CHENGDU, China — July 16, 2026 — Independent developer Digital Sky today announced that Mandate Order, its ancient Chinese war city-building simulation, will launch in Steam /Epic Early Access on August 12, 2026, at 10:00 AM Beijing Time / 2:00 AM UTC.
The game’s regional price will be US$19.99, with a 15% launch discount available for the first two weeks. Mandate Order currently supports 12 languages and has accumulated close to 100,000 Steam wishlist additions ahead of release.
Set during ancient China’s Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, Mandate Order combines freeform city construction, agriculture, production chains, logistics, population management, retainers inspired by the Hundred Schools of Thought, diplomacy, conscription, fortified defense, and large-scale real-time battles.
Players begin with a vulnerable frontier settlement and gradually build homes, wells, farms, workshops, warehouses, armories, roads, walls, and defensive facilities. Every part of the settlement must support both daily survival and future conflict, turning the city itself into the foundation of military power.
“Reaching Early Access does not mean Mandate Order is finished,” the development team said. “It means the core structure of the game is now playable, interconnected, and ready to be tested across a much wider range of player strategies, cities, hardware, and long-term playstyles.”
Players will be able to:
Mandate Order’s public demo ended on May 10. Since then, Digital Sky has continued updating the development build through an ongoing closed playtest, using player feedback to revise several foundational systems.
Rather than focusing only on adding more content, the team has concentrated on making the existing simulation easier to understand, more stable, and more responsive.
A New Tutorial Structure
The original onboarding mixed tutorial objectives with the changing conditions of the sandbox, which could make it difficult for new players to understand why buildings stopped working or why resources failed to arrive.
The Early Access version introduces a more structured tutorial format with separate lessons covering basic controls, production, workers, storage, logistics, agriculture, and combat management.
The goal is not to remove complexity, but to make the relationship between systems easier to read.
Reworked Agriculture
Agriculture has been revised to reduce unnecessary actions and provide clearer seasonal feedback.
Spring cultivation and sowing have been combined into a more direct process. Fertility rules have been simplified, while expected autumn yield can now be previewed during the summer maintenance phase.
Water, fertilizer, worker availability, and field care still influence the final harvest, but players receive clearer information about why a crop is succeeding or underperforming.
Revised Conscription and Armory Rules
Conscription has also been reorganized around the armory.
Players cannot recruit soldiers without one, and only equipment physically stored inside the armory is counted as available. Weapons still being transported or left in resource piles cannot immediately be converted into troops.
The recruitment interface also includes different selection priorities. Players can prioritize the workers closest to the armory for faster mobilization, or choose workers whose removal will have the smallest immediate effect on production.
Once mobilized, workers stop their current jobs and leave behind any resources they were carrying, making every recruitment decision a trade-off between military readiness and economic stability.
More Flexible Invasions
Enemy invasions are no longer designed only as recurring waves.
Players can adjust when external pressure begins and how frequently invasions occur. Bandits may demand currency or specific resources, allowing the player to pay, refuse, prepare a defense, or eventually destroy the hostile camps responsible for the continuing threat.
Bandits can target valuable storage buildings, damage facilities, and steal goods before withdrawing. As a result, invasion pressure affects city planning and resource management before combat begins.
Performance, Stability, and Controls
Digital Sky has also continued working on performance in large settlements, AI behavior, unit pathfinding, walls, save and load behavior, time acceleration, interface clarity, and graphical compatibility.
Support and configuration work has included DLSS, FSR, and XeSS, alongside fixes affecting crashes, farms, logistics, retainers, diplomacy, combat, and UI behavior.
Performance, compatibility, and stability will remain ongoing priorities throughout Early Access.
Why the Team Needs a Wider Player Base
Because Mandate Order is a systemic sandbox, different players can create dramatically different problems.
One player may prioritize agriculture and population growth. Another may recruit soldiers early and expand through force. Some may invest heavily in walls and defensive architecture, while others rely on trade, diplomacy, retainers, or aggressive resource acquisition.
Different maps, construction orders, army sizes, storage layouts, hardware configurations, and playstyles can produce situations that are difficult to reproduce through internal testing alone.
During Early Access, Digital Sky plans to evaluate more than technical bugs. The team also wants to understand:
Early Access Is the Beginning of the Next Development Phase
The August 12 build will deliver Mandate Order’s established core framework, but the team plans to continue expanding the scale of its cities, production systems, military options, and long-term objectives.
