesar 3 but in 2024 - bigger and harder. And I did adore Caesar 3.
My husbans plays this game since it appeared in Steam. And now I've got my copy. It's time to return to childhood and play a good RTS :)
As far as I could tell, Hooded Horse has been a class act. When the makers of Workers and Resources got themselves into trouble because their business acumen was not strong (their game developing skills are outstanding) Hooded Horse came in and seems to have put that company in strong standing to have a great launch. As a big fan of Old World, again, I see Hooded Horse as being helpful to the developers and not rushing to get a profit at gamers' expenses.
Let's hope Greg and Hooded Horse keep the good vibes going and others learn from the success.
"Vanished in 2014 which was A DECADE AGO!" why do hurt me so...
Because you feel old
Because time goes really fast when you're busy with other games or with life.
mha sole, mha hart
Banished*, the game that put city builders on the map.
Hooded Horse > Paradox Interactive.
I've played every Banished clone
And this is a massive jump in the genre
Great job by the creator, they clearly love the genre and want to improve it
I appreciate how the bird sounds change with the seasons. In the spring/summer there are red-winged blackbirds and indigo buntings. In the winter it’s woodpeckers and crows.
One thing that the dev/published has really done well for the game is gave the game out to influencers, a release copy and allowed to stream / show it off. Which really helped to show just how polished the game is.
wow totally missed that this is a single dev that is insane massive props to that guy
Banished is a decade old?! 🤯
It's still one of the best looking city managers.
I can’t believe that this early access has given me more immersion than any other game in a long time. It allows me to switch off, to immerse myself in the life of a middle age village. It allows me to map out my road and buildings the way I want it, to shape things I want them but in a more organic way. The flexible plot building is something I have been dreaming about for a long time. I thought CO will do something like that for CS2 but it seems like an indie, one team developer can innovate more than a tripleA studio. Manor Lords is still in early access but it already given me more game time and content than those so called “completed” games and for half the price I might add. I can’t wait to see where this game is going and I’m so happy to support this project, you can clearly see there is so much passion and dedication in this.
Was playing for free on PC Game Pass but as planned bought it on Steam today. Proud to support this developer. When something dies it fertilizes the ground for the next thing. Thank you Paradox and Cities Skylines 2.
Great shout out to Farthest frontier, that's another fantastic village builder. My favourite so far. Hold on, the guy who made this video is also a game developer? I thought at some point he alluded to that. Is there a link or something to his game?
i honestly feel the main reasons for the succes of this game are (a) there is a market gap for a settler 3 style experience that focuses on modeling your supply chains and you basically "chicken watching" (b) it looks great and is a chill time and (c) the game doesnt bullshit you. I think its mainly the first bit. I don't think its because people are unhappy with their total war games and map painters but more so that there hasnt been a real supply line focused 'watcher' game in ages. To me this game feels very Anno 1800 and that is a great game too. This is for me Anno 1800 on a much smaller scale, without the systems spam and with a bit more interesting combat. One parallel you can draw is in Anno 1800 you can build a zoo with dozens of animals to collec and almost every animal is modelled and you can watch it. This type of joy you really cant get from a lot of games. (theres a bunch of other system level parallels like teching being tied to pop tier upgrades).
I've been playing manor lords on game pass, it is rated highly on game pass and I have been LOVING it as well. Probably over 30 hours already.
It's a fantastic unfinished product and it will suffer similar to how other single developer titles suffer, the masses will all scream they want something different and change will come slow, people will stop playing and forget this gem.
I recommend everyone who likes city builders get this game, but I also recommend waiting a year or two so the experience you get when you do play is a bit more fleshed out.
Games journalists were complaining that with all the layoffs at AAA studio's there would be a shortage of "quality titles" int he future, but clearly they never play indie titles or games from mid sized and small publishers. All the big hist this year have been from them and not the AAA studios.
