Bellwrightis a unique blend of survival and town management mechanics, with lone players slowly recruiting new followers to help hunt, craft, and expand their burgeoning empire. While players can carry out most tasks on their own, the game highlights the importance of community: it’s far less tedious to assign a villager to construct a building than to place each piece by one’s own hand.Bellwrightstands out in an increasingly crowded genre by remaining consistently grounded and immersive, with the perspective never shifting from the player, and players themselves must also keep ample supply of food on hand to tackle the game’s challenges.
In an interview with Game Rant,Bellwrightproject lead Florian “chadz” Hoffreither and lead gameplay developer Sergii “serr” Greben went behind the scenes about howBellwrighttook shape. They spoke about the heated debates that carefully underpin each design decision,how realism factors intoBellwright’s development, and they revealed some exciting upcoming content.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
How Bellwright First Took Shape
Q: Toward the beginning of development, did you have certain core ideas you knew Bellwright would be about?
Hoffreither:That’s actually very easy to answer, because surprisingly, it’s still the same today. From the beginning, we wanted to create a medieval world that felt almost childlike—seen from the ground level. We wanted players to experience building up a world from nothing. You arrive as a stranger, an exile, and you’re meant to feel like an outsider at first. Then, over time, you form alliances, make friends, gather companions, and really feel like this world is something you’ve built with your own hands.
A lot of our inspiration came from film—especiallythe old Robin Hood movie. That idea of a king or leader hiding in the forest, slowly gathering a band of rebels to fight back against an oppressive, dark force—that’s exactly the kind of vibe we were aiming for.
Q: Bellwright shares a few characteristics with survival and town management games like Medieval Dynasty, but what were some things you wanted to do differently from other titles in the genre?
Hoffreither:I’mnot even sure Medieval Dynastywas our primary influence. For me, it was actually some of the older games—like The Settlers or Lords of the Realm, which hardly anyone remembers anymore. But what really drove me was the theme of rebellion. That aspect was really important to me.
I needed a purpose. It’s not enough for me to just build a nice-looking town if there’s no meaning behind it. So I wanted players to feel a constant sense of threat—something that gives weight to what they’re building. That idea went through many iterations, so it didn’t end up exactly how I first imagined it, but the core concept remained: this push and pull.
You have outside forces pressing in, and the bigger you grow, the more attention you attract from enemies. They push back, and that dynamic lets players find their own rhythm. That was always the big picture—something combat-focused, because combat gives players a clear goal.
There’s a whole story behind it, too. The elements are there: revenge, injustice, and the chance to right a wrong. Even if it’s not a perfect story, it gives players a reason to fight and build.
Greben:I don’t think it’s about doing things differently, but rather taking interesting parts of other games and providing those things. However,Mount & Blade was one of my favorite games. That’s why I started to become a game developer. I really would have never been here right now without it. We have our roots in and respect for that game. Bellwright is definitely an homage to Warband.
Hoffreither:One of the games that keeps coming up in our internal discussions is a very old title—Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. Specifically, we were inspired by its approach to indirect control. You have these polarizing heroes who do their own thing—you can influence them, but you don’t have direct command. They decide what to do on their own.
We didn’t copy that system, but we were definitely drawn to the feeling it created. That sense of someone following you—not because you told them to, but because they want to help in their own way. That’s the feeling we tried to capture.
Q: Was there anything especially important to “get right” in Bellwright? Something where, if it didn’t work, you didn’t have Bellwright?
Greben:The core management aspect of your settlement has to work reliably. That part just can’t break—because if it does, nothing else in the game matters. It’s also one of the most complex systems we’ve built.
We put a lot of effort into making that foundation really solid, no matter what happens in the game.
Hoffreither:I was fully expecting that answer from him—and I totally agree—but for me, the most important thing has always been keeping the experience tangible.
A lot of times, there were suggestions from our team that I pushed back on. For example, people proposed adding a third-person or top-down camera for more clarity, but I felt strongly that those would be shortcuts—easy, even lazy solutions to deeper challenges. I wanted players to really feel like they were a lord on the ground.
My go-to example was always battles. 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.
Ididn’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.
Mount & Blade had that problem sometimes. Once you’re commanding an empire, you feel more like a spectator or an RTS commander.
Hoffreither: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 fromsomething 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. We actually built a system that let us move villages around easily, just so we could test every possible distance and combination to see what felt right.
