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[Akura]

The Planet Crafter has released version 1.0.

[delphonso]

Been playing a lot of games lately, in very short bursts.

Nioh is absolutely great and far more my style of game than Dark Souls is. It's just fast Dark Souls, which more customization. It honestly buckles under all the mechanics it introduces, but whatever - it plays amazing.

Battletech is also very good. Gameplay, customization, and story, all are satisfying. I've had a lot of fun just taking jobs to blow away caravans or stomp all over some pirates.

Balatro is hyped beyond belief and yes, it is very good.

I've been playing We Love Katamari, the remaster, with my daughter - it's great, love reliving my childhood games with my kid.

[Funk]

So manor lords came out and it great, great at being a medieval manor manager.

Not great at battles or people management, but a good city builder. 

[Radsoc]

Any more opinions on manor lords? Similarities to other games?

[nenjin]

I watched a couple hours of it by Legend of Total War.

No disrespect to the Manor Lord devs but....the game looks wildly over-hyped. I'm a little shocked how much coverage it has gotten, front page of Steam, a lot of other things. It reminds me of Tropico with fewer options. The production chains aren't super lengthy, there's no sim management of any kind, warfare is very barebones....

It gets the aesthetic just right, and the early game of course looks enticing as you build up. But once you've formed a stable village there just doesn't seem to be that much else interesting going on.

Compared to that OTHER 4x game that came out where your civilization goes from tribal to space age, Manor Lords looks like it needs another year of development.

I mean, last I saw a couple weeks ago, you couldn't even conqueror the other factions on the map.

So my take is "good game that they're launching too early into EA for it to be a complete experience."

[Jopax]

I think it's getting a bit of a Banished treatment, a decent game that for some reason is way too talked up by a ton of people. From playing it a couple of hours, so far, it pretty much is Banished+

Still very early and lacking a ton of features, but whats there is fairly polished and enjoyable if you're looking for a somewhat relaxing city-builder. The atmosphere is pretty much spot on tho, I'd love to see them add more to it in terms of building variety and options to have some properly creative looking villages and towns down the line.

I'd say if you want a similar but far more involved and complete experience, go for Foundation as that one has been in development by a bit more people for a good while now and while it's nowhere near as graphically impressive it still looks and plays pretty good for the price.

[nenjin]

Yep, I'm strongly reminded of Banished's EA release as well.

[Chiefwaffles]

I think it's getting a bit of a Banished treatment, a decent game that for some reason is way too talked up by a ton of people. From playing it a couple of hours, so far, it pretty much is Banished+

I was thinking the exact same thing. Banished's hype was and remains completely inexplicable to me. A solid game by all means, but I never understood why people seemed to go insane for it. I haven't played this (yet) or seen *too* much of it, but it strikes me the same way. Solid game with a weird hype around.

[Iceblaster]

I think it's getting a bit of a Banished treatment, a decent game that for some reason is way too talked up by a ton of people. From playing it a couple of hours, so far, it pretty much is Banished+

I was thinking the exact same thing. Banished's hype was and remains completely inexplicable to me. A solid game by all means, but I never understood why people seemed to go insane for it. I haven't played this (yet) or seen *too* much of it, but it strikes me the same way. Solid game with a weird hype around.

Personally, I think it could just be because I don't think there was a big mainstream game of that sort before? That being a 'hardcore' settlement manager of the sort, Rimworld had only been out for a year and Dwarf Fortress was still at least afaik niche, City: Skylines was a year out so we were still in between major city building franchises, too.

I forget exactly the gaming landscape in 2014, though, so this is entirely speculative.

[nenjin]

IIRC the biggest selling point of Banished was people starving to death in winter, and also the aesthetic of housing once your city was built.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, I think Banished's big thing was just scratching an itch that nothing else at the time really did. A nice mix of simplicity and difficulty.

Manor Lord seems to have a lot more competition, so I'm not sure why it's getting quite so much hype.

[Djohaal]

I think whomever is developing/publishing it greased some palms in the game news media industry. I was assaulted by previews and news about it the last few weeks from every possible games news outlet in my cell phone google news feed.

[n9103]

FWIW, I only know about Manor Lord because one of the guys I watch on Twitch picked it up. Well, that and this thread.

[Persus13]

If you ever find the secret for what makes a game hit or sink I'd think there'd be a bunch of people trying to hire you.

Being high up on Steam's most wishlisted games, and then people liking the narrative of a small indie city builder getting to that point seems to be most of the reason for the hype from what I've seen.

[nenjin]

I think it's just good ol' fashioned marketing. IIRC Legend of Total War got his copy for free from the devs. So they probably hit up a lot of people in the scene with free copies, and probably have a competent marketing department that knew how to talk to Steam. Steam does clearly pick winners in the top banner ads. And it may not even be total wishlists but by how fast it gets wishlisted. And there could also just be plain paid placement. All that, combined with it actually looking like a decent game, can go a long ways toward shaping perception.