Currently in Early Access,Bellwrightis Donkey Crew’s second stab at a survival game. It may not be an MMO like its predecessor,Last Oasis, butBellwrightis similarly ambitious in scope. Beginning as a humble individual with basic survival needs,Bellwrightplayers slowly recruit an army of followers, each of whom has their own needs, but also the ability to contribute. Gradually expanding from camp to village to town,Bellwrightsees players expanding their control and the problems they face along the way.
Games with this particular flavor of growth are often faced with a similar problem: after a certain point, players can begin to lose touch with the people they’re managing. The game may feel grounded at a smaller scale, while turning into something more akin toan RTS gameafter players elevate their status. Game Rant spoke withBellwrightproject lead Florian “chadz” Hoffreither and lead gameplay developer Sergii “serr” Greben about how the team tackles this issue that has plagued even their personal favorite titles.
Bellwright Keeps Its Focus Grounded
Hoffreither pointed to the1998 classicBattlezoneas an early example of this issue cropping up. InBattlezone, players would similarly begin by managing their own vehicle, then a small squad of units, until finally expanding to a top-down strategic overview. Although it’s a welcome change of pace, this shift can remove players from the action and the stakes felt in the smaller-scale stages of the game. Hoffreither says:
“There was this game from 1998, Battlezone, that I absolutely loved—up until the moment it gave you a satellite view. As soon as that happened, it broke the immersion for me. It felt like a cheap workaround, and the whole feeling the game had built up just disappeared.
I didn’t want that to happen in our game. I kept telling our designers not to fall into that trap—don’t just ask, “What’s the easiest way to present this to the player?” Ask, “What preserves the feeling of being on the ground, of actually being a lord among your people?”
One of my favorite games of all time made that same mistake. So for me, it was always clear: never lose that grounded feeling. You should be walking through your streets, talking to your soldiers—you’re not floating above them, you’re living among them.”
Bellwrightachieves this through several characteristics. For one, the perspective never shifts from the player. They can carry out some tasks via the map and menus, but no matter how big the player’s empire has grown, they’re still the same vulnerable individual they started with. Additionally,Bellwrightplayers never stop needing their own supply of foodand equipment. Like every other citizen of their realm, players remain engaged in the core loop of fulfilling their basic needs.
Bellwright Is Inspired by Mount & Blade, but Learned from It
Hoffreither also singled out theiconicMount & Bladeseries, and Greben revealed thatBellwrightis a homage to the series in many ways. Similarly ambitious, it’s easy to draw some comparisons betweenBellwrightandMount & Blade, though once again,Mount & Bladeis a title that can sometimes suffer from the weight of its scope. Drawing inspiration from this while avoiding that pitfall was a monumental challenge, as Hoffreither says:
“We talked about that very early on—like, is it even possible to do what we’re trying to do? We wanted to take elements from something like Mount & Blade: Warband, or even Bannerlord, and place them into a truly continuous, open world.
It’s not just a question of whether it’s technically possible—it’s also a game design challenge. For example, we went through a ridiculous number of iterations just on the distance between villages. At one point, you’d walk out of one village and immediately run into another. At another, you’d leave a village and only see the next one on the horizon 15 minutes later.”
Hoffreither also noted thatopen-world gamesof this variety must solve problems players may often take for granted, such as the distance between villages, resource distribution throughout the map, and where to place points of interest. Although the answers seem obvious in hindsight, Hoffreither points out that reaching these outcomes is challenging, iterative, and far from obvious.