NOOOO BELLULAR WHY DID YOU DO THAT TO ME. BANISHED CAN'T BE A DECADE OLD NOOOOOO
*proceeds to crumble into dust*
As a Workers and Resources player, I am happy to see all these positive things about Hooded Horse. I was initially sceptical when they came into the picture a while back.
I sincerely hope they can help bring the game to a wider audience - it's more than worthy of it.
I just finally achieved a happy metropolis achievement. After my first 5 failed attempts, 3 days playing. I finally got the hang of things and had an amazing start. Got my starting city absolutely thriving. Now with over 200 houses and more than 100 of them being level 3. and like you said, it vampired my time so well. 😁 I started playing at about 10:00 O'clock am yesterday and next thing I know it was 6:00 pm. This game is so fun and satisfying, and definitely takes a bit to fully understand as it is very in-depth. But certainly worth the time.
Anyone involved I’ve the making of this game should feel incredibly proud.
I think they have now just set the bar for ‘city building/rts’ genre.
When I saw the trailers before I shrugged and said "really want more of a city builder, not an RTS" your last video on it is why I ended up buying it (though I haven't had time to do anything besides get it downloaded yet). I spent waaaaaay to many hours in Banished back in the day. So I'm looking forward to spending some time on this.
Incredible game so far with immense potential. Love the Dev and how he has approached all of this. He has earned my trust with that and until something happens to change that I will support the game. The next 6 months will be interesting to see. The hate I have seen in forums has been a bit over the top given the state of aaa gaming... Guess nothing should surprise anymore...
I've played Manor Lords for 20 hour so far and all of it has been in normal time. I've been enjoying the ambiance and looks and feel of the whole thing. Yes, the game still needs a bit of work in places, but I have enjoyed every minute of it, just watching the world go by, the sunrises and sunsets and the weather, it is very relaxing and it will only get better. Very well done to Greg and Hooded Horse for releasing games properly.
Enjoying this game quite a bit. Needs more for sure, but a great start and i hope he keeps up the work.
The city building in this game reminds me so much of Lionhead's Black and White games. I'm addicted, like being a kid again. Excited to see the dev add more.
The dev was honest.
I came for manor lords. I stayed for the mods.
Yeah, first thing everyone is gonna do is add bigger battles mods.
this already has mods? does it have mod support? workshop? i might check this out
This game has so much potential. Just imagine castle building and town fortification and so much more in the end product.
This game is actually crazy. I don't like RTS or city builders. Games that require a lot of management but really is a lot of staring at the screen and watching things happen. But it was on Game Pass so I was like, you know what? Let's give it a look.
The XBOX app says I have 15 hours in it. I don't know where the time went, and I'm absolutely shocked that a game this polished is being developed by one guy. There are AAA game studios that can't make an interface this polished, gameplay this interesting, and all running this smoothly. Can you imagine pouring 7 years of time into a project as a solo developer, and then shifting a MILLION copies still in early access? Mind. Blown. The game has a warning about bugs on startup, but besides some sort of odd behaviour when trying to place down burgages it has so far run flawlessly.
I am enjoying it and looking forward to more patches.
A little bored by mid game but more to come early.
I just love how the Dev said out loud its not what people expect.
He outlined what the game is exactly and what to expect and if you dont like it thats ok.
Massive respect and makes me want to support it.
It is challenging throughout, and the challenges differ and vary. It gets so much fun once you get built up as well.
There are quite a bunch of people that have worked on Manorlords, that "1 Dev" thing is missleading at best. You clear that missunderstanding up halfway through, but still lead with it into the video.
Doesn't take away from it being a great game though.
Hooded horse is amazing. In this day and age who would have thought we would praise a publisher.
to think this was made by one person when you have companies with hundreds of people that cant even get close to it its mind blowing, grats to the dev Greg, passion project indeed
1 - There were at least two programmer devs credited
2 - They had a whole team of artists throughout the 7 years.
