SteamWorld Build (PC) Review

The SteamWorld series has been around for some time now, with the first title coming out back in 2010 and exclusively on the DSi.  Since then, every handful of years there has been another entry in the series, ranging from Tower Defense to action/mining.  The newest title changes things once again by being a mix of City Skylines and Dungeon Keeper.  With all previous games being a solid entry in the genre they attempted, the only real question for this title is where it will rank in the five other games in the series.

The core game loop consists of building the town around an old and abandoned mine.  The better the town, the more towns people and workers you acquire.  That means more workers that can be sent to the mines, which means more and more tech can be found to improve the town.  It is a pretty addictive loop as improvement in any of the games areas leads to the option to improve others. 

The town aspect of the game features the player creating housing for the residents, and then slowly expanding that out to needs and entertainment.  The player is slowly led up a tech tree that involves unlocking more types of towns people who require ever increasing and complicated requests.  From the easiest being satisfied with a bed and access to food, to the more complicated that want some form of education and access to alcohol. 

The mine aspect increases in complexity the longer it is play, introducing different kinds of workers that can be produced and different weapons that can be unlocked.  From basic miners who collect material to improve both the town and the mine; to bots who go out to repair anything a wandering enemy may have broken.  Each map has a mine, and every mine has several floors.  A floor is “beaten” when the entrance to the next level is found, although most of the levels have enemy pits that will continue to spawn creatures to attack the player base.  This means that most levels will require the play to jump back to them to perform some level of maintenance every now and them.

There are only two main issues with the game, the length and that most of the maps are smaller than you would want.  The first can be easily explained by the second, as by the end of exploring the mines and preparing to complete the game the town has been built out to the very edges of the map and will need to be restructured in many places.  The mine itself is incredibly satisfying.  Not many games have elements of base building and creating new tunnels like the Dungeon Keeper or Dwarf Fortress franchise.  It is rewarding to see that, but also disappointing that all levels can be cleared out in a short couple of hours.  An endless mine would be wonderful, along with a much larger town map.

SteamWorld Build is a wonderful game.  The main issue is that it is so good it is difficult to stop playing it for long enough to talk about the title.  The title is entirely worth the asking price of 30 dollars, but is entirely free if you subscribe to Microsoft Gamepass.  This is also one of the better titles in the series, as it mixes two genres that just are combined that much anymore.  For anyone who likes the previous titles, city building, or strategy games this is a title you don’t want to sleep on.