It’s funny, because people often look at a finished game and say, “Well, obviously it should be like this.” When you’re standing in front of a blank canvas, it’s not obvious at all. You’re sitting there asking, “Should it be 500 meters? 800? I don’t know—let’s test it and find out.”
Q: Speaking of iteration, was there ever a moment during development when you tried something that wound up being a bit of a disaster?
Hoffreither:This is literally what game design is, and any game designer who says they didn’t go through that is lying.
If you don’t fail,your game is probably boring, because it means you never tried anything new. Iteration is one of the strangest but most essential parts of game design. In my opinion, it’s what really separates game development from standard software development.
You end up throwing away 90% of your work by the time you ship the game. Honestly, I’d even say you throw away 200%—because it’s like the Ship of Theseus. You rebuild and rebuild until it’s something completely different. That’s what game development is. If you go into it thinking, “I’m going to follow my original idea exactly,” you’re going to fail. You have to stay open to change, but at the same time, you need the experience to recognize when to change.
That’s the biggest challenge: you try something, and it feels bad. But does it feel bad because the idea itself is bad? Or because you haven’t developed it enough yet? That line is so hard to walk, and the only way to get better at it is through experience.
This is the hardest part of game design—and it’s the part you really can’t teach. It just comes down to experience. I’m really glad to say that we now have a team with a lot of experience in exactly that area. And they also have a good sense for vibe, because this isn’t a science.
If it were a science, making games would be easy.
It must be difficult to balance survival aspects on top of everything else. Along with managing my settlement, my own character also needs to be fed.
Greben:Anything that happens inthe game is basically survival mechanics, but the repetitiveness and issues from survival mechanics can be compensated for by other mechanics.
Hoffreither:It’s actually kind of funny—all the questions you’re asking are the same ones we kept asking ourselves, often on a daily basis. We went over them again and again, and we honestly didn’t know the answers until we tried things out.
We had arguments—not physical fights!—but real debates about stuff like, what is survival in our game? Is town-building a survival mechanic? Do we have a switch for that, or is it a gradient? Is the world moving while you’re outside your town? Can people stop by your town while you’re off doing quests? These are things players don’t see in the final game, but they absolutely shaped how it feels to play. They fundamentally changed the gameplay experience.
For example, one conscious decision we made was that yourvillagers rarely starve to death. That was very intentional—we didn’t want players to feel pressure like, “Oh no, I need to be back before 7 p.m. or my people will die!” That’s not fun. We felt that’s not what a lord would do, anyway. A lord would trust that his people are intelligent enough to feed themselves when they’re hungry. That mindset helped shape our design.
Another big thing was modding. We decided early on that modding needed to be a core part of the game—because even among our team, every single designer had different opinions about key features.
The inventory system? Wow. That sparked some serious internal debate. Again, not physical fights—but definitely strong arguments. Some people thought it was crazy, others thought it was great. It ended up being two camps—and yeah, my camp won. We’re still not sure if it was the right decision, but we all agreed it gave us a fantastic foundation.
That’s why modding is so important to us. There are so many variations that could work, and we’ve provided just one streamlined version—our version, with a bit of a gradient. But we know there’s a whole wide range of possibilities out there, and it’s exciting to see what players might do with it.
Greben:Last week, we had a very heated argument about one of the restrictions we have on traveling. After a long back-and-forth, we decided that we’re not changing it. We’re not going to make it easier for players to just zoom around. It’s part of the gameplay, and making it too easy would hurt the experience. The person who was arguing for the change? Well, after all that, they were like, “Okay, fine.”
Hoffreither:It actually sounds like a fun anecdote in the end, but it’s tough in the moment. Game designers love to design, and the thing is, you may’t make a game that fits everyone’s idea—because, not to put it bluntly, they’re wrong. It needs to feel like one consistent experience. As a creative director, it’s really painful to tell someone who’s passionate and clearly believes they’re right, “I see where you’re coming from, but we just can’t do that.”
It’s painful because you might even think they’re right, but you still have to pull the reins. It gets complicated because you can’t do design by committee. If you do that, it just becomes a mismatched mess. You need either one person or a group of people who are all very aligned on the vision. Otherwise, it’ll feel like the game is being pulled in every direction at once.
Honestly, one part of the job I hate is having to tell someone, “Your idea is great, but we can’t do it.” It feels bad. You don’t want to crush a creative person’s passion for an idea—but sometimes, it’s necessary. Because if you don’t, the game could end up being very confused.
Q: I have a background in modding myself, so I was curious about the kinds of mods you anticipate seeing for Bellwright. Are there any you’re especially hoping to see?
