SteamWorld Build Preview – You’ve got to dig down to build up

thesixthaxis.com:

Is there a genre that the SteamWorld series can’t turn its hand to? Since its breakout platformer SteamWorld Dig, it’s morphed into a side-scrolling XCOM-like, dealt out an RPG deck-builder and now it’s getting its construction tools out for SteamWorld Build: a city-builder with a twist.

SteamWorld Build is the first game in the series from someone other than series creators Image & Form, though it absolutely fits in with the familiar tone and style. The game opens with a quirky cutscene as Jack Clutchsprocket and his daughter-bot Astrid gaze upon the stars, dreaming of a way to escape their dying planet and find a new home. That’s when a clearly evil AI ball pipes up from a nearby cart, instructing them to dig down and unearth the ancient technology that will facilitate this interstellar objective.

This narrative conceit lends itself very nicely to a game that is a city-builder on the one hand and a mining game on the other. You start your first mission on the surface, building up around an abandoned train station. It’s a nice and light experience, quickly placing housing for an ever-growing workforce and setting up a warehouse, forestry and lumber mill to produce the wood they will need.

Growth from here is gradual as you worth through a series of milestones. Repairing the train station, for example, allows for trading and acquiring building improvements. The charcoal kiln is followed by cactus farms, sand sifting and glass-blowing to pipe moonshine through to saloons. That then allows you to turn worker housing into engineer housing – so long as you can fulfil all of their building and supply requirements to keep them happy. This is where the game really starts to open up the options for industry. Next step?