I still remember the first time Besiege surfaced. Overnight, Reddit was flooded with gifs of monstrous war machines running over sheep, blasting through castles and murdering tiny soldiers. That was 2015. The game is still in Early Access and player numbers are dwindling, but a major new update could breathe life back into it.

The Multiverse update adds a full suite of multiplayer game modes as well as a level editor, so you can build arenas that you and your friends can blow apart in imaginative ways. For now you can only play with people in your friends list, and you can have up to eight people in a server at one time.

The modes are a mixture of competitive and co-op: you can take your custom contraptions into combat or race against friends to complete objectives; work together to complete scenarios and puzzles; or just mess around in a sandbox world creating as much havoc as possible.

The level editor—tutorials for which will be out soon—looks fairly intuitive, and you pick structures from a menu on the left of the screen and plonk them down, rotating if necessary. You can use the Logic Editor to change the attributes of units and the physics of your level, too. Best of all, you can create levels on the fly while your friends are playing through them. I predict shenanigans. 

Click here to read more info from developer Spiderling, and watch the video at the top of this post to see the new tools in action. It's £5.59/$7.99 on Steam, GOG and the Humble Store.

Medieval build-'em-up Besiege offers a lot of physics-based shenanigans for not very much money, letting you build vaguely Robot Wars-esque siege engines, before letting them loose on Medieval villages and fortresses. Released at the start of January 2015, it's still in early access—however, there's a big update coming that should breathe new life into the game.

The update's named, rather grandly, the Besiege Multiverse, and it will add co-operative and competitive multiplayer, a level editor, and an open sandbox you can mess around in to your heart's delight. Here's a trailer:

Excitingly, you'll be able to build levels while your friends are in there playing them. You'll also be able to fine-tune things like the physics and stats of units placed in the world.

There's no date yet for the Multiverse update, but developer Spiderling Studios hopes to have it released to the public by the third quarter of this year. It'll be free if you already own Besiege, while the price of the game will increase by $2 to accommodate the new features, when Besiege Multiverse arrives.

If you're intrigued, there's a 30% sale over on Steam until April 14. (Thanks, Destructoid.)

As the Steam store has it, "Besiege is a physics based building game in which you construct medieval siege engines and lay waste to immense fortresses and peaceful hamlets." As modder Drako sees it, Besiege is a proving ground for futuristic death machines straight out of Pacific Rim.

Somehow Drako has created a walking, bipedal, rocket-firing Gipsy Danger with functioning fingers. Its only downside? This Jaeger can't turn. But rotation is a mere detail when you can have a fleet of Shad 's V-50 Jumphawk helicopters pick it up and sweep it away to the next battlefield.

We'd constructed a list of the most impressive Besiege engines, but Gipsy Danger might just top it. Rain anachronistic devastation upon peasants yourself by getting it straight from the Steam Workshop.

Besiege, the physics based build-'em-up, has already seen some absolutely astounding works of destructive engineering. For all its impressive community output, though, the game is still early in development. After a series of minor patches, it's now set to receive its first major update—a release that its developers say isn't far off. "There are just a few more things that we d like to add, tweak and give some extra polish to which should take us a few more days," writes Spiderling Studios' 'Von' in a new dev post.

Update v0.1 will add a new island—meaning new structures, enemies and blocks. "The new island will start out with 5 levels," 'Von' wrote in an earlier teaser, "more will be added as time goes on, and offer new challenges to the player."

What the update won't do is update the engine to Unity 5. "There are still bugs that are preventing us from completing the port from Unity 4," 'Von' writes.

With the update still a few days off, the studio has released a couple of new screenshots. It's no coincidence that they're the images found above and below these words.

For more on Besiege, check out Andy's gallery of amazing creations.

Besiege is a game about building medieval siege weapons then destroying things with them. Even at this early alpha stage it s a madly addictive physics sandbox with a powerful editor. The community has been coming up with some incredible, mind-blowing stuff, and I ve had as much fun watching videos and gifs of their creations as I have playing the game myself. Here are some of my favourites.

P.S. I m pretty sure these are all attributed to the right people, but if I ve credited your creation to someone who just reposted it, let me know and I ll fix it.

Rapid-fire catapult by SD78

Balls of Steel by MoonHeadJohn

Deathcopter by AetasAaM

The Airbase by AnduinX BYM

Mech Truck Thing by Muki123

Sea Turtle by Ray Yu

Reloadable Ballista by Lonju

The Humpener by Captain Buk

Flying Aircraft Carrier by Zynek

Machine Gun by Tommy Coley

Chaos Tank by Christian Hummeluhr

Drone Launcher by Urassassin1986

Fireball Shotgun Tank by A. Smith

Drift Racer by SpecialistJim

Firestorm by AnduinX BYM

The Cube 2 by GHandPivot

Sniper Mk I by Drifter

The Batting Cage by Mark McQuillan

Tiltrotor Aircraft by Kyle Forche

Perpetual Motion Machine by Athos Pimenta

Rhino Walker by Mark Daming

Death Hugs by Therabidsmurf

Thwomp by Gas Bandit

Monorail by Tyler Westerfield

Constructo Car 2 by David Mcl

Right Hook by Tommy Coley

I spent some time recently playing Besiege, an Early Access game in which you blow up castles, massacre tiny soldiers, smoosh sheep, and accomplish other objectives with siege engines you build yourself. Snap together parts and pieces, add wheels, wings, and weapons, and wreak havoc in an enjoyable and attractive construction-slash-destruction sandbox. Screenshots didn't feel like they would do the fun physics justice, so have a look at the video to see the game in action.

Besiege is in Early Access and can be purchased DRM free from Humble or DRM-laden from Steam. Here's the official site's store page.