October 23, 2023 - Day 296 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 315

Game: Lords & Villeins

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 11, 2022
Installation Date: Oct 23, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 15m

Lords & Villeins is a top-down pixel-art medieval city-building sim. Number six in the October Humble Choice Bundle.

I generally try to find something good to say about a game, but I genuinely can't find anything to like about this game.

Top-down & pixel-art was a hard sell to begin with, but Stardew Valley is top-down pixel-art and that worked for me.

This just didn't click. It's not so much of a city-building management sim, as a micro-management sim based on city-building.

The systems in the game seem disconnected from one another.

You assign land to a family. A 10 block x 10 block area of land is "10 acres". Each person takes up 1 block, so I guess each person is 10% of an acre in size?

But then you turn that area into a house, and now it's a 10 acre house?

I have to give the villeins everything single thing they need from my "warehouse". There are things in my warehouse. How did they get there? I do not know.

For instance, I had to give them X amount of straw.

Then they need walls on the land I zoned for them, and I can build the walls out of straw or wood. Do the walls come out of my warehouse pile of straw or the straw I just gave to the villeins?

The game does not tell me, and at this point, I do not care. I just want it to be over.

I attempt to build walls. You place the icon and drag out the wall. I dragged it in the wrong place. I can't cancel it. I need to delete it. I can't delete it with a drag. I have to click on and delete every single piece of wall individually.

The systems in this game are opaque and frustrating and when my 15 minutes were up, I gave a sigh of relief.

There is probably an audience for this game, but wherever that may be, I assume they have a tolerance for pain that I lack.

Lords & Villeins:

1: Nope

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