New expansion Besiege: The Splintered Sea is set to dramatically shake up one of the most iconic and beloved sandbox games on PC with the introduction of one of the most universal substances on Earth – water. The medieval-inspired building game and physics sandbox heads into the ocean in its imminent update, providing all manner of new ways to experiment. But if you, like I was, are worried about what might happen to its delicious explosions in the soggy new setting, developer Spiderling Studios is here to reassure you that they’re getting even better than before.
In its first development blog for the new Besiege DLC, Spiderling Studios digs into some of the main ways the introduction of the wet stuff will impact its delightfully satisfying physics sandbox game. “It’s always been important to us that if we ever added water to Besiege, it would need to be a more interactive and impactful experience for the player than simply a flat plane to sail a ship across.”
That starts on a grand scale, with the large waves of the ocean battering your ship about, “making navigation challenging and causing ill-balanced machines to capsize.” You’ll have to be a lot more considerate about your stability and center of gravity than on solid ground, then. But that effect goes both ways, and your ship’s movement through and impact on the water will create different levels of splash, spray, and spread in its wake.
The most fun example of this is with explosions. “Besiege wouldn’t be Besiege without awesome explosions,” Spiderling says, “so we wanted to give special attention to them in water as well.” Primary sources of this such as bombs and mines are strong enough to cause physical impacts on water, whether they explode above or below the surface.
Explosions taking place above the surface will force the water downward, creating a brief depression in the surface that will affect any ships or other objects floating on it. Underwater explosions, however, are even more fun – they’ll create a big bubble as they detonate, forcing water and other objects away from the epicenter, but this bubble will then collapse, causing anything still nearby to be sucked back in rapidly.
Spiderling notes that this “makes submarine warfare especially satisfying and immersive,” but it will also thrust water upward to the surface, damaging any vessels caught above even if they’re outside of the explosion’s initial radius. All of this has me very excited to try out the new expansion, and the good news is there’s not too long to wait.
Besiege: The Splintered Sea launches Friday May 24 on Steam. You can head to the store page to wishlist it now – and if you don’t yet have the original game, it’s currently 70% off at the time of writing. The deal only lasts through Sunday April 21, however, so you’ll have to be quick to grab it for the low price of just $4.49/£3.83, though it’s absolutely worth picking up at its full price if you miss out.
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