Highlights

  • Bellwright sets itself apart from other survival games by offering a grounded medieval setting, management elements, and a narrative focus.
  • The game draws inspiration from popular titles like Valheim and Mount and Blade, combining features such as settlement building, resource management, and large-scale combat.
  • Bellwright's emphasis on storytelling and a unique blend of gameplay elements make it a promising indie game that stands out from its competitors.

In a games industry filled with survival games borrowing from hit titles like Valheim, Bellwright aims to set itself apart with a grounded setting, management elements, and narrative focus. Much like other promising games similar to Valheim, Bellwright seems to be striking a good balance between the familiar and inventive.

Bellwright is being developed by burgeoning indie studio Donkey Crew, and will be published by Snail Games, a company best known for the ARK franchise. ARK is one of the more well-established and creative survival-crafting series on the market, blending elements of futurism and fantasy to create a truly unique co-op game world. While Bellwright shares a few similarities with ARK, it's noticeably different when it comes to both its game mechanics and its setting, as Bellwright is targeting a realistic experience, placing players in a grounded, medieval world. Bellwright's emphasis on narrative is also worth noting, as the game presents a tale of political intrigue, corruption, and mystery.

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Why Valheim Players Might Enjoy Bellwright

Bellwright Looks Like a Mix Between Valheim and Mount and Blade

Bellwright has quite a bit going on, aspiring to be much more than a traditional survival title. The game will allow players to recruit followers, liberate villages and towns, and lead troops in battle. Mount and Blade fans may perk up at that description, as it sounds strikingly similar to TaleWorlds Entertainment's medieval civilization franchise. Incidentally, Donkey Crew's team includes many former Mount and Blade modders, and it looks like the studio is leveraging this experience when it comes to the tone, aesthetic, and large-scale combat to Bellwright.

That said, Bellwright includes several features that many players feel are conspicuously absent from Mount and Blade, with perhaps the most notable being settlement building and management. In the Mount and Blade games, players can take over castles or towns and control their resources, but they can't engage in the sort of settlement-building offered by traditional survival games. This is contrasted by Bellwright, which looks to be offering a rather robust settlement-building system, allowing players to customize their towns, build up their defenses, manage resources, and fend off enemy forces. In this way, Bellwright looks to be borrowing key elements from both Valheim and Mount and Blade, making for a wholly unique experience.

Bellwright's Story Could Set It Apart

Although many survival games feature narrative content, the story usually plays second fiddle to gameplay. Usually, this genre focuses more on lore or world-building than a traditional, linear narrative. Otherwise, the narrative is generally vague and interpretable, rather than direct or fully enthralling.

This may not be the case with Bellwright. The game kicks off with the player-character being framed for the murder of the kingdom's prince, which forces them to live as a fugitive. The story thus follows their journey to uncover the truth behind why this murder was pinned on them, with revelations about history and family being doled out over the course of the plot. The town management, survival, and base-building gameplay of Bellwright is couched within this narrative framework, as the player is tasked with uncovering the truth and leading a rebellion against the kingdom's oppressive regime.

The emphasis on narrative and unique blend of disparate, synergistic gameplay elements make Bellwright an indie game to follow. Its similarities to best-selling titles like Valheim are notable and may help in drawing in a broader audience, but Bellwright promises to deliver a more singular experience; it doesn't seem like a mere Valheim clone. The game is set to launch in the first quarter of 2024, so audiences will soon get to see how its melding of various survival and crafting gameplay elements turns out.