Developer Long Jaunt and publisher Hooded Horse announced that they are pushing back the Early Access release date for Norland, the Rimworld-esque medieval colony sim/ story generator.
The game will now be releasing in July rather than in May, and this extra two months of development means extra development time to include these features:
- Enhanced World Map trading
- Province ecology- players will be forced to find resources outside their borders to sustain the kingdom
- New local map mechanics (patrolling, enhanced character reactions, market speculation)
- Aging
- Prophecies and disasters in the mid-game
- Other quality-of-life changes
A full breakdown of additional stuff coming with Norland’s Early Access build thanks to this delay can be found here.
Given Hooded Horse just published a million-copy seller of a city builder in the form of Manor Lords last month, it’s a sound reason to give Norland some breathing room by spacing out the two game launches- both being medieval themed strategy games with likely some overlap of fanbase.
And Norland itself has grown quite the fanbase too. The game now sits with over 500,000 Steam wishlists right now, placing it within the top 50 games on Steam with the most wishlist. It’s a game that’s already on the radar for quite some number of folks.
Norland blends the colony sim mechanics from Rimworld with grand strategy and RPG elements of Crusader Kings. Players control a dynasty in Norland, and established land with its own culture (and cultural tensions) and lore. Players can directly issue orders to the monarch and their court members (including family members and other nobles), but the peasants and slaves cannot be directly, or indirectly controlled.
Norland allows you to build an army and engage in bloody battles, or have a noble be sleeping around with other nobles (or even with the commoners). There’s plenty of interesting situations, drama and events that can happen simply through the magic of different systems interacting with each other.
Norland will now launch on PC via Steam Early Access on July 18. Check out our hands-on impressions of the game here.