Manor Lords’ single dev has a lot planned for the game, with one highly requested feature set to make its way into the city-builder soon—fishing ponds. This will provide players with extra value in their villages early on, as well as help ensure their villagers don’t croak come winter.
The upcoming addition of fishing ponds was confirmed yesterday by Greg Styczeń, the mastermind behind Steam’s most-wishlisted game, on X (formerly Twitter). He said he’s currently “working on fishing ponds for the next update” since the feature was “requested a lot.” He didn’t provide a lot of details on how fishing ponds or fishing itself will be implemented but included a beautiful and serene picture of a work-in-progress pond. Styczeń also responded to players’ questions on Twitter/X, both regarding the feature and off-topic inquiries.
When asked about the estimated release date of these fishing ponds, Styczeń responded by saying he currently plans to launch them in “a few weeks.” Fishing ponds are also going to be shipped together with the Unreal Engine 5 port of the game, the developer said.
The Manor Lords developer has other features “on the priority list:” butchers and cattle, which will be yet another source of food and trade goods for players. Another addition, mushroom picking, was also planned and then scrapped since “it didn’t change up the gameplay enough to justify their existence.” Styczeń added how too many resources “doing the same exact thing” only clutters up the game and doesn’t provide value to the experience. Even so, he said he “might reconsider” at some point.
Manor Lords has been bleeding players over the past few months, dropping from a 173,000 peak (according to Steam Charts) to around 6,000 daily. Updates such as these are likely being expedited by the developer in an attempt to win back some of the player base, though that’s just speculation. Even so, Manor Lords is one of the best city-building games out there, with 88 percent of players willing to recommend the game on Steam.