Lords And Villeins is a lighthearted city-building strategy simulation of a medieval society where you shape the dynasty of the ruling family. In this game, You're not drowned in managing every detail of your villager's daily life; instead, staying true to your role, you focus on the big picture and deal with whole families and their descendants.

Manage peasant and noble families, expand the production chain, train an army for the king and influence the daily lives of villagers while making important decisions and engaging with the fantasy of being a Medieval lord.

Embark on an emotional journey and see your villagers grow, evolve, create relationships, go through struggles and challenges to shape their lives and stories in interesting ways.

New major update 0.12.17 has arrived and brings many new features for you to enjoy! From the traveling salesmen, the Inn and travelers visiting, to hunting, new weather effects, temperature simulation, fighting and more. You can even look forward to some spooky additions - plant pumpkins on your farms and place Jack-o-Lanterns to make your village more mysterious!

Lords And Villeins is available through Early Access via Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store, and other digital stores at $19.99 USD / €19.99 EUR.

Hear ye, hear ye!

By the decree of the King, the first of the game’s three Early Access Content Updates, dubbed “The World Update”, introduces a slew of new options and challenges for the aspiring medieval rulers, who shall henceforth in their daily lives encounter the following:

New Features

• New Zone: The Inn
  • Place bars, tables chairs, beds, and cooking facilities to run the inn.
  • Assign the Inn to any family in the settlement to run it. It can also serve as their home!
  • Villagers will regularly visit the Inn to have a beer and socialize with others.
  • Villagers will purchase meals or beds at the inn if they don't have their own.
  • Visitors will arrive at the village and spend some time at the inn. Then depending on the reputation of the player may request to stay (replaces the current system of random popups).
• New Zone: Caravan Marketplace
  • Build caravan storages and storefronts to attract traveling salesmen.
  • Caravans react to the demand of the settlement and a portion of their offering is tailored to the needs of the specific settlement, while the rest is random.
  • Villagers purchase from caravans in the same way as from other villagers, though they prioritize local markets first.
  • Caravans attempt to purchase cheap resources on the local markets, that are oversupplied, thus creating an opportunity for import and export economies.
• New Zone: Hunting Area
  • Attract new families of hunters and assign them the hunting area.
  • Place hideouts, forest feeders, and traps to hunt wild animals.
  • Forest feeders attract wild animals and hideouts provide protection.
  • Hunters will use bows and crossbows to hunt and prefer equipping leather armor for better protection.
• New Wild Animals and Herd Behavior
  • Bear, boar, deer, and wolf have been added.
  • Animals now spawn regularly in herds and move through the map in search of food.
  • Carnivores like bears, boars, and wolves will hunt other animals for food. They may even attack villagers if they get desperate!
  • Wolves sometimes perform tactical hunting and find a target to hunt down during the night when all animals are sleeping.
  • Animals rotate out of the map and have preferred seasons outside of which they won't appear on the map.
• Domesticated animals now come in with caravans
  • Cows, chickens, and sheep no longer spawn on the map. Instead, villagers will purchase them from traveling salesmen.
  • Pigs currently still appear on the map to make foragers viable. Once we implement better breeding AI, we will remove them as well.
• New Pets - Cats and Dogs
  • Villagers have now a small chance to appear with a pet - a cat or dog.
  • Pets will follow their owners around and can protect them in a fight.
• Added new stats for strength, dexterity, and intelligence
  • Both villagers and animals now have stats - strength that dictates their attack power and health, a dexterity that dictates their defense, and attack speed and intelligence, which impacts their social interactions (only applies for villagers).
• Added new fighting system
  • Villagers and animals can now fight each other.
  • The system is driven by villager stats and equipment.
  • Villagers and animals will protect each other in a fight depending on the situation and distance from the fight.
  • Most fights between villagers end with fainting. Fainted villagers are dragged to the bed by their family relatives to recover.
• Villagers can wear equipment and tools
  • Each piece of equipment has a durability loss which is accumulated either naturally through time, for most wearable equipment, or when used.
  • When villagers wear tools, the time of work-related activities is reduced.
• The game tracks the reputation of the player
  • Reputation is updated daily based on relationships with other families.
  • The relationship is driven by the actions of the player and villagers' average happiness, which is most impacted by their average mood.
• Villagers build relationships, date, and request to marry
  • They greet each other in proximity or when sitting at the same table, progressing their relationship either in a positive or negative direction (indicated by emojis over their head).
  • Some villagers will have special interests in each other and if relationships increase well enough, they will fall in love.
  • Villagers that are in love can go on a date from time to time and have a chance to request permission to marry.
  • If a relationship is very negative, villagers have a chance to enter a fight after a negative interaction.
• Individual families maintain relationships with each other
  • The family relationship is updated daily and it translates into personal interactions of villagers. This information is currently hidden from the player but it drives the relationship system.
• Temperature is simulated
  • Simulation is driven by a global temperature that changes through the year and is impacted by insolation (walls, rooftops) and heat sources (fireplace, candles).
  • A new heatmap overlay has been added to observe the temperature on the map.
  • Villagers need to keep themselves warm. During cold days, they will burn firewood in fireplaces and actively surround them to heat up.
  • Clothes now impact their resistance to cold temperatures and naked villagers will freeze more easily.
• New weather effects
  • Weather effects of rain, storm, and snow are randomly triggered depending on the season.
• Walls and structures deteriorate over time
  • Visual indication marks their reduced quality and villagers will perform activities to repair them. Currently, there is no cost to repairing them, but this will be added later.
  • Public structures are maintained by the ruling family.
• Beauty values are simulated
  • Values are driven by terrain type, structures, and walls and their quality and cost. Better / more expensive structures provide more beauty. Trash piles on the ground also decrease beauty.
  • Peasant villagers are not very demanding in terms of beauty, but the noble class added in the next update will act differently.
  • A new beauty overlay has been added to observe the beauty levels on the map.
• Soil quality is simulated
  • The quality is impacted by terrain type, distance to the source of water, and the presence of crops, plants, and trees. Soil regenerates over time if it is not used and rain speeds up regeneration.
  • Soil quality impacts the speed of growth of plants and their chance of getting sick before harvesting.
  • Players can maintain the percentage of soil being left to regenerate in the priority menu of the farm.
  • A new soil quality overlay has been added to observe the quality of the soil on the map.
• New Market Price List UI
  • A new screen that lists current prices of all goods and animals, as well as their change from a previous day.

