The perfect city building game is a difficult thing to achieve. First, you need extremely deep and robust systems for designing every aspect of a bustling metropolis. Roads, residential and commercial districts, the economy, public transport – making these things functional, let alone intuitive, is surely a significant game design challenge. Second, you need a convincing world and simulation. Constructing your perfect city is one thing, but if it doesn’t feel populated and alive, what’s the point? Cities Skylines 2 gets the first part totally right. Despite its ongoing struggles, it still provides the most complete set of city building tools. Frostpunk is more committed to the second part, where your population and your spirited bastion of humanity feel truly human. But imagine a combination of both. Available to try right now on Steam, a new city builder lets you make beautiful creations that also feel unique and personal to your citizens. And PCGamesN has some new, exclusive footage.
This is Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, from solo developer Tomas Sala. An open-world city building game with creation and expression at its center, your job is to construct a new hub for the final vestiges of humanity following a mysterious near apocalypse. In its opening hours, everything is up to you. Tactile building tools like you chip, mold, and paint the landscape to create the incipient foundations of a new metropolis. As the game progresses, however, your creations become more individuated.
You can create trade routes and forge alliances with other burgeoning societies, but you also need to protect your city from would-be ransackers. To that end, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles allows you to recruit captains and commanders, who will occupy certain districts of your metropolis and use them to raise and maintain their armies.
Over time, these areas will be shaped and changed by their commanders’ personalities. What starts as entirely your creation becomes a more colorful, lifelike bricolage of influences – a melting pot of different cultures and architectural styles that feels closer to a real, living, breathing city.
The Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles release date is set for Tuesday March 26, but you can already try it thanks to a Steam demo available here. In the meantime, PCGamesN has some exclusive footage of late-game builds.
The post-apocalyptic world of Bulwark is largely submerged in water, forcing the remnants of humanity to build their cities on the peaks of mountains. In some instances however, you can use technology to move the rising oceans, and create districts and boroughs that are semi-aquatic. If you want to get a sense of how the finished product in Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles compares to the megalopolis of Cities Skylines 2, and the unique quasi underwater architecture, take a look at the video below:
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