After four years away, SteamWorld is back. If you haven’t seen the news yet, Thunderful unveiled SteamWorld Build earlier this evening, the next entry in their genre-hopping series of games about colourful robot pals trying to make their way in the world. As the name implies, this one’s a citybuilder, and I’ve been hands on with an early build of, err, Build, to tell you all about it. No, I’m not sure what’s going on with the previously announced Headhunter right now either, but in some ways, I’m glad it’s Build that’s coming out first.
After all, it’s been a hot minute since the last SteamWorld game came out, and Build is shaping up to be the perfect reintroduction to what made this series so special. It goes right back to its roots, reframing that classic SteamWorld Dig story of mining for gold and treasure with a new, management-style eye for town-planning, while also paying homage to where it all began for these jolly old rustbuckets way, way back on the Nintendo DSi. That’s right. SteamWorld Build may be a citybuilder on the surface, but down below it’s a mining and tower defence ’em up – and having lost several hours to my demo build already, it’s really something special.