Greben:That’s the whole point. I really want to see what they make. I’m curious to see what they can do with tools we didn’t even think about. That’s the most exciting part for me.
Q: The game feels realistic in a lot of ways. Like when you’re building a structure, you place each individual piece of it. How do you balance realism and fun? How do you decide, “We’re doing this because it’s realistic,” versus, “We’re doing this just because it’s fun?”
Hoffreither:Ironically, I was the one pushing for thiscomplex building system, but at the same time, I’m the one telling our game designers, “Never use realism as an argument.” Realism can’t be a reason for a design decision.
For me, it was about something different. I really wanted you to feel connected to the buildings. My goal was that when you look at your city, you can say, “Every single beam I see was constructed either by me or someone else.”
If it just popped up out of nowhere, that would feel awful to me. I was surprised to learn that a lot of people actually do way more of the construction by hand than I do. Personally, I build the first building, then I’m like, “You want to take over now? That’s your job.” I wouldn’t build more than two and a half buildings, because for me, it’d get boring. But I’m surprised a lot of players don’t mind doing it, because that wasn’t even meant to be the focus for them.
The reason I pushed for this approach was to reinforce the idea that you, as the player, aren’t special. You don’t have more health or abilities than your soldiers or companions. You’re not better than them. The only thing you have is the power of your people—the people you hire or who choose to join your cause.
That was one of the most important aspects to me. I wanted the first buildings to feel a little tedious because it reinforces the point that you aren’t the one doing everything. The people around you are.
We debated whether or not we should forbid players from doing it, but no, that’s the wrong move. The player needs tounderstand the value of their companions, and they need to see that those companions are actually logical and have real value.
Bellwright Never Uses Realism as an Excuse
Q: Looking at difficulty, what was the overall challenge level you were going for as the intended experience?
Greben:That’s a very difficult question to answer because it’s tough to balance, given how many different aspects there are in the game and how many types of players we have. For some players, combat feels too easy, while for others, it’s too difficult. The same goes for food management—some players find it super difficult, while for others, it’s the opposite. Each struggle is different. For now, I think we have found the right solution: we made surethe default difficulty is somewhat challengingfor someone who is new to the game, but not impossible. Then we have adjustable difficulty options for players who find it too easy or too difficult.
Q: Things seem fairly realistic in terms of how they’re depicted structurally and the way people do things. Was a lot of research involved in figuring out what a campfire would look like during this time period, or things of that nature? How do you approach depicting these structures?
Hoffreither:Of course, we were involved in those discussions, and a lot of research—especially by the artists—went into it, but realism was never the main focus. The buildings, for example, were based on research, particularly the materials used, so it’s not made up. However, we didn’t try to go as far asgames like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, for example, in terms of strict historical accuracy.
I’m really impressed by how much I learned playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but that was never our intention. Our approach is more like a child’s version of a medieval world, much more black and white, more idyllic in a strange sense—more colorful and not as complicated or ambiguous. Now that I think about it, there was a lot of concept work around different-tier buildings, but we never made it a point to stick strictly to that. It wasn’t our starting point. What was more important to us was showing the difference between the early wooden tents and the later, higher-tier structures. For example, we used materials like wood, but we didn’t focus on making it ultra-realistic.
It seems to be more internally consistent. A bench costs two logs to make, and you can see where those two logs went into it.
Hoffreither:It’s so weird because when I look at other games, I think, “Wow, they’re so consistent.” But then, when I look at our game, I think everything is so inconsistent. It’s just that when you’re looking at your own game, you notice every little flaw, every detail. You end up thinking, “I don’t like this; I would have done it differently if I had more time.”
Q: You’ve been in Early Access for a little while, so I’m curious about player feedback you’ve gotten. Has there been any feedback that particularly helped guide you, something that stood out?
Hoffreither:From my experience, and this is probably the best feedback we can get, what the players are asking of us is exactly what we want to do internally. Our developers are really passionate. We have this joke that every Slack thread that hits 1,100 replies gets a special tag. And then we’re like, “Oh God, someone needs to read through all of that.” Sometimes it goes up to 300 replies, and it’s 12 midnight, and we’re saying, “Guys, we need to stop talking about this, someone make a summary!” No one wants to read all of that. We have super-motivated developers who really care about the game.
