Sustaining the thrum of a finely-tuned citybuilder needs to be some of the satisfying acts of online game plate-spinning round. Nursing that fixed move of foot visitors, produce and income, all of them teetering on a fastidiously honed knife-edge, that is the great things proper there. In fact, it is not all the time the specter of imminent and complete collapse that fuels these mighty engines of city planning. Typically it is the straightforward pleasure of constructing itself, watching a scrub of filth observe stand up into a complicated superhighway of architectural marvel. The very best of those extra relaxed sorts of citybuilders – your Dorfromantiks and your SteamWorld Builds et al – nonetheless contain loads of plate-spinning; it is simply that they will not ever fall over in case you take your eye off the ball for a second.
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles sits on the citybuilding crossroads of ‘relaxed’ and ‘one thing extra’. It desires to be an easy-going type of builder, as nothing essentially dangerous occurs when the wheels cease turning for a second. For essentially the most half, you are free to construct the place and nevertheless you please, setting up imposing fortresses jutting out into the ocean from mere scraps of rock. However it additionally will get extra slowed down within the trivia of useful resource move, employee administration and conquest and growth by way of muddy, ill-defined fight procedures than it most likely ought to. It all the time feels on the precipice of changing into one thing larger, bolder and extra boisterous than it ever actually achieves, dipping its toes into the murky waters of its lonely Ursee with out really ever getting its ft moist.
As a solo developer challenge, Bulwark nonetheless feels spectacular in its personal proper – even when it is in the end one which’s topic to a debilitating quantity of feature-creep. If you hearth it up, you are introduced with a sort-of marketing campaign mode that consists of three beginning eventualities, and a free construct mode the place you may actually go to city with its seaside building methods. I say ‘sort-of-campaign’, as there is not any actual aim in Bulwark. You’ll be able to simply preserve constructing and constructing till you’ve got had your fill. Positive, you might most likely conquer the oceans in case you wished, however there aren’t any goals or victory situations per se telling you to take action, or what it is best to goal for subsequent. You make your individual enjoyable in Bulwark, which might really feel fairly liberating on the one hand, however directionless on the opposite.
The primary situation has a tutorial of kinds that teaches you the fundamentals of how you can construct and get your settlement up and operating, however most of its later-game queries, resembling how fight works, are hidden away in its assist menu. Different questions I had, although, are by no means answered in any respect, resembling ‘why cannot I construct one other extractor on this close by stone quarry?’ and ‘am I actually making one of the best use of those outposts I appear to maintain amassing?’ It will probably typically really feel such as you’re clutching at straws in consequence, making Bulwark the type of citybuilder you most likely have to attempt to fail at (or a minimum of muddle together with) two or 3 times earlier than you actually really feel such as you’ve received the measure of it – as a result of the sport itself is not going that can assist you perceive it in any nice element. Some of us will little question thrive on feeling your approach round its borders like this. However the extra I performed, the extra I discovered myself itemizing within the different path, simply wanting some simple solutions for the way sure elements of it truly labored.
The elemental act of constructing, although, is kind of satisfying, and watching your settlements edge additional and additional out into the ocean actually feels such as you’re defying the percentages as you attempt to make a life for your self. The very first thing you will have to do is join your outpost to a wooden mill, as with out wooden, nothing might be completed in any respect. It is one among three most important assets in Bulwark – the others being stone and iron – and as soon as you’ve got received walkways and towers linked to their respective extractor websites, assets will move freely (for essentially the most half), with homes cropping up robotically alongside your bridges and jetties.
It is a very simple type of citybuilding. Whereas useful resource websites might be depleted, they take a very long time to take action, and so they’re successfully infinite in amount whereas they’re being mined. There aren’t any actual limits on how a lot you may construct within the early elements of the sport, and you may really feel little have to hit Tab to toggle on the Useful resource Movement menu. Bear in mind this menu exists, although, as I will be returning to this later. As an alternative, you will be too busy making a spiderweb of walkways round your beginning location, setting up towers and laying foundations to provide you extra stable floor to work with as you increase into the deeper and deeper water. Upon getting stone and iron, you can even improve your buildings additional, like ever larger towers that attain upwards into the foggy heavens, and balconies to help much more elaborate skyways. Finally, you will additionally be capable to assign captains and commanders to those towers to extend your army may and useful resource manufacturing, every one bringing their very own distinctive trimmings to make them immediately stand out in opposition to your settlement’s skyline.
Nevertheless, these feats of engineering magnificence are sometimes spoiled by its finicky digital camera. It may be onerous to pick out particular buildings or towers together with your mouse except the angle is simply so, otherwise you spin it spherical to view the whole lot from utterly high all the way down to erase any query of depth notion. It is a minor nitpick within the grand scheme of issues, nevertheless it raises its head simply typically sufficient to really feel such as you’re all the time wrestling with it – significantly whenever you swap over to your airborne surveyor ship, which you will be piloting around the Ursee in quest of different outposts and event-based query marks to construct up your settlement additional.
