1y ago

Don't say Manor Lords was made by a 'solo developer,' argues competing city builder maker: 'The team size on it is maybe even larger than ours'

www.pcgamer.com

11 comments

Solo dev that hires a bunch of contractors?
That's like if I was saying I mow my lawn myself by paying a teenager to do it for me
- I mow the lawn myself but I outsourced the design and manufacturing of my mower. Same with string trimmer and leaf blower. I also buy my gasoline instead of making it myself.
  
  Yeah but in this case we don't seem to be talking about building the tools for the dev (lawnmower/gas), it seems like contractors were hired to develop things that are the final product (mowed lawn).
I'm starting to think the problem is their marketing department because I have no idea. Why are there so many conflicting stories?
I will say I can feel the hype train with Manor Lords, which I usually am not a part of. I like that kind of game and already had furthest frontier so I picked it up.
I was pretty... shocked with how much was unfinished and how little soul and love the game felt like it had.
I figured I got duped and someone paid every youtuber on a slow week to hype it up since they missed some publisher deadline or whatever
- Yeah, I saw a review where the guy was like "what mechanics are there are really polished" and to me that was saying that they can really feel an absence of the "rest of the game", and so its probably not that far along.
- This is exactly why I never buy Early Access games. The biggest thrill for me is starting a new game, and if that isn't as good as it can possibly be, then that opportunity has been wasted.
  Sure, it /may/ get better at some undefined point in the future, but there's just so many games out there that are complete, and won't require re-visiting at some point because they got better. Once that first play is gone, it's gone.
- I mean it just released into early access so I mean yeah it makes sense that there isn't a full game there yet. Personally I like this approach to early access more then the approach a lot of other games take where the full game is there but it's super buggy and has lots of bad design throughout it. This feels more like a slowly building out and polishing from the start of the game to the end which I think is gonna make a great game once it's done. And even now while the experience isn't super long it's really good and well polished.
- Farthest frontier is great, all the hype around manor lords made me go back and Farthest play fromtier again
I’m really loving Manor Lords but my first “good” playthrough is coming to an end and I’ll take a break until more content is added. Once you learn all of the game mechanics, building a thriving economy is really easy.
I picked up the game for $30, it will keep getting better, and some day I’ll have an amazing game that I got for pretty cheap. This isn’t my first early-access experience, and most of the games I’ve gotten have been a success. Subnautica, Oxygen Not Included, The Forest, Astroneers. Im sure there are more on that list, just a few off the top of my head.
I don’t much care about the semantics. It isn’t just one person making the game, but it is one persons vision and it is a good one.
Nobody better talk shit about Crate thanks to headlines like this that don't clarify until you are 2/3 of the way down the article. Crate and Larian restored my faith in game development.

11 comments