You can’t go wrong with an airship, that’s what I say! Well, apart from that one time when things went very wrong with an airship. Historically wrong, some might claim. Ahem. But at least I can confidently state that all the best video games have airships in them, like everyone’s favorite Final Fantasy, 12, the third best Bioshock game, and, er, middling survival sim Forever Skies. Look, I just like airships, okay? Let me have this, please.
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles Update
Chill city-builder and definitely not a strategy game, Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles already features airships in abundance, which by my admittedly unusual metric makes it the best video game ever made. But where do you go once you’ve ascended to the zenith of creative expression? The answer, of course, is bigger airship. The latest update introduces the biggest balloon yet seen in Tomas Sala’s gentle game of mountain fortification management. The Behemoth is a vast, heavily armed aerial flagship with three different upgrade tiers that players can acquire as they explore Bulwark’s lofty world, even changing its name at one point to avoid confusion. Instead, it’s more about letting players express their desires for construction and/or conquest with minimal friction.
Alongside the Behemoth, the update adds several other locations to Bulwark. The most notable of these is the Entagon, which has little to do with tree people but plenty to do with spies. Acquiring the Entagon unlocks subterfuge diplomacy events, allowing players to:
- Acquire settlements from rival factions
- Corrupt faction commanders to do your bidding
- Undo vassalizations
- Disrupt settlement defenses
Elsewhere, the update introduces Arbologies, which will grow trees when supplied with workers, along with curved walls for more nuanced construction. Several quality-of-life features have also been added, including a limited fast-travel system and a supersampling setting for antialiasing, along with the usual array of balance tweaks and bug fixes.
Sala prefaces the update’s Steam post with a couple of requests to “help keep Bulwark and a new game development going,” presumably because, like so many games, Bulwark is struggling against the ferocious riptide of new Steam releases for prominence. He asks players to review the game on Steam, adding that “any review helps, even the critical ones,” and also requests that Bulwark fans follow him as a developer, noting that “Valve has told me many exciting things that will make this super worthwhile in the future.” Intriguing!
If you’ve yet to try out Bulwark yourself and all my airship talk has got you curious, it’s currently available for less than half price as part of Steam’s autumn sale. That brings the price down to (£7.19). The discount ends on October 6.
