With a whopping 2.5 million sales under its belt, Manor Lords is undeniably a smash-hit city builder – but publisher Hooded Horse doesn’t want to get unrealistic with its expectations of any future releases because of the one indie gem’s success.
In a recent interview with the BBC, Hooded Horse co-founder Snow Rui explains that the company was surprised by Manor Lords’ reception despite the pre-release interest marketing and trailers generated. “It would almost be arrogant not to be taken aback by how successful it turned out to be,” says Rui. However, she also states the importance of not getting ahead of oneself when dealing with success.
The publishing lead shares one of the best pieces of advice she’s received: Do not “roll too fast” upon finding favorable results. To Rui and to Hooded Horse as a company, it’s more important to focus on being sustainable in the long run rather than to hang on to one big bang of a success story. “A breakout hit like this,” describes the head, “you cannot count on it to repeat itself year after year.”
Rui continues: “There will be people pushing you to have a different expectation or treating the next year as a failure if the breakout hit doesn’t repeat itself but that’s simply not the case. So that’s a matter of setting your expectations and centering who you are” – and while another Manor Lords would be nice, the publisher doesn’t always need AAA-level sales for an indie game to be considered successful.
Here are some of the other best early access games you can play right now.