As the name suggests, is a city builder about managing a medieval village. You help it develop, fight bandits and eventually participate in larger military campaigns. But all this may not be enough should you cannot persuade families to maneuver in and help develop society, and a few players appear to have problems on this regard. “I have houses, the homeless won’t take them,” wrote one player on Discord. “Approval is NOT the issue here. Before the homeless came, I was at 90%.

The the game is on Steam’s most wishlist ahead of today’s Early Access launch, exploded to over 150,000 concurrent players, not even including everyone playing on Game Pass on PC. This overtook it in terms of total current players and made it the top seller on Steam, ahead of . This is all good news for developers Slavic Magic and their publisher, Hooded Horse, and all of this has apparently contributed to record numbers of homeless peasants.

Players start with several groups of villagers, a few basic resources, and one ox. Initially, they work in camps to gather resources and produce wood. They are eventually expected to move out of their camps and into the homes players have built with them, leading to a virtuous cycle of hardworking workers, growing villages, and happy populations. It’s just that some players seem unable to make their subjects obey. This sounds frustrating, but also funny.

“So I built the first few houses, but families aren’t moving in.” he wrote one player on Steam. “Instead, I keep getting warnings about homeless people…” Some people wonder if this can be a mistake. “I ALWAYS have 5 people who are constantly homeless, even though I have enough town plots, I can’t do anything about it” he wrote player on subreddit. “I swear to God I encountered some bug, 5 of my original families are usually not moving into town I built, but every latest family that involves town has moved in, so now I even have 4 families which have moved in and 5 homeless, despite that I HAVE enough burgers and half of them are empty,” wrote a 3rd person on Discord.

So what’s going on here? Are there gremlins in the early access code, or do players only need a few days to learn the nuances of a realism-based management simulation? “We have seen the same reports,” Hooded Horse spokesman Joe Robinson said in an email. “While at first glance it may seem like it’s the same problem at the highest level, there are a few things that could be contributing to this. Some are by design, but others are related to known bugs that are already being fixed.”

One of the present causes of homelessness is a known bug that stops the reconstruction of burned houses. Another more diabolical bug is that upgrading the starting family camps will cause them to never move to nearby town plots until they demolish the camps. Finally, even should you solve the issue of homelessness, the corresponding negative modifier may stick around for a while. “We’re investigating a possible bug where malus just isn’t welcome, so we’re unsure about that,” Robinson said.

This is just the first day of the Early Access journey, as player feedback helps Slavic Magic deliver on the ambitious promise of the medieval strategy game. I’m sure players will discover even weirder bugs and quirks as they try to figure out what makes it tick. I can’t wait to find out what it is.

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