Other Improvements

• When villagers eat at a table, there is a visual indication of the meal on the table.
• The tutorial scenario has been expanded with new quests that teach the new game mechanics like heat, marketplace, and the inn.
• The tutorial book has been expanded with information about new features, such as caravans and the inn.
• The sound system has been improved, making the sound levels more balanced and adding better transitions.
• The in-game HUD has been redesigned. It now contains a middle section for action buttons and a right bottom section for toggling overlays.
• Most UI screens have been redesigned, particularly to display fonts bigger and make them easier to read.
• Homosexual couples can now adopt children.
• Art for existing animals has been updated.
• Added Grass Field floor type that can be used to cover the dirt.
• When setting fees or salary on a zone, players now can enter the value as gold, silver, and copper coins separately.
• The ruling family will now build structures covered by a zone if that zone has no family assigned.
• An option to force villagers to ignore building blueprints in a zone has been added.
• The cursor tooltip now also shows the size of the placed zones.
• Increased priority of building over planting and harvesting.
• The inventory screen now lists also personal gold of villagers and separately lists taxed resources in the ownership of a zone/family/person.
• When a family starts to run out of money, a "Family is Low on Money" notification is triggered.
• Renamed Blacksmithery to Forge and Bowmaker to Bowyer.
• Zone tooltips now list a recommended build size as a guiding point for new players.
• Different walking speeds on varying terrain - villagers now walk faster on cobblestone paths and slower in forest or sand.
• Cats and dogs can be pet by clicking on them.
• Accept New Family UI now shows which animals they would arrive with. It also lists zones they can be assigned to with their profession.
• Families in the tutorial should now cook meals regardless of their stock to complete the quest faster even if the player donated them a lot of food.
• The tutorial now starts with a bigger fishing family to make building the Inn easier.
• Added new "Clear All Notifications" button.
• Storefronts now also list ground resources being sold.

Bugfixes

• Fixed bug that caused the "Married in" mark in the family book to appear incorrectly.
• Fixed incorrect meat yields from animals when butchered.
• Fixed bug that sorted items in the Royal Tax screen incorrectly.
• Fixed bug that displayed incorrect text for the king when the player completed all taxes fully.
• Fixed bugs with the cursor tooltip displaying size dimensions and costs.
• Fixed bug where built chairs appear under the floor blueprint.
• Fixed bug where you can't close inventory screen with a cross button.
• Fixed bug that Ground Storage did not list all resources if by chance villagers stored multiple types there

An Early Access roadmap is available here.

Key Features

• 70+ objects at your disposal to build, decorate and improve your settlement
• Nearly 20 different zones and professions that can be performed by the villagers for the player to manage
• 90+ resources to be used in a fully functional production chain
• Unique family-management perspective where the player negotiates with groups of villagers through the head of their family
• Fully simulated procedurally generated environment with a complex AI that can create relationships and develop character traits
• Seasonal cycle with a simulation of weather conditions, humidity, and temperatures that have an impact on villagers lives

Lords And Villeins is in development for PC.