Hands on with SteamWorld Build - Preview
When SteamWorld Dig came out, many moons ago, I found the game to be charming and fun to play, it is one of my most played titled on the 3DS. When the next game in the series, SteamWorld Heist was announced, I found myself asking, where was my Dig 2. While Heist was great fun, SteamWorld Dig 2 wasn’t far behind and that was everything I wanted from the series. But then rather that develop SteamWorld Dig 3, the studio threw their cards in the air and said that nope, the next game would be a card based title. The reason why I am saying all that, is because it proves that SteamWorld, as a foundation is very flexible, which leads us to SteamWorld Build, the newly announced game for the series.
SteamWorld Build is part city builder, part mine explorer and then a touch of the old SteamWorld Tower Defense from the DSi. It doesn’t require you to have any understanding of the past games either, in fact apart from Dig 2, none of the do, which also helps with its accessibility. This new game is set before the ending events of Dig 2, with the planet shaking away and Jack Clutchsprocket has the idea to save his granddaughter Astrid, take off to the stars. Helping them is Core, a mysterious sphere that might not be as well intentioned as they say, but that is something for another time. The general goal is the stars, the how requires resources and access to a buried piece of technology, which is where the mine comes in. In order to access the mine though, you need resources and for that you need bots, so that is where the city building comes in.
The core cycle is placing down items like residential dwellings and shops, in order to recruit more bots and make them happy. Once you have those down, you can place lumber yards and mills, in order to get planks of wood, in order to expand the town. From there you need to start to manage the resources, of which your bots are one of, ensuring that you have all the needs met. The game, at least the demo, didn’t waste any time, with the level of juggling amping up pretty quickly. What made it interesting though is that each of the elements is not to hard to get, as long as you have the space for it. In many city builder based games, some resources are attached to locations, here that does happen with the trees, but it isn’t the same with you needing to access one singular square. When you need water, which is extracted from cactuses, you can just build a farm and then plant fields of them around you. It is a nice touch that removes some of the more complex nature of resources based games.
Once you have a decent sized town and all the resources that you can generate on the surface, it is time to repair the mine shaft and venture beneath the surface. This is where the second part of the game comes into play as there are two main aspects, the mining and more building. Mining is pretty straight forward, you tell the bots where to go and if they have the right tools, they will just dig away at the walls you point them towards. In order to have miners though, you need to build them places to sleep, or at least recharge and like above ground, each location or machinery that you build requires resources. Some of them like the gold nuggets you can find are easy to get, others take time and deciding on what to build and where is more important below ground. The reason for that is that the planet is literally shaking apart and as you start to dig out more, you are risking a mine collapse, so you have to build supports. The basic cycle here is expand the mine, build supports, build structures or machinery as needed, then repeat.
Where the challenge for all the above comes in though, is that you have to constantly manage both locations at once. This isn’t a game where things pause when you no longer see them, so if you are focused on the above ground, events will still happen below. There was an instance where I was waiting for some tools to be obtained, so I could upgrade my workers to engineers and found myself just watching the bots move around. It was charming and wonderful to see, however with my attention focused on them, I forgot about the below ground and got a notice telling me of a potential mine collapse, because I hadn’t placed down more supports after my mining team dug out what I told them too. This balancing act is not going to be for everyone, so it would not surprise me to see the developers add in a mode that lets one side pause when you are not looking at it. For those who like the challenge, maintaining your bots, buildings and resources, both above and below ground, will really test your management skills.
Of course, this was just a small sample of the full experience and I have not even dived into the story elements that play out, the resource management screen and the countless expansion options. So far, like the other entries in the SteamWorld series, I find myself drawn to the world they are presenting, but it is the games mechanics that keep me wanting to play it some more. There is still a fair amount of waiting ahead for the game, but so far, this is a title I can’t wait to dig into some more.
As of now the game is only dated for 2023, but when it does release it will come to PC, Switch, Xbox and PlayStation.
