Bellwright’s First Year Anniversary Caters to Carnivores And Bookworms
Donkey Crew, the Poland-based studio behind Bellwright, is celebrating the medieval survival and crafting game’s first year anniversary with a bumper crop of updates and new content. It’s currently available in Early Access on PC.
Bellwright puts players in the ragged shoes of a person accused of murder by the Crown and now on the run. Players will get the chance to try and clear their name and in doing so uncover a conspiracy against them. The good news is they can fight back by building an army.
“We’ve been blown away by the incredible support from our community over this first year,” said Florian Hoffreither, Project Lead, in a press release. “Every piece of feedback, every settlement built, and every uprising fought has helped shape Bellwright into what it is today and what it’s still becoming.”
Vegetarian-Unfriendly Update
Chief among the new content is Animal Husbandry. Players can now buy, sell, and raise animals for their delicious meat. Chickens, boars, rabbits, cats, pigs and cows are now all in the game, although it’s currently not possible to eat cats.
Players can house animals in barns and coops, and then murder them for resources, such as skin and feathers, in the Butchery. Hunting also gets an upgrade, and now includes the ability to fish. Players can also set their followers to go fishing for them.
It’s not all about animals though: players can now also build a Library. Villagers can store and read books, thereby adding to the immersion of creating a living, breathing settlement. Traveling merchants have also been added, taking some of the emphasis off crafting and scavenging so players can focus on quests.
Donkey Crew has added 25 more of these, including updates to the main narrative quest, and fixed multiple bugs and glitches in existing missions. Tech-wise, the developers have added support for up to FSR 4, as well as DLSS 4.
Bellwright For Everybody
One of the most exciting news items revealed as part of the anniversary update is that Donkey Crew is accepting sign-ups to test out the forthcoming Mod Kit. As expected, this toolset will allow players to customize and create all kinds of assets and content to expand Bellwright in fun and unusual ways.
Donkey Crew has implemented a huge amount of other fixes and tweaks, too, and has drawn praise from the Bellwright community for actually giving players what they want.
“Coming from recent games like Valheim and Enshrouded I’d say this game has the potential to be one of the very best.”
“The game is super well optimized. Very stable max FPS for me even in large custom villages and fights.”
Bellwright is also slated for release on Xbox later this year.