All the discussions we have internally are exactly the same discussions we see on the Steam forums and in Discord threads. There’s no more beautiful feeling than realizing that what we want to make and what the community wants us to make is exactly the same. So yes, of course, we see things… I can’t think of a specific example right now, but everything is heading in the same direction. For us, that’s a very beautiful relief because it shows that we made the right game for the right people.
Greben:We are constantly discussing different solutions to problems as well, and really trying to understand every piece of feedback for the game. Every day we parse through hundreds of messages, and there’s so much good feedback that’s been really helpful.
Q: Earlier, we talked about how you felt it was really important for the player to feel like they’re on the ground and an active participant. So, how did you decide on the ultimate size of the player’s empire and how much they could realistically manage?
Hoffreither:We didn’t. We simply don’t know yet. We’re still not even close to where it could be. Our ambitions are much larger than what it is right now. I don’t want to give too much away, but we want to see how far we can push this thing. We want to explore just how far we can go before people say, “Guys, this is literally too much.” I’m slightly exaggerating, but the idea is: what if you go from zero to hero to an extreme?
This is something we’re going to focus on in the next year or so—what if you really get your own fiefs, your own kingdom, your own land? What if youget involved in politicswith other settlements? I’m not making any promises, but these are ideas we have, and they fit perfectly with what the community is telling us. That’s the direction we’re heading in terms of ambition, but also balancing that with reality.
Q: Is there a detail in the game that took considerable effort to achieve, but that you feel players may not fully appreciate?
Hoffreither:I think pathfinding andanything related to AI. People say our AI isn’t the greatest, and we agree, but we also know how much work we put into it. At some point, you just have to put a stop to it. Combat is definitely another big challenge. Honestly, I’m so jealous of everyone who works on a shooter because the amount of animations you need for a shooter compared to a combat game is mind-blowing, and no one really respects it.
I’m not complaining, we chose this path ourselves, but with a shooter, you’ve got a bunch of shooting animations, a bit of recoil, and some aiming. In a combat system, you have every direction, every block, and you need to calculate the reactions between all of that. It’s a really complex system with animations that are calculated in real-time but also take into account mocap data. We have thousands, if not tens of thousands, of animation files, and we’re honestly drowning in them. We don’t even know how to handle them all.
As you said, there are too many challenges to mention, but those are the first two that come to mind. And, yeah, medieval combat games are a huge challenge by themselves. I would advise any game developer to try it, but be wary. No matter how much you think you know, you’ll always underestimate just how much more there is.
Q: Similarly, is there anything about the game you’re especially proud of how it turned out?
Hoffreither:I would say the entire experience is inseparable. There were moments of despair, times when we thought it was all going to fail. I’ll admit that. But then we turned it around. We had to take a step back and just assess, “What do we have?” It really helped when we started inviting others to play it. At first, we asked friends and family just to give it a try, and suddenly, my brother—who’s always brutally honest—was like, “I’m addicted.” I was like, “You’re just saying that.” But he insisted, “No, I see the jank, I see the crudeness, but I cannot stop playing.”
That was a huge wake-up call for us. A lot of other people reported similar experiences. When you’re in the thick of it, you start to get blinded by the mechanics and the flaws, and you lose sight of the bigger picture. But for someone fresh to the game, it’s a world of possibilities. It’s so hard to shake that biased view. Game designers are usually their own harshest critics, at least in our company, and it’s terrifying because you never really know if you’re making something good or bad until someone else tries it.
Q: You mentioned AI pathfinding was pretty tricky to work on, but what would you say has been each of your biggest challenges working on Bellwright?
Greben:Combat AI! you’re able to spend a lot of time trying to improve it, and in the end, you can get what you set out to do, but the overall result may barely be an improvement. You always need to come up with some ideas and assumptions. It’s very often the most difficult thing for me to work on.
Hoffreither:It’s funny, all of his arguments resonate with mine. My focus is mainly on performance and everything outside of the core gameplay. Honestly, I feel like I’m getting sucked into it—I hate working on it. There’s so much cool stuff I want to do, but then I’m stuck learning how to debug crashes or figure out why performance is dropping.
Then you get into things like interviews, and you realize that someone has to handle everything, even if it’s not what you want to focus on. For me, I love working on game mechanics, but someone once said that being a CEO is like being a builder for all the problems no one else wants to solve. When you’re also a bit of a tech guy, it means you take on all the problems others don’t want to touch. I don’t even know how to do some of this stuff—like, I don’t knowwhat causes certain GPU issues—but who else is going to do it? So, you end up handling it. And for the last year and a half, it’s been more of that and less gameplay, which is really what I’d rather be focusing on.
