Bulwark: A review of Falconeer Chronicles

Is the idea of developing a metropolis without the typical stress appealing?

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles
Platform: PC
Developer: Tomas Sala
Publisher: Wired Productions
Release date: March 26th, 2024
Price: $19.99
Digital availability: Steam

Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles lets you know right away that you’re in for a unique experience. A spoken replica of the game’s sole developer, Tomas Sala, greets you in the corner of the main screen.

The wizardly-looking guy tells us that experimentation is welcomed and that Bulwark uses a streamlined control system for its simulated city building. Sala withholds the fact that his most recent work defies a number of game design conventions.

A Marvelous World Encased in Water

Though the events of Bulwark take place forty years after The Falconeer in 2020, the aerial combat presented in that film won’t be repeated in Bulwark. Rather, the title returns to Ursee’s aquatic realm.

In terms of context, it’s a remarkably creative cosmos full of rocky atolls that protrude from a stormy sea and skies teeming with lightning strikes and salted hazes. Similar to Falconeer, the buildings that rise from these craggy cliffs are iconic, with their tall spires and winding walkways that expose humanity’s disobedience of an unwelcoming environment.

Building Slowed Down

Interestingly, Falconeer Chronicles rejects all conventional control schemes that give you a somewhat static, godlike view of the map. Instead, towers that link to your base are placed, and the game creates pathways on its own. Ground construction and mobility are essentially node-based. It’s very different from typical city builders’ nested menus, letting you freely construct an intricate web of buildings.

In practice, it’s significantly more akin to the carefree approach to civil engineering provided by Townscraper and Dorfromantic than it is to the meticulous micromanagement of Cities Skylines or Sim City. No, you are not required to establish a facility or even construct housing for your employees. Rather, homes just seem to spring out all around a thriving community, like leaves sprouting from a healthy seedling. Furthermore, because you may build intricate decks around your towers or trip away unnecessary structures, tending to your outposts can have a Zen-like effect similar to pruning a bonsai.

Development is Not the Final Goal

In theory, the three resources in the game—wood, stone, and iron—should be of interest to you. Furthermore, I never experienced the “oh sh*t, what do I need to fix?”limitations of resources in real-time strategy games, such as Age of Empires. Rather, more raw materials are utilized to upgrade your towers, which might strengthen your forces and defenses.

However, because combat is purposefully minimized (and frequently managed without your help), it is almost entirely unnecessary. Even after trying to cause it, I haven’t come across any fail-states in Bulwark. The focus of the game is primarily on allowing you to construct without the kind of structure that is included in the majority of 4X games. However, this independence also means that there are no usual pressures that city builders usually add, making the game a consistently peaceful experience.

Getting Guidance

That might not be to everyone’s taste. There are lots of things to do in Bulwark. There’s a whole map that may be explored across three campaigns. You’re not alone in the Ursee; there are other groups that can either further your sphere of influence or cause conflict. But don’t anticipate any of the complex geopolitics of Nobunaga’s Ambition or the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, since sides stick to a straightforward friendly/hostile duality. You can construct a LEGO empire in a bathtub in the game’s Freebuild mode if you’d prefer to avoid all diplomatic endeavors.

Bulmark may let you down if you’re used to a sense of urgency, though. Even though I always complain about games becoming formulaic, I didn’t really like the gameplay in the moment when I played the title; instead, I spent much of my time appreciating its departure from the norm. Even while I strongly believe that the game should support players in discovering their own happiness, Falconeer Chronicles never seems like a fully developed sandbox.

A Requirement for Command

Then there are sporadic mechanical problems. While using a mouse and keyboard or a controller is an option in the game, neither input method seems very natural. You have the ability to take control of your Surveyor, a blimp, at any time. However, the click-to-move approach used in navigation is cumbersome. Bulwark allows you to pan the camera around objects when you’re on the ground, however it’s disappointing that you can’t enlarge the image to see more of your city.

And there’s the matter of testing. Sala clearly prefers not to guide players through Bulwark’s universe, but to allow them to engage with it and learn how it functions. As a result, players are free to concentrate on building and exploration rather than managing resources and taking over military operations. However, neither of these parts is very deep. Before a feeling of boredom sets in and you decide to go to another game, you’ll quickly become familiar with the majority of the nuances. And it’s most likely the main problem with Falconeer Chronicles. Although the goals of the game are commendable, the in-game activities aren’t captivating enough to keep your interest for very long right now.

Bulwark: Using a review code that the publisher sent, I played Falconeer Chronicles on a PC.

Review Overview

Gameplay – 60%

Controls – 50%

Aesthetics – 80%

Content – 70%

Accessibility – 75%

Value – 80%

69%

OK

Summary : Bulwark: As you build tall structures and commerce hubs for your oceanic colony, Falconeer Chronicles puts down some rather ambitious foundations for autonomous city construction. Furthermore, there is a noticeable lack of challenge, which makes this more of an open-ended plaything than your typical goal-driven game, even though the unwillingness to mimic traditional forms of play is admirable. To make the autonomy a little more interesting, the developer should be able to make a few tweaks.