'Manor Lords' player count explodes as Steam's latest surprise

Manor Lords? Manor Lords. The biggest games on Steam lately seem to come from the most random places, and that's certainly the case for Manor Lords, the medieval RTS that just hit Early Access, and saw player numbers skyrocket right after.

Manor Lords' claim to fame is that it was “handcrafted by a solo developer,” Greg Styczeń, and the game was previously partially funded through Patreon. Her players love her.

By checking the charts, the Manor Lords had reached 100,000 Synchronized Steam players Just hours after launch. The all-time peak was 170,082 players a day ago, but it's now 10 a.m. ET and it's already reached 164,484 at the time of this writing. Maybe by the time you read this article, it will be heading north of 200,000.

It's the The #1 best-selling game on the service currentlyAnd, as with many other successful games, it's not a premium $70 game, but a game that's on sale for $40 versus $30 when it launches here.

Ratings are currently “very positive” on Steam, with 87% positive in fact, suggesting that it's not just that there are a lot of players playing, there are a lot of players. Satisfied Players play, and the game delivers what they were hoping for, a fun RTS experience in an era where the genre isn't what it used to be. Here's how the developer describes Manor Lords:

“Manor Lords aims to provide an organic, gridless city building experience with complete freedom of positioning and rotation, but with snapping tools to make planning more convenient. The building mechanics are driven by the growth of real towns and villages in the Middle Ages, where major trade routes often influenced and landscapes on how the settlement formed and developed.

I was about to write about how Styczeń created the game in Unreal Engine, and sure enough, a couple of hours before Epic I just posted an interview with him About using the engine to make this work as a solo developer. Here's what he says about it:

“Now that I've been sitting with the engine for almost seven years, I can't imagine writing my own engine. Not only is there a lot to think about, but the world is constantly changing, and we're also worried about driver compatibility for any new card that's released and implementing every Some kind of AI upgrade technology, various stores, SDKs, etc. Honestly, I don't know how people do it!

Styczeń also received a “MegaGrant” from Epic, where the company funds small developers to create games in Unreal. He says this allowed him to quit his day job and focus full-time on development, while hiring additional freelance artists to help with things.

The game looks excellent, especially for what is almost a one-man show. I'm curious to see how big it gets, and I'll be keeping an eye on those player charts.

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