Taking a lesson from Manor Lords, Hooded Horse delays Norland to July

«Late is just for a little while,» a wise man once said. "Suck is forever." Few games embody that mantra as effectively as Manor Lords: It was supposed to come out in 2023, got pushed to April 2024, and ultimately launched to near-universal acclaim and major sales. Perhaps inspired by that success, publisher Hooded Horse announced today that medieval strategy sim Norland—which, like Manor Lords, is putting up big wishlist numbers—has likewise been delayed, and is now set to come out on July 18.

The extra couple months of development time will enable developer Long Jaunt to «include some extra features, and bask in the glory of hitting 500,000 wishlists for a bit longer,» Hooded Horse said. Those features will include enhanced world map trading, a province ecology system that will incorporate factors like soil erosion, limited raw materials, and market saturation, new local map mechanics, aging («no longer will the ruling family be immortal»), mid-game prophecies and disaster, and numerous other features and improvements.

«We've done what we could, but the game needs additional testing and debugging; it doesn't perform as well as it should,» designer and studio head Dmitry Glaznev said on Steam. «I’d like to postpone the release for a few more weeks to ensure we deliver a well-functioning game. Norland’s new launch date is set for July 18th.

»I'm sorry about the additional wait, but we will continue to open up the demo version and conduct regular playtests so you can see how the game is evolving and getting closer to a state we can be proud of."

There's clearly a lot of interest in Norland—more than 500,000 wishlists puts it among the top 50 most-wishlisted games on Steam—but publisher Hooded Horse isn't inclined to rush the developers to the finish line. 

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

The strategy worked out