A Cozy City Builder Under Constant Siege
Whenever people imagine how their life would be in medieval times, most would assume they are in some position of authority. Whether that be as a member of royalty, an esteemed knight, or well respected craftsmen.
Realistically most people would be in a position of poverty though.
But game developers don’t care about realism and instead want to make engaging experiences, which is why in Becastled you play as an omniscient creator and defender of your very own city.
Becastled is a city management game that is broken down into a day and night cycle. During the day, the player can task citizens with collecting resources, constructing new buildings and defenses, and training the military forces of the Sun Kingdom.
And then, at night, the Moon Beasts attack and it’s the player’s responsibility to maneuver forces and defend the kingdom.
Day and Night Cycle
The overall vibe is incredibly cozy, despite the description. The city slowly comes together to make a vibrant and lively town, while the combat encounters are relatively slow paced, especially early on. The number of enemies that will attack is shown on a crystal that spawns at the beginning of each day. This is also the location that the enemies spawn at, making planning for their attack fairly straightforward. The night encounters also end immediately after every enemy is defeated, which makes them fairly quick, early on.
This means the bulk of the gameplay focuses on creating and building the city. Becastled begins on a newly generated map, split into individual tiles that contain various resources like wood, food, iron, and so on. The first thing to do is decide where to build the city’s castle. This is where new citizens will spawn, as well as serve as the heart of the city. If it is destroyed during one of the night raids, then it’s game over.
Resources and Citizen Happiness
Thankfully there are plenty of ways to defend the city and the first few nights are cakewalks when it comes to defense. This gives time to focus on building up the city, after all, a castle would be just an empty building if there were no people. So the first day will consist of building houses for citizens to move into, as well as sawmills so there is actually wood available to build said houses. The next step is to ensure the citizens have something to eat; there are a few ways to do this, some tiles will have animals to build a farm, others will have fields to till, and there are of course deer which can be hunted.
Food helps keep citizens happy so that more will move into the town, but there are other ways to keep their spirits up. Like serving them spirits at the local tavern.
Late-Game City Building
As more resources are gathered, more tiles can be “captured” which essentially just means purchased, and there are also new buildings that allow for a wider variety of resources to be gathered. Eventually the city will be surrounded by walls, with fortified towers and gates blocking points of entry. In the late game there are even siege weapons that can rain down attacks on incoming enemies.
There is a sandbox mode too, so players that just want to focus on building a cozy little city are free to do so. The art style lends itself incredibly well to creating simple, yet vibrant environments that are incredibly fun to put together. There is a good range of decorative buildings as well, which allow for parks, streets, and leisure areas to be scattered throughout the sprawling city.
The Unseen Enemy
But as great of a concept as the game is, unfortunately Becastled is currently plagued with performance issues. This includes citizens getting stuck on their way to performing tasks, structures no longer operating properly and failing to generate resources, and other pathfinding hiccups. Most of these issues can be resolved by saving and restarting the game from the Xbox home screen, but they are frustrating nonetheless. One of the worst cases was during the winter, when units wouldn’t produce charcoal in the charcoal burning building. This caused happiness to drop rapidly, which led to the total population dropping by over half in under one in game day.
Of course, at that point, saving and reloading won’t fix the damage that has been done to that playthrough. Especially if the run is further along where night raids start to generate stronger enemies, like elite soldiers or even dragons.
And while it’s not a bug, there is also no way to accelerate time. There are in-game time options to pause, play at half speed, or play at normal speed, but I am of the opinion that any single player only strategy game like this should have the option to accelerate time, especially when much of the gameplay involves waiting on resource collection.
What compounds this issue is that trees only respawn at the start of a new day, and it is possible to have the sawmills completely clear out an area of wood during a day. This means halfway through the day, there may be nothing left to do but wait for nightfall. This causes segments that already aren’t very exciting, to drag on longer than they need to.
A Great Concept Awaiting a Fix
It’s a shame because the art style and core gameplay loop of Becastled are great. The concept is a solid one, and the way the city comes together is satisfying. It’s a shame then that it just doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. If it did, Becastled would be easy to recommend, but until those bugs are ironed out, you may be better off waiting.
Important Links
Cozy City Builder Becastled Fortifies for a Full Launch This October – https://www.thexboxhub.com/cozy-city-builder-becastled-fortifies-for-a-full-launch-this-october/
Buy Becastled on Xbox – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/becastled/9P3B6BXCJ9XN
