Spiderling Games' 'Besiege' is currently in Early Access. I was gifted a copy this weekend by a friend and decided to check it out as the concept sounded interesting and a few gaming youtubers I like and watch had some fun with it.

So did I? Well, yes. Kinda...

For an Early Access game in 'Alpha' an stage it is surprisingly well optimised and has enough features in it to give the player enough to do. As of writing, there is one island of 15 or so individual zones to play in. Each of these gives enough variation and forces you to learn different strategies on how to tackle them.

In some ways, this works against the game as you are pretty much given the tools and told: Go! But as a sandbox game, a tutorial would not really work (edit: there are small tips that pup up at the start of a level). So to get through this one you are going to have to use your imagination. or the steam workshop

Visually it looks really cool, using a somewhat cartoonish style and low poly models to its advantage in giving the game a striking look to stand above the various other titles in this growing genre.

There's not really any music apart from a low ambient (though not distracting) drone, but the weapon sounds do have the type of grunt in them to make it feel like you are really blasting things to bits.

It took me a while to learn basic things. This is the first sandbox/creative game I've played outside of Minecraft, yet the games are nothing alike.

In Besiege, you are given a central box and have to build siege weapons out of it by attaching various parts. Build a strong armoured or light frame and add a combination wheels, support lines, cogs, pistons, hinges, steering, blades, canons, flame/water throwers, and bombs. But then realise your centre of mass is off and you don't move right, or flip right over as you are too light and unbalanced.

It's really quick to jump in and out of the design and play stage, and you can save designs and even upload them to the steam workshop platform to share with others.

The aim is usually to blow up a building or eliminate a bunch of troops before they shoot you apart. But there are a few stages which involve grabbing and moving boulders around, which I did not find as fun. Give me more EXPLOSIONS! :D

I make no effort to hide my appeal towards siege weapons and will admit I had plans and have started to build a miniature trebuchet in the shed. Start off small and don't be intimidated by the complexity of what others have uploaded. Your first machine may be really naff, but will improve over time.

So a game where you build war/siege weapons sounds great! And yeah, before I knew it my 86 minutes was up. While this site really just uses F86M as a legacy title now, I still try to do as much as I can within that period.

I'd imagine it is the type of game that appeals to people that really like to tweak and rejigger things until they get the result they desire. But if you ever played with lego bricks or equivalent toys in your youth the same amount of fun can be found here.

And this is where the 'Kinda' takes place. I had a lot of fun with this one, but a lot of frustration also.

There's not a high learning curve, I'd even say it is fairly low. However if you are not aware of the genre it will take some time to come up with something effective. There's a huge payoff of achievement when you finish a level, but this just takes some time.

It's hard to judge a game in early access alpha, so I'd give it more leeway than complete titles. In the future development I would like to see a few pre-made example siege weapons and the basics of how it works.

But still kept really basic as a lot of the appeal here is figuring out the game.

Basically I've been spoilt by having other titles have everything made for me or had severe limitations restricting what I can do. When presented with an open world, I'm going to need some time to get into the groove of it.

As said twice or so above. Besiege is in Early Access. The game works without issues and there is enough to play through and create with, while also being the type of game where more will be added to all of this over time.

Got an imagination? Like blowing stuff up with canons? Ever played with lego bricks? Really recommend giving Besiege a go. It's a great little single player sandbox game with a huge future potential as more is added to it.

Game Acquisition: Gifted Copy
Platform Used: Steam
Tweet Thread: 1 - 9 May 2016
PC Used: Scorptec Venom 2009 MK2

OS: Windows XP (latest SP)
Processor: 2.2Ghz Dual Core
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: 512mb Dedicated VRAM
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 1 GB available space