The (Actual) First Build Engine Game
So a lot of people may think that the first Build Engine games were from Capstone (the Pinnacle. The abso-LUTE Pinnacle) with their... games TekWar and Witchaven.
Well as it turns out, there was a game that came out one year earlier called: Rock'n Shaolin - The Legend of the Seven Paladins. There are plenty of screenshots of it (the below are just ones I grabbed off Google's first page), and boy is it. Something.
It was developed illegally by Accend Inc. who tried to get the rights to license the Build Engine from Apogee, but when that fell through they just... used it anyway; specifically an earlier somewhat unfinished version of the engine.
Yes this game uses a less complete and more buggy version of the engine that brought you TekWar. And from what gameplay I've seen it shows. Despite this, there are some surprising things like a functional train (it's a Build Engine game, who am I kidding that that's in any way surprising) and a character select system which lets you select one of 7 different characters, though how unique they are I can't say. The game was apparently based very loosely off the novel Seven Heroes and Five Gallants, hence the 7 characters.
I find conflicting arguments on if the game was even actually released or if just the demo was - though it seems a full version with 32 levels was released, but only in Taiwan and South Korea.
The version of the game that came out in South Korea is the more updated version - it was further developed/adapated by a company known as TWIM. This version goes under the name Euijeok: Im Kkeokjeong and was adapted to be based off a Korean historical setting and added an 8th character - if there are any other non-cosmetic changes beyond that I couldn't tell ya.
The game "runs" in DOSBox but most people agree it is very buggy and the cycles run so fast you'll be dead in a heartbeat. The most reliable way to play it is via BuildGDX, (though it has some of the bugs removed for those who want the pure... "experience".)
