Review: SteamWorld Build

destructoid.com:

I’m not terribly familiar with the Steamworld games, including SteamWorld Dig and SteamWorld Heist. I tried a bit of Dig, and it didn’t click with me. However, I am very familiar with city builders, so the latest game, SteamWorld Build, still got me excited.

This entry is done by a different developer The Station, whose previous work was also called The Station. So, SteamWorld Build is a bit of a departure for both the developer and for the series as a whole. 

SteamWorld Build (PC [Review], Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S)
Developer: The Station
Publisher: Thunderful Publishing
Released: December 1, 2023
MSRP: $29.99

The world is ending, so some of the surviving robots are following the instruction of a disembodied robot eye and digging into the ground to try and find rocket parts so they can leave. Rather than do it themselves, however, they’re building a settlement directly over the abandoned mine so they can attract other robots that they can send to their deaths in the cold, unfeeling earth.

SteamWorld Build feels closest to the survival city-builder genre to me, but only in terms of controls and the management of resources. There really is no survival here. There’s no real fail state, and even if you suck really badly at things, you will probably always be making progress. Really, SteamWorld Build has its own flavor, which works both in its favor and against it.

Beneath that, there’s also a mining and exploration game where you direct your robots to dig through blocks of earth to try and find resources and other objectives. Dungeon Keeper kept coming to mind as I played it, and there’s maybe a splash of that in here in the sense that you hollow out areas and can build rooms. Some of the blocks you order your