Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles (PC) Preview

It seems that Tomas Sala’s The Falconeer series is mimicking the SteamWorld franchise with the next game in the series that started out as an aerial combat exploration title as it pitches upwards into the clouds. A new stylized city-builder in The Falconeer universe is totally changing the genre. It is also a strange and wonderful way of doing a demo (currently on Steam) as we’ve seen over the last while. Instead of having only a limited amount of time or content to it, as Tomas points out when you first load the game, everything currently is here, but the only thing missing is the ability to save your game (though the press build does save).

Effectively, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles is a deceptively simple-looking city-builder with a lot of hidden depth underneath. The first thing that will stand out is the camera controls. Focused on whatever tower/production building of your settlement you happen to be building from at that moment, you’ll use WASD to swivel around said focal point. Each tower is connected to a bridge that is automatically built by the people who need homes. Meanwhile, your focus is on towers, resources, and defense. This just means that for the better part of the early game, you can do almost everything with just the mouse.

Once you’ve built a few messy towers in the tutorial, have several bridges connected to one place, and have to remember which click does what, complications start to arise. The left click lets you select where to move from tower to tower. However, the right click builds bridges to that tower, with select symbols telling you what will be built in that area. Circles will be bridges, squares are foundations around towers, and triangles are balconies looking out from your towers. For defensive towers, you’ll want stable foundations and that is where resources (such as wood, iron, stone, and workforce) come into place.

The more homes you build around the starting tower or resource extractors, the more resources they will be able to pump out. Pressing the tab key gives you a very nice and satisfying look at the lines leading towards each tower, showing who’s able to get what to and from where each resource happens to be. Wood is needed to build bridges, stone is needed for towers, iron is for your defensive battlements, and people are basically like rabbits, you’ll find them everywhere. Though like many of these thematic city-builders set during a fictional time or a deliberate mythology, you’ll find more people with exploration and special people will be needed.

As was the case with The Falconeer, there is a heavy influence of the sea and settlements built on small archipelagos, but this time the falcons aren’t your focus. At some point you’ll have to cover certain amounts of water that a bridge can’t cover, so you’ll build harbors with your airships and each harbor can play host to a certain number of captains. However, you only have a select number overall throughout your soon-to-be ocean-wide empire. Engaging with events will give you an opportunity to interact with the locals, as you aren’t the only kingdom being built around these waters.

This is why your defense is important and each defensive tower requires one commander to, well, command the armies that you aren’t micromanaging. That’s what I like most here, I’m not stuck micromanaging and dealing with resources. Instead, I’m focused on the resources with a hint of delegation to those who can defend the settlement or trade routes without my need to watch over them every few seconds. All the complicated busy work of a typical resource-collecting city-builder is shaved away so you can focus on exploration and gathering.

The tutorial level might be a little too quick at throwing events at you. You’ll constantly have new people coming into your waters, a storm on the horizon that could hold a foreign threat and a new resource deposit just over the waves. There is seemingly a political element to the people of your settlement on stilts, though, for the most part, it is a very slow-moving piece to the puzzle. It is based on the same map as before, but looking down from the heavens wondering why your Freehouse Refugee citadel and peoples are being persuaded by the pirate faction into whatever it is mythical Viking-era pirates do.

What I think is possibly the most impressive is the photo mode, a revelation that I am sure will surprise no one that has heard me talk about these modes before. The sensitivity of the camera could be greatly improved due to the free movement with WASD being very binary and aggressive, but the orbit with your mouse is a little lazy. That said, your ability to move as far away as you like or as close as you want (close enough to go into buildings) is the freedom I want. It also offers some fantastic shots of these cobbled-together communities and their mix of wood, stone, and iron creations stacked on top of strange rock formations.

I still find it impressive that such a game is made by a solo developer, but the ideas certainly show that mindset. Take that as a positive and a negative if you want. Feeling a little more aimless outside of that tutorial level, the goal is seemingly to just keep expanding and building your empire. Sadly, that deceptively simple appeal only works for so long before I am asking myself, “So, what now?” With a little hint of a ticking clock on your resources or limited dangers, I’m left wondering how I’m being engaged by gameplay.

It is a very pretty and appealing sandbox city-builder in a strange and wonderful world that is distinct. I like what we’ve got of Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles, but in full action I wonder where I’m supposed to be engaged. It is still heavily in development, as noted by Sala when you start the game up every time. I am curious how it will shape up when finally released more than excited if I’m honest.

A PC preview copy of Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles was provided by Wired Productions for this preview.