A staged development roadmap will be published after launch. Current areas under consideration include:
Digital Sky also emphasized that players should evaluate the Early Access build according to its actual content and current condition.
“We do not want anyone to buy Mandate Order simply because it is an independent game or because it comes from a Chinese team,” the studio said. “Players should decide based on what the launch version offers and whether its approach to city-building, governance, and warfare interests them. Purchasing the game is one form of support. Clear criticism and detailed feedback are equally valuable.”
Availability
Title: Mandate Order
Platform: Steam/Epic
Global Release Time: August 12, 2026 at 2:00 AM UTC
China Release Time: August 12, 2026 at 10:00 AM Beijing Time
Price: US$19.99
Launch Discount: 15% off for the first two weeks
Steam page:
Mandate Order on Steam
About Mandate Order
Mandate Order is an ancient Chinese war city-building simulation set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era. Players begin with a frontier settlement and build a functioning military city through agriculture, production, logistics, population management, retainers, diplomacy, conscription, fortified defense, and large-scale real-time combat.
Its core systems include freeform city construction, Wu-based population management, dynamic seasons, retainers inspired by the Hundred Schools of Thought, armory-based conscription, line-drawing formations, chariot combat, and customizable fortifications.
About Digital Sky
Digital Sky is an independent game developer based in Chengdu, China. The studio is developing Mandate Order with the goal of combining systemic city-building and large-scale warfare with gameplay concepts inspired by ancient Chinese history and philosophy.
Join the Official Mandate Order Community
We also invite you to join the official Mandate Order subreddit, where you can share feedback, discuss strategies, report issues, and speak directly with the development team.
Official Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MandateOrder/
We will continue sharing development updates, answering community questions, and listening closely to your feedback throughout Early Access.
Set during ancient China’s Spring and Autumn and Warring States era, Mandate Order combines freeform city construction, agriculture, production chains, logistics, population management, retainers inspired by the Hundred Schools of Thought, diplomacy, conscription, fortified defense, and large-scale real-time battles.
Players begin with a vulnerable frontier settlement and gradually build homes, wells, farms, workshops, warehouses, armories, roads, walls, and defensive facilities. Every part of the settlement must support both daily survival and future conflict, turning the city itself into the foundation of military power.
“Reaching Early Access does not mean Mandate Order is finished,” the development team said. “It means the core structure of the game is now playable, interconnected, and ready to be tested across a much wider range of player strategies, cities, hardware, and long-term playstyles.”
Players will be able to:
- Build and manage a functioning frontier settlement using freeform construction.
- Organize labor through the historical Wu unit, with each Wu representing approximately five workers.
- Develop farms, production buildings, storage networks, roads, armories, and fortified defenses.
- Recruit retainers associated with different schools of thought, including Confucianism, Mohism, Legalism, the School of Agriculture, military strategists, and others.
- Manage public support, food, water, housing, winter fuel, illness, and social stability.
- Produce weapons and equipment before converting civilian workers into soldiers.
- Use line-drawing controls to deploy formations across large battlefields.
- Build walls, towers, gates, and defensive equipment, then station troops along the fortifications.
- Respond to bandits, invasions, disasters, diplomacy, trade, and shifting seasonal conditions.
Mandate Order’s public demo ended on May 10. Since then, Digital Sky has continued updating the development build through an ongoing closed playtest, using player feedback to revise several foundational systems.
Rather than focusing only on adding more content, the team has concentrated on making the existing simulation easier to understand, more stable, and more responsive.
A New Tutorial Structure
The original onboarding mixed tutorial objectives with the changing conditions of the sandbox, which could make it difficult for new players to understand why buildings stopped working or why resources failed to arrive.
The Early Access version introduces a more structured tutorial format with separate lessons covering basic controls, production, workers, storage, logistics, agriculture, and combat management.
The goal is not to remove complexity, but to make the relationship between systems easier to read.
Reworked Agriculture
Agriculture has been revised to reduce unnecessary actions and provide clearer seasonal feedback.
Spring cultivation and sowing have been combined into a more direct process. Fertility rules have been simplified, while expected autumn yield can now be previewed during the summer maintenance phase.
Water, fertilizer, worker availability, and field care still influence the final harvest, but players receive clearer information about why a crop is succeeding or underperforming.
Revised Conscription and Armory Rules
Conscription has also been reorganized around the armory.
