Nine years is a long time. Think about where you were nine years ago and I’m sure you’ll be surprised about how far you’ve come and where life has taken you. Not for me though. Nine years ago I was playing Besiege, and today a brand new expansion has launched so I’m still playing Besiege.
If you don’t know what Besiege is, imagine designing your own wooden Rube Goldberg-esque machines in a medieval sandbox game, all crafted to inflict maximum damage on something else. It’s The Incredible Machine meets Stronghold and is just as wild and fun as that sounds. Things had gone quiet on the Besiege front for a while, after five years of early access and four years since release, but now it’s time to whir up your siege engines all over again.
Formerly the action was confirmed to the land, wheels and legs forming your basis for shuffling your creations about. In The Splintered Sea it’s time to wave farewell to the shore and head out to the ocean in all new watery adventures. Ten new zones await your cobbled together creations, with new blocks, new challenges, and even the ability to descend under the waves.
What’s always set Besiege apart from anything else out there is how it embraces sheer chaos. While you can have a plan, there’s every chance it’ll go wrong, and the temptation to build bigger, crazier things is always there. Adding water into the mix only ups the cavalcade of chaotic craziness, as now you’ll have to deal with ocean physics and everything bobbing about on the waves.
It’s those physics which add an entirely new dimension to the game. It may look more toy than an in-depth simulated experience but Besiege has a lot going on under the hood. As you fight on the surface and beneath the waves, you’ll have to deal with shape-dependent drag, realistically modeled buoyancy, and more. It deepens the Besiege experience while adding a lot of explosions, as is correct.
Besiege: The Splintered Sea is out now on Steam and you can save 10% until Sunday, June 2. Head over to the store page to learn more.
If you’d like to experience something else in the genre, our guide to the best building games will get you constructing in no time, and our best strategy games guide will have you using that brain for something other than smashing stuff together.
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