With Bellwright, the makers of Last Oasis launch a new attempt to thrill the gaming public with a huge playground – this time in the Middle Ages.
The apparent models for Bellwright are resonant: The Mount and Blade series, Medieval Dynasty, RimWorld, Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The medieval-survival-construction-strategy game aims to combine many things that are already fun separately and let you experience a rise from a small hunter or woodcutter to the ruler of entire lands along with an army.
What is Bellwright about?
At its core, Bellwright has a lot in common with genre greats like Medieval Dynasty or isometric construction games like Banished or third-person survival games like Valheim . You have to survive in a graphically elaborately staged medieval worldby hunting animals, cultivating plants, collecting resources and erecting the first buildings of a settlement.
Over time, NPCs will join you and you can assign them tasks or command them in battle. Your small cell in the forest grows into a rebellion, during which you take territories from the crown by force, learn new skills and establish outposts During this time, thanks to various helping hands, your initially modest skill pool will add up to a collection of truly masterful proportions
From apprentice to master: The skills of your male and female companions should also be central, as not only do they each bring their own special skills, but they also become masters of their trade – whether archer, swordsman, builder, farmer or craftsman.
(The list of promises made by the developers on Steam is long) and reads impressively.
The following video gives you plenty of opportunity to experience gameplay f an early stage of a score in the fancy world of Bellwright. Primarily, you’ll see what gathering resources, interacting with NPCs, and building an initial settlement looks like
Who is developing Bellwright?
The developers behind Bellwright are no strangers, unfortunately that includes negatives: Donkey Crew’s first project, after forming from a number of modders from the mount-and-blade community is Last Oasis
The title has still not been regularly released to this day, after launching into Early Access in March 2020, and the (ratings on Steam are currently trending downwards). Some accuse the developers directly of leaving the project and just moving on to new things.
This doesn’t have to mean anything negative for Bellwright, but it should be in the back of their minds, if one or two are willing to give them a chance here or at Last Oasis.
Of course, if you generally don’t get enough of the Middle Ages as a setting for games of all kinds, you shouldn’t miss the long-in-development (Manor Lords)
So far there is no officially published release date for Bellwright. So for now there is only one thing to do: Wait and see. But the list of recent hits, with gems like Baldur’s Gate 3, Diablo 4 or Starfield, is already endless, so have fun!
So what do you think of Bellwright? Do you like the graphics? Did you try out the demo at the recent Steam Next Fest? Do you think the developers are overreaching themselves with this approach from small to huge? Does the situation around Last Oasis play a role for you when you think about Bellwright? Feel free to write us your opinion in the comments!
