Donkey Crew, the development team behind Bellwright, has revealed some new information on the building system and mechanics.

Bellwright is an open-world sandbox survival game with a focus on settlement building that takes place in the Middle Ages. In the game, you will start off with nothing to your name and must build up an army to vanquish a tyrannical king.

When we start, the first building we will be able to build is a small shack. This shack will serve as the player’s primary dwelling and comes with a few amenities, such as a private stash for us to store our belongings, along with a simple workbench that will allow us to craft our very first tool, the simple axe, as well as provide us a place to lay our heads, pass the time, and sleep till morning. As a bonus, after we build the shack, it will provide us with 60 renown, a mysterious currency in the game, which will allow us to convince other villagers to join our settlement.

One of the coolest features of building placement in the game is the ability to place your building down, not just at 90-degree angles but a full 360 degree, allowing you to place the desired building wherever it fits your fancy. The structures don’t just pop into existence fully constructed, as you must build them from the ground up, allowing you to experience the organic growth of your town, built through your own sweat and tears.

Besides the shack, which is the player dwelling, you must also build cabins for the villagers to reside in, and besides just housing, you will also be able to construct resource-collecting buildings such as logging camps to gather timber and farms to crow crops, along with processing areas such as a smelter to smelt ores and campfires to cook food. You will also have the ability to build an armory, a weaver loom for tailoring, and an armor smithy for making powerful equipment.

However, before constructing all those wonderful buildings, we need to establish a research desk. This requires a small investment of time and resources, and sometimes the expertise of a professional. By doing so, we can unlock not only the aforementioned buildings but also discover new ones, such as a water collector and even a foraging camp.

All this could be a daunting process for one person, but you are making a village, and you can invite more villagers to join you. When you lay down the blueprints for your buildings, your villagers will collect the necessary resources from your stockpile and build the structures over time.

Bellwright was initially supposed to be released into early access in December, but the early access release has been pushed back to Q1 2024. Though a little disappointed, I think it’s better when developers are taking their time to release a better game.

What do you think about building in the game? Let me know in the comments below.