Manor Lords, the best city builder of 2024, hits 3 million sales as players continue to fill its maps with muddy medieval towns

(Image credit: Slavic Magic)

Our favourite city builder of 2024, Manor Lords, is having a pretty great 2025 as well. Following a meaty update that introduced a pair of new maps, bridges, building upgrades and a bunch of fixes, it's now hit the 3 million sales mark. Not bad for solo developer Slavic Magic—though that characterisation did net the developer a bit of flak last year, since contractors have also contributed to the game.

Regardless, Manor Lords is an extremely impressive effort from such a small studio, and while it's still in early access, it's enjoyed regular updates and tweaks, and thus is already much improved compared to the version that made such a sizable impact back in April.

The popularity of the city builder surprised both Slavic Magic and publisher Hooded Horse. "A breakout hit like this, you cannot count on it to repeat itself year after year," said Hooded Horse co-founder Snow Rui in a BBC interview last year. "There will be people pushing you to have a different expectation or treating the next year as a failure if the breakout hit doesn't repeat itself but that's simply not the case. So that's a matter of setting your expectations and centering who you are."

Even before launch, though, there was a level of anticipation that you don't usually see with medieval city builders—even with the enduring popularity of city builders in general. By January last year, it had already been added to over 2 million Steam wishlists.

"When we first launched the announcement trailer in 2020, my girlfriend said she expected me to get 7,000 wishlists," Slavic Magic's Greg Styczeń said at the time. "I was more optimistic and said it would be more like 14,000 and that would be awesome. Suffice to say, I did not expect the game to pick up so much interest and hit over 2 million."

It can be hard to tell what game is going to enjoy a popularity explosion, but Manor Lords does tick a lot of boxes. It's a looker, for one. Undeniably one of the best-looking city builders around. And I reckon the lack of abstraction, the fact that it's deeply tactile, and the little flourishes, like the ability to wander around your settlements, made it very appealing. It's a muddy medieval sim, but at the same time it's almost cosy. And you don't usually get much crossover between the cosy audience and the hardcore historical sim crowd.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.