"Slow is only for a little while," the wise man once said. "Sucking is eternal. It was supposed to come out in 2023, pushed to 2024-4, and eventually launched into a major sale with almost universal acclaim. Perhaps inspired by its success, publisher Hooded Horse, like medieval Strategy Sim Norland Manor Rose, has put a big wish list number— as well as a late

extra months of development time, the developer's long excursion could include "some extra features and a little longer 500,000 wish list." These features include enhanced world map trading, state ecosystem systems incorporating factors such as soil erosion, limited raw materials and market saturation, new local map mechanics, aging ("No longer dominant families are immortal"), in—game prophecies and disasters, and many other features and improvements.

"We did what we could, but the game requires additional testing and debugging, and it doesn't work," designer and studio head Dmitry Glaznev said on Steam. "We'd like to postpone the release for a few more weeks to ensure we deliver a game that works well. The new release date for Norland is set for 7/18.

"Sorry about the additional wait, we will open the demo version and conduct regular play tests so that we can see how the game has evolved and is nearing a state where we can be proud of it."

There's obviously a lot of interest in Norland — more than 500,000 wish lists put it in the top 50 of Steam's most wish-listed games, but publisher Hooded Horse doesn't tend to rush developers to the finish line. 

"The reason [for the delay] is basically the same reason we delayed Manor Rose," Hooded Horse CEO Tim Bender said in a separate interview with PC Gamer. "It's just an additional polish."

The strategy worked well for the Manor lords. It's a great city builder but it's also surprisingly stable for early access games. Bugs are rare, performance is good, and Slavic Magic's claim that 99% of reported crashes are caused by older drivers is a bit exaggerated You just need to look at Nightingale, another highly anticipated early access game and see the consequences of being too early for Early access. There are: more than 47,000 simultaneous times a month That's not insurmountable, but it makes life harder than it needs to be.

Bender also confirmed that Norland will be the first early access release, similar to Manor Lords. "We love the release of Early Access," he continued. "Almost all of our games are early access releases.

"The game is great. I'm really excited. It plays so well and in so many interesting ways... I really look forward to it."