Developer: Spiderling Games
Platforms: PC
Price: $6.99
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Destruction is fun. Anyone who played Red Faction: Guerrilla surely remembers the joy of driving trucks through buildings or collapsing towers with a few swings of your sledgehammer. Besiege takes the vehicle construction you love from games like Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and injects it with a dose of physics, blood, and medieval destruction, as you build powerful siege engines to level castles and lay waste to armies.
From the moment you start Besiege, the polish put in the game is evident. The two-man team behind Spiderling Games have been working on Besiege since late 2013 and it shows in every aspect of the game, from the slick menu designs to the building UI that makes constructing vehicles effortless. It's the little details that stand out: wood beams snap in half when broken, blood stains your blades and the ground, your structure collapses and falls apart realistically when aflame, buildings crumble under the might of your cannon fire or swinging maces.
The current version of Besiege offers fifteen levels, with more to come in future updates. While your objectives are not that complex (ranging from destroying a specific building, destroying a certain amount of enemies, to transporting resources), building something that can steer effectively, withstand damage, and attack without breaking apart from recoil or movement can be tough. Half the fun in this game is experimenting and learning from your failures and tweaking your designs. Blocks at your disposal include everything from armor plating, pistons, Kerbal Space Program-style detachers, wings, and propellers to an arsenal of maces, cannons, and devastating saw blades. This toolset allows you to create all kinds of unstoppable killing machines. A mace-armed behemoth. A rolling windmill of death. A spring-loaded scorpion tail ending in a flamethrower. The variety of silly and creative builds you can create in Besiege is vast.
Besiege is currently only at the 0.01 alpha stage, but honestly, the game doesn't feel like an alpha. It's an easy-to-play, polished experience, both in terms of visuals and gameplay and in performance. It's fun and enjoyable, and you can spend hours messing around and building new and more ludicrous ways to complete your objectives. Besiege was Greenlit recently, and the devs plan to have the game on Steam Early Access "very soon". You can purchase the game through Humble, and learn more about Besiege and its development on the developer's site.
