Open-world survival games are definitely my jam. I’ve played almost all that have made the jump to consoles, highlighted by hundreds of hours in ARK: Survival Evolved. Bellwright is looking to be the next best thing in the space, as you wander a medieval world, completing quests, rescuing outposts, building camps, and so much more.
Bellwright has been in early access on Steam for about 2 years now, and now that the game has transitioned to its standard release, it has also launched on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. The transition to console, though, has been less than glamorous.
If crafting survival games are right up your alley, Bellwright will have you hooked right away. After a really robust character creation section, you’ll be released into the world to meet your first quest givers and begin your first camp. It won’t take long for you to add a villager to your camp, and as you continue to help the local village residents with their problems, you’ll slowly build it up.
As these games go, you will slowly build up, learn new skills, get new buildings, and more. You’ll start with a torch and axe, but will soon build a mining camp, foraging camp, lumber camp, and more. As you find new materials or learn to forage new resources, more and more will be available to research. It’s not too long before you have a bow, perhaps a warhammer, better armor, and more.
All crafting survival games come with their own level of grind. You need to spend hours collecting resources to erect building A, just to do it all again for building B, C, and so on. For some, that grind is what they want; hell, it’s something I thought I wanted. Bellwright takes a different approach.
There is nothing stopping players from gathering things on their own, but over time, you will invite people to live in your camp. These new associates don’t just sit around – they work. Each new resident can be set to work, guard the camp, or accompany you on bandit raids. When they work, villagers will gather resources, help build structures, research tasks you have queued, and more.
I found that Bellwright slowly morphs from a survival game to a management experience. You’ll rely less and less on what you can get done in a single in-game day, and more on what your villagers can do for you. You will need to manage resource gathering, resource creation, guard patrols, and more. Making sure everything runs smoothly will be your number one priority. Building towards this moment was incredibly rewarding, and seeing it pay off with an ever-growing village was worth the journey.
I had a blast playing Bellwright, and put in dozens of hours over the past few weeks. Coming out of early access, the game is full of graphical problems that are going to be tough for some to overcome. There are some really weird shadow effects that I suspect are supposed to be from the clouds, but it looks really janky.
There is a lot of motion blur as well, so when you are moving throughout the world, it sometimes just doesn’t look quite right. Everything is very static, too – while you will have villagers milling about and animals going about their business, everything else feels very still; trees don’t sway, bushes and river reeds don’t move. It all feels a bit dead at times.
Moving past these graphical elements, the game’s combat is sadly woefully lackluster. It feels a bit like combat straight out of the Xbox 360 era of games like Oblivion and Kingdom of Amalur. Unfortunately, this cannot really be avoided early on, as you’ll be taking down bandit camps and fending off invasions on your own. Over time, you can direct others to do most of this for you, which keeps you from having to engage with this unfortunate mechanic too often.
Bellwright is a massive game, and although I’ve played this for well over 50 hours, I haven’t seen everything this game has to offer. What is painfully clear is that Bellwright needs a bit more time in the oven to smooth over some of these graphical issues and lackluster mechanics.
That said, there is a solid base here, and it’s doing enough things differently to warrant me coming back again and again. I’m annoyed by some of the aspects I’ve complained about in this review, but not enough to put this down for good. Even with the issues, the idea of pushing forward and seeing what lies around the next corner is just too enticing.
Ultimately, I fully expect Bellwright to get patches that, at the very least, will improve the game’s graphical issues. Whether combat gets altered or not, only time will tell. Hell, this combat might have been a design choice by the team that they love. It just didn’t work for me. Still, there is a really good system here, and my score will likely only go up with time.
No, with the launch of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S/X version of Bellwright, the game is officially out of early access.
While there is cooperative play for Bellwright on Steam, the development team is actively working to bring that feature to console. At the time of writing, Bellwright is a single-player only game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
Adam has been writing about video games since 2014 and board games since 2018. If he's not rooting for the Toronto Maple Leafs or Toronto FC, he definitely has a controller in his hand - probably playing on a Nintendo platform - or is sitting at a table playing a board game. Adam also has firm opinions on a few key topics: there are much better board games than Settlers of Catan, and Nintendo doesn't need to compete with Sony and Microsoft.
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