‘Besiege’ by Spiderling Games is a pleasant and surprisingly relaxing romp into devastation and destruction that I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did.

Frankly, there is no real plot to Besiege but there is a strong premise and presence. Set in medieval times you are set the task of designing war machines to take down your enemies and conquer their resourceful lands. While this game stands firmly on two feet without a story tale attached, I would have loved some comical cutscenes with a loose narrative attached to string together what plays out as hilarious gameplay scenarios.

Objectively, as stated before, you must build mechanical machinery to pulverise the landscape in front whether it be charging armies, fortified castles, or a measly flock of sheep, thus capturing it. To do this, a plethora of stabilising, moving, and destructive parts are given to you.

Like a chop shop straight out of GTA, you can Frankenstein together pieces of foundations, axels, wheels, cannons etc, to build a machine to annihilate anything in its path or even from the skies. It sounds easy, but it isn’t.

The motion, inertia, and ragdoll psychics add a challenge. Too much weight on the front you won’t move, too much on the back you will flip, not put an axel in and your wheel won’t spin. It was very specific and I loved it. It was an enjoyable and unique gaming experience.

The Nintendo Switch edition includes a campaign with 55 levels across 4 maps and also a Sandbox mode means there is a lot of content. The Sandbox has 3 distinct areas for you to practice and muck around in, but I didn’t find it very interesting or enjoyable to hang around there too much.

In the Campaign, there is also a Workshop where you can download or buy artistic war designs from other players. A great way to develop and showcase the dedicated community that seems to be built around this title. Unfortunately, it is missing Multiplayer and the Level Editor from other next-gen editions.

It was made even more fun on the Nintendo Switch. In handheld mode, I could use the touch screen to move and delete components much faster than using the joycons. I could even pinch and expand to zoom in and out on areas to seem more accurate about what was going into my war vessel. 

On a big screen with a pro controller, it ran fine, but I did prefer the handheld due to the touch controls.

For how small the environments are I am impressed with the graphics. Although everything on the Nintendo Switch is small and compact in handheld, the game is packed with charming and simplistic watercoloured-like visuals.

Despite the violent nature of the game, it is quite whimsical with fluffy sheep bopping around and bumbling guards and sentries set amongst the fortresses and soft pastel woodlands. The audio is very generic but calming and ironic contrast to the sound effects of destruction as you blast a goat into smithereens with a cannon or shatter a sentry tower to a crumbling mess with a catapult.

Overall, Besiege on Nintendo Switch is a solid addition to an already fun game. With its crazy bouncy psychics and bombastic unique ‘build a death machine’ gameplay, this is a great addition to your Switch library despite its shortfall of missing features.

Written by: Stacey