SteamWorld Build Is the Series’ Most Impressively Wild Experiment Yet

SteamWorld isn’t like different sequence. Where most recreation franchises take a single core concept and iterate on it over a number of installments, the creators of SteamWorld determined early on that it might be something. It’s been a tower protection title, a Metroidvania mining recreation, a 2D technique shooter, and a card battling journey – all set inside the similar universe of down-home steam-powered robots. For followers of SteamWorld, it’s at all times a delight to see what it might be subsequent – and now, with SteamWorld Build, it’s a model new tackle the metropolis constructing style. It’s a usually surprising leap.

But, clearly by no means content material with staying the similar for too lengthy, Build brings one other first for the sequence – it’s the first SteamWorld recreation to not be constructed by its creators, Thunderful Games (beforehand referred to as Image & Form). After being acquired by Thunderful, The Station have stepped in to create Build. Oh, and for good measure, in addition they made it the first SteamWorld recreation to make use of a 3D perspective, and the sequence’ first voice-acted recreation, too.

It’s a captivating subsequent step for the franchise – and I caught up with Game Director Andreas Persson, Art Director Sofie Wikström and head of the SteamWorld franchise Brjann Sigurgeirsson to debate how they despatched SteamWorld on what is likely to be its largest leap but.

“We knew The Station well,” says Sigurgeirsson of how the collaboration took place. “We knew that they were very solid studio that had done a lot of work on the LittleBigPlanet franchise. We also knew that they had been working on their own things. And then when the opportunity materialised to acquire them, we sort of jumped on it. One of the one of the first things we said was, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if you guys could pitch us something that could fit in the SteamWorld universe?’”

“Since this was our first SteamWorld game, we looked at a lot of what [Thunderful] had done previously,” continues Persson. “And what we settled on was that they are really good at taking something familiar, and then mixing it with something else and creating something unique… With that, we then saw that there is a real nice city builder that could be made in this universe by taking the city part and marrying it with mining gameplay. I would say it’s like a city builder meets Dungeon Keeper.”

It’s a novel proposition, and one Sigurgeirsson says proves the level of utilizing a brand new developer – SteamWorld is a sequence that by no means stays nonetheless, and it may possibly develop in even much less anticipated instructions by using entire new teams of builders, with contemporary views and totally different experience.

The Station had labored on concepts for a metropolis builder for a while, however SteamWorld provided them a novel alternative – to work on two layers. Above floor, you place collectively a Wild West-inflected railway city, piecing collectively housing, factories, and facilities for a rising inhabitants of Steambots. But beneath the sand and dust, the motion modifications completely, asking you to dig your personal mines to search out the sources wanted above floor, with dungeon crawling and tower protection parts thrown in. The manner these two layers hyperlink is the distinctive promoting level, forcing you to handle two kinds of recreation without delay, and at all times providing you with one thing significant to realize.

It can sound daunting, however The Station has additionally taken one other key a part of SteamWorld into consideration – the proven fact that the entire sequence acts like a smörgåsbord of recreation genres, and goals to introduce its followers to new ones in accessible methods.

“We then saw that there is a real nice city builder that could be made in this universe by taking the city part and marrying it with mining gameplay. I would say it’s like a city builder meets Dungeon Keeper.”

Andreas Persson, Game Director

“It’s something we’ve worked on from the very start of development,” says Persson, “since we knew we would get a lot of new players that were familiar with the world, but not necessarily with resource management games. So we had to think, ‘How do we communicate information and where do we put the complexity in the game?’ We deliberately decided early on to keep the city pretty streamlined. We didn’t want fires to erupt in the city and destroy everything.”

The concept is that there are calls for on the participant to construct effectively, however not main punishments should you don’t. Equally, whilst you’re mining, issues will tick alongside above floor, decreasing the must always shift ranges and micromanage. But, as Persson says, it’s not that there’s an absence of complexity:

“I remember we had some testers that didn’t realise how complex the game was until they learned everything,” Persson continues. “Because when you get to the first mine floor, there is not a ton of complexity. But as you go deeper, you learn each step, and each step builds on the previous one. So we said we want it to be ‘complex, but not complicated.’”

Another new consideration for each The Station and Thunderful was about remodeling a style greatest recognized on PC right into a console-friendly expertise. SteamWorld has at all times had a house on console, and it wouldn’t really feel proper to restrict Build.

“We’d played a few [city builder] games [on console] and we really never felt that they worked,” says Wikström. “So we knew that going forward, we would have to adapt the UI and the gameplay with console in mind.” Unlike different video games, this wasn’t a case of simply understanding button inputs – whole options have been created with a controller at the forefront. “If we came up with anything, we always had to look at it from a controller perspective… I know that there were features that turned out in specific ways because of this. Rather than, you know, trying to shoehorn everything in on the console.”

The Station put limits on themselves to verify enjoying with a controller at all times felt good – it’s been playable on console since the very first model of the recreation, and any time an replace was ready, it wanted to be examined on console earlier than it was accredited.

Again, this appears like very ‘SteamWorld’ pondering – the sequence has at all times prized being distinctive and accessible, and The Station utilized that pondering even to parts of recreation improvement that Thunderful had by no means had to consider earlier than.

And, past the recreation itself, that’s the fantastic thing about SteamWorld Build – it’s opening new doorways for this already wide-open sequence. The Station isn’t simply introducing SteamWorld followers to new concepts, and new methods of occupied with the sequence, however even Thunderful.

“I think The Station has proved that we can we can take SteamWorld in in any direction. There’s this internal joke that the next one should be a dating sim. And it’s a joke until we… make that game,” laughs Sigurgeirsson. “I think that The Station really proves that point. They’ve been brave, and very competent – they gathered enough understanding and then they just ran with it. And it’s turned out really, really great.”

SteamWorld Build involves Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One on December 1. It will likely be obtainable for Xbox Game Pass on day one.