In Bulwark you build an impressive fortress on barren rocks and defend it against attackers. This looks great thanks to a special building system.
There are games that manage to trigger fascination in viewers with just a short trailer and a few images. Bulwark belongs to these games for me. Not only the graphic style and design, but above all the unusual building system has an exciting and refreshingly novel effect on me.
Now enough praise: I would like to show you here what makes Bulwark so special as a building game, and which questions remain open in view of the still rather sparse information available.
What is Bulwark anyway?
Bulwark will be a building game in which you build unique fortress cities on barren and rocky islands and defend them against enemies. The title will be released exclusively (on Steam), but a release date is not yet known.
Bulwark is especially characterised by the construction system mentioned at the beginning: You can apparently expand buildings at will with additional floors or side wings and connect them with bridges and walls. Depending on how you continue to build, existing building parts also change. You can see for yourself what impressive cities are created in this way in the trailer:
As can already be seen in the trailer, we will not only build in Bulwark, but also fight. Because apparently dragon-like creatures occasionally attack our bulwark. We therefore also build various warships and airships that defend our city from the water and from the air. Resource management and story elements will also play a smaller role.
Cities like this have never existed before
The main focus, however, is still on settlement building, which is quite different from the vast majority of construction games. While we usually build cities on the plain and rocky cliffs are considered undevelopable areas, in Bulwark we have nothing but steep mountain ranges at our disposal. This gives our cities a unique look, as you can see in the first screenshots:
Due to the limited space, our buildings grow upwards and are not connected with roads, but with elegant bridge constructions. In addition to towers and bastions, we also erect harbour buildings, smaller houses and wind turbines that may provide our energy supply. However, nothing is known yet about building types and functions.
Who is developing this?
Behind Bulwark is solo developer Tomas Sala, who previously released the aerial combat game The Falconeer. That let you explore an oceanic world on the back of a giant bird and fight spectacular battles. Bulwark is supposed to be set in the same world as Falconeer. In the trailer we see that we can also use some of the giant birds to defend our city.
By the way, we have already talked to developer Tomas Sala about his first game. What drives him as a developer and why he chose an aerial combat game in particular!
Editorial conclusion
It”s really hard to say at the moment how Bulwark will play when it”s released. We have seen gameplay, but still know almost nothing about how our cities will work. What different types of buildings will there be? What resources will play a role? These and other questions remain unanswered.
Since Bulwark comes from a solo developer, we can probably not expect too extensive building functions. My personal guess is that we will mainly be concerned with building a particularly fancy fortress. I consider fighting to be a minor matter for this little building game. Resource management and story are also supposed to play only a minor role.
But I would also buy the game for the fortress construction alone, because building one of these impressive rock cities would be a lot of fun for me. Of course, it remains to be seen whether others will also be enthusiastic about it.