Bellwright’s Future Plans
Q: Do you have an “elevator pitch” for Bellwright you’d use to describe the game to a stranger?
Hoffreither:Actually, the best feeling I get is when I know someone is talking about the game without knowing I was involved in it. That’s one of the best forms of validation you can get—the silent confirmation. If someone says something because they genuinely feel that way, not to flatter you, but just because they’re being honest. For example, if you’re standing nearby and someone watches a trailer of your game, and you hear them say, “That’s so cool,” there’s no better compliment than unfiltered praise from someone with no intention of being tied to you. I don’t really go around trying to sell the game because I think the game speaks for itself.
We’re so happy about our recent milestone of80% positive reviews—it’s been a big deal for us. We’ve worked hard and truly believe in our game, so the recognition feels deserved. I know it sounds a bit arrogant, but we’ve received so much love. It’s not perfect, but we’re feeling very positive right now. Our long-term goal is to get to a point where we can address everything, but for now, I’d say we’re proud of where we are, and we’ll keep working to earn that perfection.
Q: Looking ahead, what’s your focus now? Is there anything you’re particularly interested in working on?
Greben:There isn’t just one thing—it’s many things. Overall, improvement and stability are key. We’ve already made progress, but it needs to be perfect. We also want to add new locations, since exploration is a key part of the game. Since last year, we’ve already added a lot of things like that.
Hoffreither:One of the hardest things to balance is the differentiation between improving what’s already there and bringing in new features. On one hand,I want horses, warfare, kingdoms—I want all of that. But then, on the other hand, I look at the game and see an NPC walking with a basket until it falls over, and it pains me. I look at that and think, “This is not what the game should be. This doesn’t feel like it’s alive.” It reminds me that these aren’t living, breathing beings, but rather clunky bots moving awkwardly.
How do you balance that? Honestly, there’s no easy answer. We attempt to balance it in ways that are mostly driven by passion. It’s about seeing who’s bothered by something enough to fix it. If someone is truly annoyed by something, they won’t wait for a ticket or approval—they’ll just fix it because it bothers them that much. It’s not an ideal system, but it’s the one that’s somewhat working for us right now.
Greben:It’s honestly so overwhelming. Giving someone a task and saying, “Okay, you can do it,” is one thing, but then time goes by, and it’s not always as easy as it seems to actually address those issues. It’s not just about assigning the task—it’s about having the drive and determination to actually fix it. Sometimes, it’s hard to stay on track and really focus on getting it done.
Hoffreither:For me, the hardest part about game development is that whenever I start testing, I see so many things that bother me. I end up stopping the testing to fix them because I can’t continue playing until it’s addressed. It’s a very unhealthy cycle, but I get caught in it because I’m not getting very far in the game. I feel the need to fix things before I can move on. It becomes addictive. I think a lot of game developers can relate—when you’re playing your own game, you may never play very far because you always want to fix what’s wrong. Then,when I play other games, I find myself thinking, “I like that,” but at the same time, I think, “I could make this a little better in my own game.” It’s a strange feeling. I play a lot less than I used to, not because I hate games, but because when I do play, I just feel like I’d have more fun making my own games. It’s a weird feeling.
Q: We’ve gone through most of my questions, but is there anything you’ve been hoping I would ask about?
Hoffreither:I think that may be one of the most thorough interviews I’ve ever experienced.
Greben:We have a big Spring Update coming up! It’ll have new gameplay features like animal husbandry, which expands the ways you’re able to customize your settlement.
Hoffreither:But it’s not just about customization. It’s about how you can’t have a medieval settlement without pigs.
The original Settlerswas one of my favorite games. Just watching the pigs you’d see walking around was a big part of the game for me as a kid. I need that, and I missed it in our game.
The amount of creativity we’ve seen from the community is incredible. One of our game devs, while working on the mod kit, created a mod where he added pigs that exploded. It was completely silly, but I loved it. I didn’t question it; I just thought, “Why not?” It really made me think—if we came up with that in just 30 minutes, imagine what the community will create if they have a month to try it out. From what I can tell, our community is driven, creative, and passionate. I expect we’ll see a lot of crazy stuff—both good and bad—but mostly in the best ways.
Q: Any last thoughts before we head out?
Hoffreither:I’m actually really impressed with your questions. I can tell you played it, and it’s an honor to speak with someone who asks such questions. For us, that’s really a good sign. Game Dev is really hard, and to see someone appreciate it is beautiful.
[END]
