Manor Lords, published by Greg Styczeń (a.k.a. Slavic Magic) and distributed by Hooded Horse, was released in April.
When you first play the breakout medieval city–building simulator Manor Lords, you are assigned an ox as a starting resource, along with five or so peasant families. It’s the ox that’s really important because to build anything you need him to drag the lumber, guided by the “people” on screen. Three of my feudal tenants are named Barbara, Herman, and Ott. My ox, who is comparatively large and looming, is called Bartholmes. (You can see each character’s procedurally generated name when you click on them.) If you lose your ox early in the game, you’re screwed.
This is why I find myself returning to Albrecht Dürer’s unbuilt Monument to the Vanquished Peasants, published in the Nuremberg master’s book of proportion studies in 1525. I’ve seen it a million times as an art historian, but never before as the overprotective custodian of this little group. I’m looking at the plinth more closely now, with its livestock—including an ox th…