@@IWillYeah what do you want, that the guy learned the lute to make the soundtrack himself too? For all intents and purposes this is a 1dev game. He got help sure, from people he searched himself, he guided them himself and told them how to use their talents the best to adhere to his vision.
@@olivierchristiaens8174
1) the artists did from concept art onwards, so no not his vision.
2) it's disingenuous to actual solo devs solo who don't hire a slew of devs thoughtout an extended period, from programming to art, etc. the credits are HUGE.
3) This isn't as simple as using an asset pack, these *other* employees and contractors act as *key* members of his *Team* which drive the project forward.
4) there's a key difference between the hiring though, ML's was extensive over an extensive period over a range of fields, requiring a funding incompatible with a solo dev's first release budget. This is NOT a solo dev title, merely a (smart) marketing gimmick.
@@IWillYeah Did he do everyting himself? No, nobody refutes the fact that he hired good help.
But like an old painting you can say it is the work of the sole artist. Not the man who makes the paints, nor the model, nor the apprentice who does some sketch work ...
We literally broke Steam when this released, it was impossible for the servers to keep up with the demand. I was in work at the time and set up remote downloads for the first time, leaft my PC on all day, and started to download it before I got home so that I could jump straight on. The hype for this game has been literally unrivaled and you know what - for EA it's delivered exceptionally well!
sure bro, Steam didn't broke with Palworld's millions of people playing at the same time, but it broke with 170k :))))) the game is great, but it's not the second coming of sliced bread, especially now in it's EA form.
Palworld, Helldivers 2, Manor Lords.....looks like AA games are dominating so far. WE NEED MORE OF THEM!!!!!
The game is so good that I'm clued to my screen as when I was 12 or so playing Age of Empires for way too long. My eyes are bloodshot and I've barely slept for the past 4days and I would love to play more and make diff layouts and managed to hit over 1k city yesterdayday night jeez. It really draws you in it's insane, such good work
of course it is polish experience when dev is from Poland :D
For not being historically accurate, there are a lot of fine details that are accurate. Like, the tavern has benches _outside_ the building - that _is_ historically accurate. It costs too much money, resources, and time to build a whole structure to build a roof large enough for every customer. Anyone who's played/watched a historic or fantasy game/show always sees taverns as sports bars without the TV's all over the walls.
The part that isn't is historically accurate:
Usually the brewery and the alehouse were one and the same. It was someone's home and they both made and sold the alcohol on site. Taverns sold wines.
Im so happy that the launch was a success. I wish Greg the best.
I find this game to be stunning. It is relaxing, challenging but recoverable, and has room for growth. Wow, this is a history maker, a marker in the gaming industry.
Dude sounds like a born leader and entrepreneur. Knows how and when to delegate, but ultimately retains control of the vision which focuses everyone. Look forward to games he develops in the future.
The game is a game for the people A passion and a hard work and hail for the dev for this gem of a game
Against the Storm and Manor Lords are all you need for joyous city building
The soundtrack to this game is stunning
I love the song that plays when you start gaining production momentum
The whole thing is on Spotify under the account "Pressure Cooker" - guaranteed goosebumps!!
I've made myself a proud village, but I'm still struggling. Most fun I've had with a game in ages.
Honestly, I've probably spent as much time in just the coat-of-arms creator than the rest of the game. It's just so fun. Do wish there was some more functionality with it (adjusting the location of the symbols slightly for example, or adding multiple, or some missing formats), because I want to make some specific flags - the very medieval-y flag of my province and of my family's clan - but it's still so good regardless.
I’ve played another game by hooded horse, Soviet republics workers and resources. It has similarities in game play and video. I like both. They seem to have a good take on creating games with creators. Not just cut and paste with different graphics.
As a developer and gamer myself, Hooded Horse is one of the publisher i think have the balance between devs and players that EVERYONE wants to achieve. I hope they grow larger to get a better industry and better games.
I’m buying my copy of this game this upcoming weekend. I’m excited for this.
