Best City Builder 2024: Manor Lords

Break out the lute, because Manor Lords was our favourite city builder of the year. For more awards, check out our Game of the Year 2024 hub.

Elie Gould, News Writer: Manor Lords came out at just the right time for me. Before landing on this medieval city builder/management game, I played quite a few horror games and metroidvanias, which can honestly be pretty tiring. So it was refreshing to be tested by a game in a different way. Instead of needing perfect reaction times, I had to do mental gymnastics to figure out whether this was really the right place to start an arable farm or solve trade issues by flooding the market with sheep. I’m not saying that I mastered this city builder, but I sure had a lot of fun growing my quaint town into a serious political and economic centre.

Andy Edser, Hardware Writer: Manor Lords is the sort of strategy-based city builder that I'd probably mess around with for a bit if it was a 2D, top-down, low budget offering, before eventually leaving for more graphically-temperate climes. But lo and indeed behold, it's actually one of the better-looking games I've played this year.

I hate to sound shallow, but I am, so that's just the way it comes out. At its core though, Manor Lords is a vibe game—a slice of middle-ages muckery that's acted like a goblet of not-so-refreshing mead to swish away the spicier notes of my usual grand strategy adventures to create something altogether more grounded.

I expected it to crunch and jank with the best of them, a result of its mostly-single-dev production—but instead it's been a smooth ride. The interface might be filled with a dizzying array of options, but it never feels overwhelming. That's a trick that other city builders would do well to imitate, and lends itself perfectly to chilled-out after work sessions. Sometimes I don't need to save the world after a long day typing words about tech. Sometimes I need to ponder history.

I could listen to my villagers mosey around my catastrophically-planned town for hours, the gentle tingle of lutes drifting me into a place of mindful peace. Until it all kicks off, of course, and the swearing begins. Manor Lords is a mud bath to soothe the gaming soul, and my year has been all the better for it.

Sean Martin, Senior Guides Writer: Just like Andy says, Manor Lords has been one of my gaming happy places this year. There's just something so comforting and pastoral about the entire affair. It's a smart city-builder, but it has an impeccable atmosphere as a medieval life sim, too, transporting you back to a simpler time when you only had to worry about making it through the winter or bandits pinching your eggs. It's funny, because proper medieval life sims usually bore me to tears.

Atmosphere, in my opinion, is the secret spice that really makes a city-builder—it's one of the main reasons why Frostpunk is so special—and Manor Lords is extremely good at channeling those rustic medieval vibes. I think the game is also very smart in terms of scale, letting you feel like a local lord where a lot of strategy games would try to expand the scope. Manor Lords never tries to drag you away from your settlement and its people, instead letting you tend to your township as it grows, and tackle each concern as it arises—which must be pretty similar to how life back then actually was.

It perfectly satisfies my craving to escape modern life and start rearing sheep or making dye from berries I find in the woods. Better yet, I don't actually have to face the reality that the life of your average medieval peasant was probably quite tough.