Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles Review (Inkidu)
I don't think I can recommend this game, which saddens me as I had really looked forward to what you could do once you got past the tutorial presented into the demo, and I struggle to put into words that if you've played the demo, you might feel like I do:
You've played everything there was to play.
I consider myself an exceptionally creative person if I'm feeling vain, but I would never consider myself someone devoid of creativity. I adore words built on high concepts, which is what drew me to this work in the first place. Again, my disappointment comes to the surface.
I've read several of the reviews of this game to gauge the temperament around the game, and while most will talk about the mouse and keyboard controls, what I came across were numerous replies by the developer and one in particular that espoused his vision for the game. It is a long work, but my summation of it was he wanted to create something creative not burdened by grinding out resources, which is valid.
But as my counterpoint to this and I think gets at the heart of how disappointed I feel with this game. While a game shouldn't be onerous or obnoxious, Bulwark over-corrects to the point of your actions having no point. Yet what it is trying to do doesn't go far enough. I can get behind a zen-mode city painter, but the structures that are generated aren't varied enough, the art doesn't try hard enough, it's never pretty enough for me in that regard. The towers all look the same, the walkways clip through cliffs the bridges have not entrances as they slam into a five story sweeping command tower. The toolbox to play with is very limited, it quickly loses its charm. You never see people going about their lives, being disrupted by attacks, you never see them make bars, cafes, entertainment districts. You never see gardens or decorations pop out. Your settlement will quickly reach maximum grandeur and stay there within the tutorial explanation.
And that's sad.
I'd be rather mean to say that the game is lackluster or that the execution is poor, because I don't think that's it. The idea was clearly adored but I just don't feel like the concept was entirely trusted. Still, it would be presumptuous of me not to acknowledge that there are computational limitations on games, along with other all-too-common real-world issues of game development. I've never developed a game, but I have played a lot and where vision is often hamstrung mechanics take over and bolster the vision.
Bulkwark doesn't deliver that either unfortunately. The reverse edge of the sword of grind-free zen buildings is that after a while it's just too easy. It's not rewarding, Cities Skylines on infinite money for some, but without the management aspect for me personally the city is pointless. It's the limitation that gives meaning to the creativity to me. It's one thing to take easily gained resources and make a perfectly aesthetic city that functions.. It's another thing to make everyone in that city happy and turn a profit and retrofit and remake and finally carve something out of nothing.
And Bulwark doesn't succeed in this. Everything's given to you, nothing is difficult (save maybe the controls for some). The aesthetics don't feed into the game. The game doesn't build upon itself. You can create a hyper tall command tower but it does nothing more than any other.
You can create a beautiful sweeping sky-way of a half a dozen buttressed stone walkways and after a few seconds it's just pointless. No one builds along side them, no one walks them, they don't even have openings into the massive towers they connect. The game is not just minimalist, it's not just casual, it's simplistic and much more shallow than the ocean-based setting would have you believe.
Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization series of games has a philosophy that games are just a series of interesting choices. It's hard to argue with him. And Bulkwark has very few interesting choices to be made. I've played simple game with a lot of depth and art considering their simple premise. Dorfromantik and Pan'Orama come to mind. And this isn't that. I'm left with game that doesn't have enough art and morphing to make i a joy to try and sculpt something, nor does it have enough strategic mechanics or decisions to give weight to my actions.
It's not a case of Bulwark being a badly designed game. It's not.
It's not a case of Bulwark being a well designed game. It's not.
It's the case that I find Bulkwark... pointless. All I engage with, all I try to extract, all I try to do lacks a point.
And that's sad.