SteamWorld Build review

pcgamer.com:

What is it? A city builder with Dungeon Keeper-like layers, set in a world of steampunk robots.
Release date December 1, 2023
Expect to pay TBC
Developer The Station
Publisher Thunderful Publishing
Reviewed on Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Playable
Link Official site

For a decade now, the SteamWorld games have been carving out their own lovely little niche, bringing charm, accessibility, and a brisk pace to a selection of different genres. They've not put a foot wrong yet, but this latest entry is a risk—it's the first SteamWorld game not developed by original creators Image & Form, with The Station taking the reins instead. Does it live up to its predecessors? Well… not quite, but that doesn't mean its mash-up of city building and Dungeon Keeper-like underground excavation isn't still a very pleasant way to spend a weekend. 

A gentle introduction sees you building up a frontier town of steampunk robots by plonking down charming, chunky little buildings and connecting them up with roads. It's a deliberately straightforward take on city-building—similar to the Anno series or The Settlers, there's a big focus on creating supply chains that refine resources into other resources (and potentially then refine them further into yet more resources) to fuel your expansion.

Houses generate workers, needed to run various other buildings. Meet your workers' needs by building necessary services nearby—such as a water source and a general store—and they'll multiply, maximising each house's output. As you hit «milestones» of population, new needs are revealed; keep meeting those new needs and soon enough it becomes possible to upgrade fully happy workers into engineers, who enable all sorts of new