Have fun and hope you enjoy it! I came in with not much expectations just based on the building animations. Now my sleeping schedule is all messed up but I have zero regrets 😂
@@G3rmanhenry yeah. I don’t know what to expect. I was playing Age of Empires prior to this game’s release, but I think this game is a whole different dynamic so I’ll see, but I like civ building games.
Manor Lords...
A good lil' game.
With very similar production/manpower mechanics to the game 'Banished' it does go further with immersion, graphic and sound design as well as nice, chilled music.
I have played it over the weekend and it is a pleasure to play and it does have good potential.
Now I am off to finish my wheat fields and bakery to get bread ready for the peasants to eat through the winter.
;-)
People keep saying Total War, this game is more like Rimworld than it is Total War. The 'burgages' are your colonizers and you have to keep them happy. Resource management is heavy, combat is an after thought but still enjoyable enough.
Im so happy to see this game being most wishlisted after the obvious hype disaster that was: "The day before" this game shows how it should be done, at least so far with the game up front with core mechanics and gameplay in place with no smoke and mirrors or insane overpromises, the day before didn't spend 7 years but around 5 i think but they also had a much bigger team in general so they should have probably been able to produce even more with the experience in the genre etc.
Played for over thirty hours. I've love gaming and played since the days of Atari and commodore 64. The game has a feel to it of the games of old. Lords of the realm, Sierra's original robin hood and power monger. I haven't felt so immersed in a game for a long time. The original Rome total war and medieval did this but money seems to ruin gaming. I hope and look forward to Manor lords improving and getting even better.
1 dev, wiping the floor with trip A companies.
spent hours alr and it just hits diff. feels like playing ONI, DST and Rimworld once again
I have a game pass, but I still got it on Steam as it really looks like a good game even if it's not completely finished, after many videos watching and playing myself one of best "releases" in quite a few years :)
I love this game so far. Would like to note some of the bad reviews are just dumb 'it's not a finished game yet' - 'this is a beta test, not a finished game' I mean the clue is in the EARLY ACCESS part I would have thought.
Honestly it's the first early access game I've experienced where stuff is clearly unfinished but somehow stills feel complete.
Hooded Horse is shaping up to be a great publisher: Workers & Resources, Against the Storm, Xenonauts 2.
Dam banished is what got me wanting Manor lords, I loved that game and sunk a lot of hours into it.
This game is truly magical. There is something about it that is just so satisfying.
Cant stop playing.
This game is so nice already, can't wait for the updates!
One of the first pc games I ever played was age of empires. After that it’s been fps and the like I forgot how good these kind of games are. Manor lords brings me so much nostalgia, I’m hooked!
CO with Cities Skylines II has no excuse and is embarrassing for their manpower and financial recourses when you see what 1 man did with this game...
It hits the same spot as rimworld for me, you can sit down to play for a bit and then realize its been 5 hours because theres always that one more thing you want to do really quick.
Its also very satisfying to set up road systems with trade and have crop rotations going.
Almost everything in game is super intuitive too, its easy to figure stuff out for the most part and I rarely had to look up how to do something in the 20 or so hours ive put into the game already.
But do you know you can pause production? :)
No politics, No grind, No micro transactions = Massively winning
Wow, Hooded Horse sounds like a publisher we all gamers should support fully. Especially with that by-law.
I'm quite surprised that this game is only a single dev. But people will have to be patient in any update. Hope he will handle well is sudden success.
Manor lords is a great combo of all the beloved RTS games
I'm playing it with my Xbox game pass so imagine all the people on that. Amazing city builder, and the combat is the best I've seen, I wish he makes a combat game or mods put that in later because its the best. Total War can absolutely learn something form Slavic Magic, maybe he can license his code to them.
You said what i think alot of people are thinking. Very nice video.
Things I'm hoping for:
Larger armies, more creative story, a historical mode, and slow motion.