Conceptually, "Besiege" is a game about engineering medieval siege weapons. But I see it as a metaphor for the creative process. It starts with inspiration." "Ew," you probably won't cry. "A mobile turret with seven cannons running along a manually adjustable beam would knock down a wooden airship. Genius.

With that said, you pick up your virtual hammer and, fueled by the thrill of creation, set about constructing the ridiculous death contraption. You hammer out the frame, align the wheels, attach the steering blocks, and prepare to line up the cannons. This is your masterpiece. History will remember you for this.

Then you slap your forehead. You forgot to add a pivot to adjust the vertical aim. You have corrected this, but now your car is taller than the level will allow, and you need to lower the overall height.

Finally, you exit building mode and press play. The force of the cannon will tear the machine apart, and it will crumble into a pile of debris and flames. Congratulations. You have completed your first draft. Now all that remains is to turn that smoldering mess of ideas into something that actually works.

Of course, Besiege is not the first game to do this; in games like Crazy Machines and Kerbal Space Program, players indulge their inner claypot scientist, building wildly ambitious contraptions, scratching their heads and making They scratch their heads and look at the resulting slag heap and mutter, "Maybe I should add a little more hydrazine. But whereas the Kerbal Space Program is a feast of deceptive rocket science, Besiege is more like an engineering tapas, breaking down a challenging task into small, but no less delicious, pieces.

The premise is somewhat reminiscent of Dungeon Keeper: Besiege points to a perfectly lovely fantasy realm and commands you to completely ruin it. But instead of creating a dungeon, he creates a siege weapon. The realm is divided into four separate kingdoms, each of which consists of about a dozen individual levels.

These levels are beautifully rendered dioramas of death, with subtle environmental details on a plain blue background. Each stage presents a simple objective that begins with the destruction of a house. An architectural area is depicted in front of the objective, and within the area is a single metal cube that serves as the nucleus of the contraption. [Besiege's toolkit has a lower threshold than the Kerbal Space Program and features an intuitive, LEGO-like construction system that allows the user to build the basic frame of a siege weapon in seconds. That's just as well, because Besiege's tutorial is lacking. There is some guidance on how to build a basic buggy, but that's about it, and the guide on how to build a maneuverable vehicle is actually the worst way to go about it.

Fortunately, this doesn't matter much because the best and most fun way to learn on Besiege is through failure. The different objects and materials you deal with reflect real physics. A tree may seem like a sturdy building material in theory, but dead wood bends amazingly when you build a three-story tall catapult. When my trebuchet wobbles like a drunk on a Saturday night, I quickly realize that reinforcing the structure with metal braces is a good idea. Similarly, if you are building a machine with a full load of weapons in the front, it is important to add ballast in the back.

The toolkit boasts a wide range of objects. In addition to all the weapons that can be equipped on a machine, there are ropes and winches to build a crane, propellers and wings to build a flying machine, and even tools for automation and rudimentary programming. Besiege also allows you to tinker with the parameters of these objects to a reasonable depth, adjusting the "speed" of wheels and the power of cannons, and assigning actions to individual key bindings.

While the title suggests that the focus is on destroying fortresses, the objectives faced in the campaign are far more varied than that. On one level you may have to cut down a farmer's crops, while on another you may have to steal crystals from a horde of druids. Thus, the game constantly forces you to come up with new tricks, and "Besiege" has a sense of humor, with trumpet blasts causing enemy units to jump around as if they were being moved by a giant, invisible toddler.

"Besiege" is at its best when it presents problems that can be solved in multiple ways and encourages creativity. Levels that require building specific types of machines (especially flying machines) tend to be more frustrating. On some levels, the boundaries of the fabrication space are intentionally restricted, and it is annoying to be led in a particular direction. Fortunately, you can save machines that you particularly like and load them later. This helps establish a range of blueprints that can be fine-tuned to fit the puzzle and quickly solve specific build challenges.

Some other minor issues. It would be nice if we could click and drag lengths of wood, like building a path on a planet coaster. Not only would that speed up construction, but it would also make it easier to edit the contraptions, since the size could be adjusted without having to delete and rebuild entire sections of machines. Also, the camera can become unstable, especially when lining up machines or working on the underside of machines.

Still, for a game that can be bought for $10, it's a great job. The level editor has endless creative possibilities. There is also a strong multiplayer community, with both cooperative and competitive play, essentially a medieval robot war. If this doesn't make Besiege appealing, I don't know what will. All that's missing is a Craig Charles voiceover pack.