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'

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(Image credit: Slavic Magic)

A medieval city

“Like, people somehow think we have 60 people, or the entire [Crate Entertainment] team’s working on Farthest Frontier, and that we’re so slow, but ‘one guy is developing Manor Lords,’ and it drives me nuts,” said Bruno. “And then you look at the credits for [Manor Lords], and the team size on it is maybe even larger than ours.”

Styczeń has “obviously done a tremendous amount of the work and what he’s done is impressive,” said Bruno, but he thinks that it’s “not possible for one person in this day and age to both fully program and do the art and the animations and everything that goes into a game” like Manor Lords.

TheManor Lords creditsinclude two “extra programming” acknowledgements and a number of 3D artists, animators, illustrators, concept artists, history consultants, writers, and other contributors. In a recent interview with PC Gamer, Tim Bender, CEO of Manor Lords publisher Hooded Horse, described its development setup as “solo developer plus contractors,” where Styczeń is the main creative force but has brought on outside talent to help.

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After this article was published, Styczeńsaid on Xthat Bruno made a “fair criticism,” but argued that the difference is that the future of Manor Lords entirely depends on him, whereas Crate Entertainment could go on making games under new leadership if Bruno quit.

(Image credit: Greg Styczeń)

Greg Styczeń: “I’m going to start telling people I’m a solo dev that’s just being helped out by a number of employees” says FF developer, it’s a fair criticism and I get it, but I think he doesn’t understand that if I quit, it’s game over, no more ML. If he quits his studio, nothing changes.

Before I accidentally start some fake game developer beef here: Bruno doesn’t have a problem with Styczeń or Manor Lords. We got onto the topic because I mentioned that Manor Lords hadalready received an unreasonable “is this game abandoned” comment, and Bruno could sympathize.

“We get that all the time,” said Bruno. “Recently, we got a negative review where people were asking if we had abandoned the game, and we had literally released a major update like two weeks before that.”

But it’s feedback like that which has caused the Manor Lords “solo developer” distinction to become a sore spot for Bruno: It’s another piece of ammunition used in complaints that Crate Entertainment isn’t moving fast enough.

Farthest Frontier has been in early access since 2022, and is set to hit 1.0 later this year.(Image credit: Crate Entertainment)

Medieval village

The bigger picture, I think, is that as much as they may try to grin and bear it, the pressure to rapidly deliver updates and respond to constant feedback clearly weighs on today’s indie game developers. It reminds me of streamers who say they can’t take a single day’s break without losing followers. As we put it in 2019, “The pressure to constantly update games is pushing the industry to a breaking point.”

Neither Manor Lords nor Farthest Frontier are “abandoned,” for the record. Styczeń is working on the firstManor Lordspatch now, and in the leadup toFarthest Frontier’s 1.0 release, Bruno says its team at Crate Entertainment is working on adding a tech tree, improving optimization, and “prototyping some new aspects to the military component of the game.”

This article has been updated with an additional comment from Bruno and a response from Styczeń.

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