Manor Lords: Is There an Early Access Developer Roadmap

With the launch of this rather interesting medieval strategy game, Manor Lords has grabbed the attention of a lot of players, and despite being in Early Access, it has garnered a lot of positive reviews. The game combines city building with large-scale tactical battles by integrating in-game social and economic variables to make for a quite unique and fun experience.

With that being said, we will be taking a look at whether the developer has a roadmap planned out for Manor Lords and what we can expect in terms of future updates. It is exciting to see new titles being handled with care and passion, instead of the typical AAA studio releases that have led to many disappointed players, peddling unfinished products.

Is There a Roadmap for Manor Lords?

Unfortunately, the developer is not planning on releasing a roadmap for the Early Access phase of Manor Lords.

I do not plan on releasing a roadmap yet. I've made a mistake once or twice before, of promising and working on a feature only to find out that the testers didn't care as much as I did and that they actually wanted something else. So even if I have a plan, I want to adopt the philosophy of "listen, verify, implement". This way I expect the first month of patches to be just bug fixes and polish. During that time, together with Hooded Horse, we’ll be collecting your feedback and then prioritizing work based on what we hear.

This will allow the developer to focus on fixing current issues and bugs that might arise from players trying out the game and instead work together with the community to integrate new features and updates to the game. This is an interesting approach, as many developers often promise huge changes and updates to their game, however, when the deadline approaches, studios often postpone or outright do not deliver the promised features.

I'm still considering whether to keep the testing of future patches closed or open, my current idea is to have an open pre_release beta branch so that everyone who owns the game can check and test the most recent pre-release unstable version of the game and contribute if they want to. And keeping the main branch as the previous most stable version. Though let me know, maybe you'd prefer me to keep the unstable versions to a closed testing group?

Overall, the expectations are high for Manor Lords given how well the game was received at launch. We will keep an eye out for any major news from the developer so if this game sounds like a good time for you, make sure to give it a try!