When you look at the history of engineering, the human race is really a creative bunch, especially in the advances of medieval conflict. From the invention of archery where someone thought “I really want to stab that guy, but he’s standing way over there” to massive siege engines designed to topple the most stalwart of fortifications. Besiege, by Spiderling Studios, gives you a medieval playground for you to flatten, burn, fly, and generally destroy with the only limit really being your imagination of how you want to do it. What’s it Like? Fetch a hammer and nails, do your engineering degree online, and avoid the explosive bison as we review Besiege on Nintendo Switch.
Besiege is a physics-based puzzle/action game where you are tasked with destroying over 50 levels of mayhem. The campaign sees you travel to different islands to tackle bite-sized missions with varying objectives. Gameplay consists of 2 phases… build, and destroy. You flick through both phases rather quickly as you will go to destroy, fail, and then make improvements to your siege engine to tackle the mission again. There’s no loading during these phases, so you can flick back and forth, failing fast, and getting back on the sawhorse (so to speak) to build your improvements. Sometimes, these failures may be absolutely hilarious, like failing to brace a beam and firing a cannon that goes flying off your machine, or putting flamethrowers too close to other parts and you end up cooking yourself. There are so many ways to approach completing a level, and one great example was playing side-by-side next to my son. We were both on a mission where seagulls circle around a tower and you have to clear them out. I opted to create extendable flamethrowers to start my own Kentuck Fried Seagul empire, whereas my son opted to use spinning blades and cannons to get the job done. The nature of Besiege means experimentation and failure are fun and usually fairly entertaining to boot.
This trial and error progression is the strength of Besiege, slowly improving your Siege Engine by asking yourself “How could I have done that better?” Sometimes, you might make small, incremental changes like equipping bigger wheels more suited to rugged terrain, or you might scrap your entire design in favour of redesigning a new war machine from scratch. The game also purposely throws in forced redesigns as well, making your once-perfect siege engine obsolete in the face of flying machines. You don’t need to worry too much about losing a design you’re attached to, however, as you can “quick save” siege engines to redeploy in later levels.
The building is fairly intuitive, and in a refreshing change, nothing is really held back from you in terms of building options with the exception of a handful of tutorial levels focused solely on movement. You can easily snap and click parts together with the simplicity of building a Lego set, yet for players who want to dive even further, you can use complex gears, gates, sensors, gauges, and springs to create complex siege engines that your enemies won’t see coming. It’s that simple-to-play, difficult-to-master style of player progression that adds to the replayability of the title, which will take you anywhere from 5-10 hours the first time depending on how proficient you are at building siege engines. There are also sandbox modes to mess around in, one with destructible villages and scenery, one for flying machines, and one big empty space for you to perfect your design. I personally can’t wait to go back to the campaign knowing what I know now to strike fear into my enemies (Look out flock of seagulls… not the band.)
Much like its gameplay, Besiege features a unique art style that almost looks like Dungeons and Dragons-style scenery littered throughout a rather plain space. This really makes the objectives and destruction pop and has a lot of “wow” factor. Enemy knights waddle around like a comical medieval take on Terrance and Phillip from South Park, castles crumble in satisfying fashion brick by brick, and explosions and fire spread and wreak havoc in glorious detail. It’s so satisfying to land a catapult shot on target and watch it crumble with amazing attention to detail. On the flip side, it’s also hilarious to watch everything fall apart when your engineering skills aren’t up to scratch as the fire slowly consumes your siege engine. Besiege runs at a consistent framerate in both docked and handheld, and despite being able to change the framerate in the options menu, it doesn’t really seem to do anything, rather just stays locked in around the 30 fps mark.
For my Medieval Engineers looking into accessibility options, there are visual options like being able to disable depth of field, motion blur, and field of view. Volume options can also be isolated, which may not really be applicable here as there’s no dialogue spoken. You can also adjust controller sensitivity, and the game also supports touch screen for engineers looking to get hands-on. Touch works surprisingly well, but was a bit of an adjustment from the initiative controller mapping. The game does have a lot of almost monochromatic tones, which may make more intricate parts or objectives harder to discern, so as always, I recommend further research into finding out if Besiege is for you.
For $30 AUD, there’s a lot of refined and polished gameplay here. The game is both funny and clever and gives you an almost unlimited arsenal to tackle problems how you best see fit. It looks amazing, runs well, and it makes experimenting with designs fun. Failure is never frustrating, and the campaign and sandbox modes are replayable with every new siege engine design. If physics-based destruction is something you’re craving, you can’t go wrong with Besiege on Switch
So, What’s It Like? Besiege is like The Incredible Machine, but medieval.
In the interest of full disclosure, a review copy was provided by the publisher, but this doesn’t influence my score.