Like SteamWorld Construct, you may comfortably go away your settlement to hum alongside within the background when you’re out in surveyor mode. I imply, there’s nothing you truly have to control in Bulwark, as you do not have to fret about assets operating out, or maintaining residents completely happy, or something, actually, so you may pop off in your airship everytime you really feel prefer it. The truth is, this was the place I ended up spending most of my time as soon as I would received my fundamental settlement going, because it’s solely by exploration that you will discover new faction outposts to vacuum up, new buying and selling ships to convey into your fold, and distinctive buildings to airlift again to your most important house.
Nevertheless, it is this late-stage of Bulwark’s eventualities the place its foundations begin to really feel more and more wobbly. Distinctive buildings are all nicely and good, for instance, however they’ve actually no function apart from wanting good. Equally for the vessels you will discover that say they will convey ‘new companies’ to your settlement in case you conform to take them in. What companies? What items? Companies aren’t a priority or perhaps a selectable constructing kind on this sport, so what good do these new recruits truly convey? Fortunately, different encounters are extra worthwhile. Buying and selling vessels are helpful when your nearest supply of iron, say, is three islands over, and fighter ships are nice at maintaining them secure as they ferry assets backwards and forwards.
Refugee outposts, alternatively, can add extra individuals to your settlement – although when their solely function appears to be to man your towers, they too find yourself feeling fairly superfluous as the sport goes on. As precise outposts, nevertheless, they really feel deeply underutilised. You’ll be able to theoretically plonk them down wherever on the map with shallow water, however as I discussed earlier, you may’t construct something in Bulwark with out entry to wooden – and to mine the world’s many, many useful resource spots, you want particular person extractor instruments for every useful resource in query. What number of extractors does the sport offer you by default? One in every of every, on your most important settlement. And the way do you get extra of them? The sport does not let you know.
Consequently, you merely find yourself assimilating most of those outposts into your wider settlement, including but extra functionless buildings to your ranks. This was one among my most important sticking factors in Bulwark, because it was solely on my third playthrough, after a number of hours of bumbling round at midnight that I lastly discovered my reply. I may both take over one other settlement by pressure and dismantle their extractor that approach (if they’d one), or hope in useless to discover a refugee camp occasion that got here with one among its personal. The latter solely occurred as soon as throughout my evaluation time, and it arguably got here far too late for it to really feel like a trigger for celebration. I can perceive not eager to flood the place with available extractor instruments, however when the sport’s solo developer Tomas Sala proclaims within the begin up display screen tutorial that the sport is about “chaotic creativity”, and the trick is to all the time “preserve constructing”, it additionally begs the query: nicely, why not?
Assets having a set vary of journey additionally feels at odds with Bulwark’s promise of simple, unhindered building. Do not forget that Useful resource Movement menu? Toggle this on and you will be assaulted with a mass of colored squiggly strains displaying how staff and assets transfer by your rising metropolis. However whereas the amount of every useful resource could also be technically infinite, they will solely journey a sure distance from their respective extraction web site (or harbour, if it is coming from abroad). This is not brilliantly defined within the tutorial, and it wasn’t till I consulted the assistance menus that I realised why, regardless of a wholesome provide of iron in my harbour, I could not improve a few of the towers additional into my settlement. I had an awesome community of walkways going, however the towers I needed to improve lay past its extremely restricted constructing vary, stopping me from making progress. As soon as once more, this can be a considerably arbitrary restrict to put on building, particularly when extractors are so few and much between. It feels such as you’re being imprisoned fairly than inspired, and whereas dismantling is free and comes with out penalty, it is a proper previous chore to rearrange the whole lot.
Factor is, although, by the point I began discovering extra extractors, I wasn’t truly making a lot progress anymore. I used to be merely killing time, ready to see if one thing else would occur. It is like being caught in a Fallout sport that simply endlessly feeds you with extra of the identical stuff to do – extra captains to search out, extra buying and selling boats to herald, and but extra refugees to deposit someplace. Actually, the one factor that did appear to occur the longer I performed was different enemy factions began to bristle with worry throughout the seas, my large settlement sending your entire Ursee right into a spiralling, unending conflict.
And sure, fight does fill the void considerably. Enemy settlements will continuously attempt to disrupt your commerce routes, no matter whether or not you could have fighter ships defending them or not, however you can even convey the combat to their door and conquer them together with your retinue of accompanying fighter falcons. However this, too, grows stale after mincing your fifth massive settlement with ease, if solely as a result of it is by no means actually clear how fights truly work. There’s little to no technique concerned – firing your weapons all occurs robotically, and I could not let you know if clicking my ship round within the sky truly makes any distinction versus standing nonetheless and letting the cannons rain down from above.
All of it simply begins to really feel such as you’re endlessly spinning plates with none actual finish in sight. Every marketing campaign situation is extra of the identical, too, providing little greater than a change in beginning place and faction kind. For some, £15/$20 will likely be a greater than enough worth of entry for that. However it additionally seems like Bulwark is on the cusp of one thing larger, prefer it’s aiming to be an Anno however by no means fairly getting there within the course of. It in the end spreads itself too skinny, doing a lot of issues nicely with out being good, and lacks the depth and momentum to make it really feel satisfying on a strategic degree. It is a citybuilder that hums alongside quietly, however lethargically, sputtering often as you modify gears, and ultimately really fizzling out altogether as each you and the sport change into utterly and completely exhausted by all of it.
This evaluation is predicated on a retail construct of the sport supplied by publishers Wired Productions.
