Independent developer Dragonkin Studios is excited to announce that its medieval monastery-themed colony sim Monastery: Ora et Labora is now available in Early Access for PC via Steam and Epic Games Store.
In Monastery: Ora et Labora, players step into the role of an abbot leading a newly founded monastery during the Middle Ages. Inspired by the historic Benedictine motto “Ora et Labora” (Pray and Work), the community lives by a strict daily routine divided into four key blocks: Praying, Working, Eating, and Sleeping.
Watch the trailer on YouTube
To keep the community thriving, you must build a functional monastery with all the rooms necessary for the daily activities, from those dedicated to basic needs, such as the dormitory, refectory, and infirmary, to the church and scriptorium, as well as those dedicated to production, such as beer and other resources. Expanding the structure as needed, as resource production scales up and the number of monks, visiting worshippers, and sick people seeking help increases.
Early Access marks the beginning of the next stage of development for Monastery: Ora et Labora. Dragonkin Studios will continue expanding and refining the game through regular updates, with player feedback helping shape its future development.
Deep Management and Living Faith
- Monk Management: Oversee a group of monks, each with unique traits affecting their work and behavior, and skills that improve through practice. They can farm fields, take care of animals, brew ale, practice medicine, construct buildings, write illuminated manuscripts, and more. Monks with a natural passion for a task learn their craft much faster.
- Crafting & Production: Produce mead, four types of beer, medicines, and essential goods like soup, bread, honey, and beeswax.
- Praying and Blessings: When your monks pray in the church, they generate Faith Points based on their spirituality skill level, which allows you to choose helpful divine blessings to support your monastery.
- The Monastic Rule: A special meter tracks how well your community follows its rules, with its effects and consequences. Missing daily prayer or denying help to people in need will lower the score, while living an orderly, pious life raises it.
- Freeform Construction & Room Designs: Build and expand your monastery piece by piece by freely placing walls, floors, doors, furniture, and decorations.
- Comfort and Decor: Having enough space for all the monastery’s occupants, and making sure that rooms are well-lit, clean, and nicely decorated, directly boost your monks’ Comfort and Monastic Rule.
- Tech Tree and Milestone Progression: Monks can write research books in the scriptorium to earn research points, unlocking new technologies and new mechanics in the Tech Tree. Complete quests and specific objectives to progress along a milestone track and get new decoration options and improvements, as your modest settlement grows into a grand abbey.
- Outside World & Crises: Help nearby villages by completing their requests, trade with visiting merchants, and prepare your food, medicine, and water supplies to survive multi-day events, like severe droughts that dry up your wells, times of widespread disease when many people in need come to the monastery seeking care and help.
Pricing and Availability:
Monastery: Ora et Labora is available now on PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store at a price of $14.99 / 14,99€ (with regional pricing applied worldwide), along with a 20% 2 week launch discount. Players are invited to play the game, share their feedback, and leave a review if they enjoy their time in the monastery. The game is currently available in the following languages: English, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Chinese (Simplified)
What’s Next
The team will continue working on new content, features, improvements, and quality-of-life updates throughout Early Access.
Here’s a quick preview of what’s coming in the upcoming updates:
- Different Monastic Orders, each with its own unique features
- New spirituality-related mechanics like religious events and relics
- New animal-related productions with chickens and cows
- Visits by important people in the monastery
- New decoration and customization possibilities
as well as many others that the team will assess together with the community.
Important Links
About Dragonkin Studios
Founded in 2015 in Siracusa, Italy, Dragonkin Studios is a game development company specializing in PC, mobile, AR, and VR games. Built by a team of siblings and close friends, we focus on creating engaging interactive experiences. From our first project, Siracusa Living Nature, to collaborations with studios like Broken Arms Games and Memorable Games, we’ve grown through innovation and teamwork. In 2021, we joined Quickload, an Italian acceleration program, expanding our reach in the industry. Today, we continue developing games and providing outsourcing services with the same passion that started it all.
Press inquiries:
press@dragonkinstudios.com