Bellwright is a new building game that will be released in early access on Steam in April. The creators, Donkey Crew, have previously gained a lot of experience with another game: Last Oasis, which was not well received at all. The team learns from the mistake. The creators have shown the current status to MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus.
Last Oasis is a bitter story of failure. A cool idea was poorly implemented: The Earth no longer rotates, the sun scorches the planet. You must fight your way through deserts with giant wooden walkers and search for oases.
A strong setting for a survival game, with a fatal flaw. The developers fully focused on PvP in Last Oasis. Anyone can and should kill anyone, big guilds are supposed to rule. Nevertheless, the game managed to attract over 30,000 players at launch.
However, those players quickly disappeared. Today, the game averages 77 players (via steamcharts). The recent ratings on Steam are “mixed” with 46 %. Even the boss doesn’t think much of his game – and is temporarily focusing on something new.
In 2023, Creative Director Florian Hofreither showed me his new project at Gamescom: Bellwright. Back then, I was quite excited. Bellwright looked unfinished but already quite good back then.
Now the developers have invited me again to see the current state of the game just before its early access release. And yes: Bellwright looks quite promising. But a nasty memory still lingers in my mind.
Bellwright takes you to an idyllic world – Alone or with friends.
In Bellwright, you play as a revolutionary who stands up against a cruel queen. To escape your heavy fate, you gather allies, build outposts and settlements, and gradually free the land from the tyrant.
Essentially, Bellwright is a mix of Rimworld and Mount & Blade, and the developers themselves say that a large part of the inspiration comes from there. At its core, the game is primarily a building game – in Unreal Engine 5 and third person. The game mechanics are quite detailed:
- You control a single character, the leader of the revolution, and traverse a vast world.
- There you liberate places and establish settlements and outposts, which you maintain with NPCs.
- Food is the most important factor for survival. Your followers either automatically collect what they need or you can manage them through micromanagement and a priority system.
- You also place buildings in third person, and over time your NPCs will construct the items.
- In combat, you lead a group and give them orders, where you can either fight at the front or remain at a safe distance.
The complexity arises from the need to find the right balance between fighters, gatherers, and craftsmen and the size of the settlements. Larger settlements are more likely to attract an attack but can provide better items and more food.
Currently, the game also offers a full co-op mode. You can play with friends, distribute tasks, like having one person for crafting, one for conquests, and one for building.
Bellwright is set in an “idyllic medieval world,” as the Creative Director describes it, as a child might imagine it. It should feel good to be out and about there – and yet there will be dangers as you progress in the game.
Plans for more features are already in place
In the gameplay, the creators showed me how they lead a squad of soldiers against multiple camps and liberate new areas. This is crucial for progress in the game because:
- you learn new items that can be created at crafting stations through a tech tree
- certain progress is locked behind special “Points of Interest,” like wheat fields that you must capture first
- new areas and biomes usually contain greater dangers, but also better loot
Bellwright will be released on April 23, 2024 on Steam and already offers a lot of fun. Nevertheless, there are already ideas for features that are to come in the future, such as:
- An endless mode where you can keep building, as currently, the story simply ends sometime and you win
- Mounts and mounted combat is something that will definitely come – they are just still struggling with the implementation
- Walls and fortifications will come later, probably alongside a proper siege system
Last Oasis “objectively isn’t fun”, Bellwright learns from it
The boss has previously talked about the mistakes of Last Oasis. Among the major shortcomings back then were:
- too much focus on PvP
- poor experience for new players
- little pushback from developers
This has led to an extremely toxic player base, which even the developers grew tired of. Developing Bellwright, on the other hand, is a lot of fun again, and they receive a lot of positive feedback from the playtesters.
Learning from their negative experiences, the creators want to do better this time. They even mentioned in an interview: If Bellwright works, they want to go back to Last Oasis and somehow “save” the game. But that’s in the distant future.
From what I’ve seen of Bellwright so far, the game indeed looks very promising, albeit niche. I can imagine and hope that it finds a loyal and at least somewhat large player base. However, I find myself increasingly comparing it to Minecraft Legends, which did not work at all: The third Minecraft game in a row is dead, surviving only 9 months.
However, Bellwright is not trying to capitalize on a well-known name but is making its own mark. This could ultimately be the factor that leads to its success.
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