Besiege Early Access Preview

Developed by: Spiderling Studios

Published by: Spiderling Studios

Available on: PC (Previewed)

MSRP: $7

Imagine being tasked with obliterating an enemy fortress, and given almost any tools you could desire to do so. In this situation, would you design a brutally efficient war machine, methodically optimizing it to lay waste to whatever needs to be brought to heel? Or, instead, would you create the most ridiculous contraption possible, stretching the limits of possibility the strangest, most unlikely method possible to complete your goals? Maybe you’d rather just ignore the task at hand entirely and mess around with an explosively destructive toolset? These are the questions that Besiege poses, and there’s no such thing as a wrong answer.

Currently in Early Access, Besiege is, ostensibly, a physics-based game about building medieval siege engines to complete a variety of objectives across an assortment of increasingly complex levels. From leveling a single house to stealing and delivering valuable supplies, the game challenges players to construct a machine that’s up to the task, but outside of a few basic hints, it takes a very hands-off approach when it comes time to start building. This immediately works in the game’s favor, because by putting the responsibility of discovering how to complete each mission entirely in the player’s hands, it inspires creativity in a way that a structured tutorial never could.

Here’s a look at all the control options for constructing a siege engine.

For example, an early level ordered me to destroy a single building positioned behind a castle wall, upon which stood a line of archers all shooting at my siege engine. After a couple of attempts, I managed to easily complete the level with a simple construct: a cannon on a mobile cart that I simply steered around the wall, then used to shoot down the building. The fanfare played, signaling that I had completed the level, yet I didn’t really feel satisfied, and it wasn’t really until a little bit later that I realized why.

I was disappointed in myself! I’d been given total freedom to create anything I desired, and I made a freaking cannon on wheels! It was effective, to be sure, but it was uninspired! Mundane! Instead of progressing to the next level, I went all the way back to the beginning of the game, determined to create something, anything better than the lame little war machine I was relying on.

Thus, the Robot King was born.

It wasn’t easy to bring my vision to life – that of a prestigious, laughing automaton atop a mobile throne, leaving devastation and chaos in his wake – but Besiege was ready to give me the tools to do it. Each piece has between two and six points to which another piece can be attached, and the toolset includes everything from wheels, flamethrowers and wings to slingshot cables and rods that constantly spin in place. No matter how esoteric a part might seem, it always has a purpose, and the game’s community – which is already quite large for an early access title, and growing steadily – has done incredible work in flexing its creativity to bring some stellar (and often hilarious) constructs to life. Assembling simple, but effective siege engines is a breeze, though I do have some criticisms of how the camera operates during the construction phase. Zooming in and out and sweeping over the area is simple, but panning the perspective to get a better look at the creation you’re making can be a real headache, and sometimes makes placing parts on a more complex machine difficult. Hopefully, this will get ironed out as the game’s updated further, but it’s my singular issue with the otherwise intuitive, approachable controls. Physically piecing something together in the game is as easy as assembling a virtual lego set: simply plug a piece in, then rotate it to make sure it’s facing the direction that you want it to. I was even able to assign hotkeys to individual parts, allowing me to turn a single axis at a time, or fire cannons separately.

“No, no! They got the Kool-Aid man!”

Currently, the game only has a little over a dozen stages available for play, but there are plenty more planned, and I can’t overstate enough how much the appeal of Besiege is in the open-ended aspect anyways. The game is at its best, arguably, when you switch into free construction, lifting the space restrictions of the normal stages, and build the biggest, dumbest things that you possibly can. Early Access games understandably have a mixed reputation, but after nearly thirty hours with the game, I’d recommend Besiege at almost any price point. At only $7, it’s already an absolute must-have that’s only going to improve with time.

And someday, perhaps, I’ll figure out how to get my poor Robot King to stop falling over whenever he turns.