Players cannot recruit soldiers without one, and only equipment physically stored inside the armory is counted as available. Weapons still being transported or left in resource piles cannot immediately be converted into troops.
The recruitment interface also includes different selection priorities. Players can prioritize the workers closest to the armory for faster mobilization, or choose workers whose removal will have the smallest immediate effect on production.
Once mobilized, workers stop their current jobs and leave behind any resources they were carrying, making every recruitment decision a trade-off between military readiness and economic stability.
More Flexible Invasions
Enemy invasions are no longer designed only as recurring waves.
Players can adjust when external pressure begins and how frequently invasions occur. Bandits may demand currency or specific resources, allowing the player to pay, refuse, prepare a defense, or eventually destroy the hostile camps responsible for the continuing threat.
Bandits can target valuable storage buildings, damage facilities, and steal goods before withdrawing. As a result, invasion pressure affects city planning and resource management before combat begins.
Performance, Stability, and Controls
Digital Sky has also continued working on performance in large settlements, AI behavior, unit pathfinding, walls, save and load behavior, time acceleration, interface clarity, and graphical compatibility.
Support and configuration work has included DLSS, FSR, and XeSS, alongside fixes affecting crashes, farms, logistics, retainers, diplomacy, combat, and UI behavior.
Performance, compatibility, and stability will remain ongoing priorities throughout Early Access.
Why the Team Needs a Wider Player Base
Because Mandate Order is a systemic sandbox, different players can create dramatically different problems.
One player may prioritize agriculture and population growth. Another may recruit soldiers early and expand through force. Some may invest heavily in walls and defensive architecture, while others rely on trade, diplomacy, retainers, or aggressive resource acquisition.
Different maps, construction orders, army sizes, storage layouts, hardware configurations, and playstyles can produce situations that are difficult to reproduce through internal testing alone.
During Early Access, Digital Sky plans to evaluate more than technical bugs. The team also wants to understand:
- Whether complex systems provide enough information and feedback.
- Whether different development strategies remain viable.
- Whether city growth and military pressure maintain an effective rhythm.
- Whether the mid and late game provide enough goals, variation, and meaningful decisions.
Early Access Is the Beginning of the Next Development Phase
The August 12 build will deliver Mandate Order’s established core framework, but the team plans to continue expanding the scale of its cities, production systems, military options, and long-term objectives.
A staged development roadmap will be published after launch. Current areas under consideration include:
- New maps with different terrain, resources, and survival conditions.
- Building upgrades and expanded city progression.
- Livestock and broader agricultural production chains.
- Additional retainers, schools of thought, policies, and governance paths.
- New military units, defensive structures, and enemy attack patterns.
- More varied mid- and late-game objectives.
- Continued improvements to performance, UI, onboarding, pathfinding, and controls.
Digital Sky also emphasized that players should evaluate the Early Access build according to its actual content and current condition.
“We do not want anyone to buy Mandate Order simply because it is an independent game or because it comes from a Chinese team,” the studio said. “Players should decide based on what the launch version offers and whether its approach to city-building, governance, and warfare interests them. Purchasing the game is one form of support. Clear criticism and detailed feedback are equally valuable.”
Availability
Title: Mandate Order
Platform: Steam/Epic
Global Release Time: August 12, 2026 at 2:00 AM UTC
China Release Time: August 12, 2026 at 10:00 AM Beijing Time
Price: US$19.99
Launch Discount: 15% off for the first two weeks
Steam page:
Mandate Order on Steam
About Mandate Order
Mandate Order is an ancient Chinese war city-building simulation set during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States era. Players begin with a frontier settlement and build a functioning military city through agriculture, production, logistics, population management, retainers, diplomacy, conscription, fortified defense, and large-scale real-time combat.
Its core systems include freeform city construction, Wu-based population management, dynamic seasons, retainers inspired by the Hundred Schools of Thought, armory-based conscription, line-drawing formations, chariot combat, and customizable fortifications.
About Digital Sky
Digital Sky is an independent game developer based in Chengdu, China. The studio is developing Mandate Order with the goal of combining systemic city-building and large-scale warfare with gameplay concepts inspired by ancient Chinese history and philosophy.
Join the Official Mandate Order Community
We also invite you to join the official Mandate Order subreddit, where you can share feedback, discuss strategies, report issues, and speak directly with the development team.
Official Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/MandateOrder/
We will continue sharing development updates, answering community questions, and listening closely to your feedback throughout Early Access.