The progress with Norland so far has been incredible. In just two months, the game already has a ton of new content and a lot of the poor balance from before has been addressed. The developer interacts with the community regularly and has taken all manner of feedback into account. Updates come at least a few times every month too.

Early Access games rarely make this much progress so soon. If you've been on the fence about supporting this game, I think it's time to come down. Norland is already worth the money and deserves the funding.

I'm worried I'm seeing a pattern with Hooded Horse here, at least going by how they've similarly handled Manor Lords.

That is to say, releasing city builders while they're still very early in development, with only a very modest discount versus the final price tag, and pinky promising they'll totally be finished.

They've done a very good job with their marketing in making sure to get lots of soundbites quoted by the likes of PC Gamer wherein they say it's totally not Gucci to pressure developers and they let games be finished at a comfortable rate... that's fine on the surface, but it seems like it's a way of baiting folks into backing projects that'll be delivered at a snail's pace.

Now to move onto Norland - sadly my gameplay was consciously limited within the two hour refund window, so I can't get too in-depth with my critiques, but I'll say that the game felt like it could be very good one day but, alas, it's nowhere near being finished and is lacking some core balancing and QoL improvements. I think the one criticism I have that I am not sure they'll fix in the long-run is that I wasn't a big fan of not being able to build my own buildings (laying down walls, doors and furnishing interiors myself). Instead you're placing pre-built templates.

I hope they at least add the ability to custom-build your castles/keeps someday, as it just feels a bit weird having a Lord and other nobles live in the same copy-pasted shacks among the peasants.

Anyway, keep an eye on this game, I hope in a few years it'll be finished and properly balanced. I personally felt like I'd rather wait until then. As for Hooded Horse - keep a suspicious eye on them. Folks are saying they might unseat Paradox as a decent indie game dev, but so far I'm worrying that they'll keep up this behaviour of abusing early access and selling unfinished demos at premium prices.

To be frank, i disregarded this game, cause I didn't (and still don't, sorry :c) like its graphics. BUT the system is so awesome, you quickly forget about it. If you're into the genra, you should definitely give it a try!