SteamWorld Build review

Topside city building and subterranean mining work well together- at least in the short term.

Delve into SteamWorld Build, and you’ll immediately find some welcome enhancements to its interpretation of civil engineering. Sure, the simulation isn’t as sophisticated as Anno 1800 or Cities Skylines– but that works to the game’s advantage. Habitually, the genre expects the use of mouse-and-keyboard controls, as you designate where housing developments and streets should go.

But Build is far more flexible than its peers, employing a controller-based input method that’s almost as fast and intuitive as a traditional point-and-click interface. The stacked menus at the bottom of the screen, an info ribbon on the top of the screen, and contextual commands are both cleverly constructed. A single button press shifts between construction and management duties, allowing you to develop whatever kinds of buildings your little robo-citizens need. Once you kick off a campaign in one of the game’s five tragically homogenous milieus, constructing housing, roads, and structures to meet basic needs is all stress-free. Best of all, you can pick up and move buildings instead of having to demolish and rebuild.

Assembling a Well-Oiled Machine

At least some of the comfort stems from SteamWorld Build’s lenient tutorial, that goads you along but still gives enough freedom for light experimentation. And like any respectable city builder, shrewd management brings growth, which is measured by Build’s Milestones. Accomplish these and you’ll spur additional innovation and development, with your workers developing vocations, as some of your general laborers become engineers or scientists.

Expectedly, each new occupational advancement brings its own new set of needs, keeping you quite busy. But city leadership never feels frantic, providing SteamWorld Build with a vibe as laid back as its twang-accented soundtrack. Gratifyingly, getting your economy to produce a profit isn’t hard. And success has its rewards, with a train rolling into town offering to export your resources. Expectedly, you can also use your cash reserves to purchase resources, to prohibit you from facing an economic standstill.

Journey to the Underground

Before long you’ll cultivate enough engineers to repair a dilapidated mineshaft that sends Build back to the subterranean depths of SteamWorld Dig. It’s here that the game reveals its most interesting characteristic, inverting many of the elements of the city builder. Once you move below ground, it’s no longer about placing objects on a vacant playfield. Now, you’ll be excavating through the game’s procedurally-generated terrain. But like topside, you’ll gradually evolve your little foxhole into a vast underground facility. And you’ll desperately need to do that since Build’s world is steadily collapsing. Your only hope for survival is gathering enough spaceship parts to blast off the withering planet.

As you push deeper, you’ll encounter some opposition, from unbreakable rock, cave-ins, and even antagonists that threaten the safety of your miners. It’s here that some light real-time strategy and tower defense elements inject urgency, while also referencing the gameplay of the inaugural SteamWorld entry. To counter physical opposition, you’ll have to cultivate guards and construct turrets to protect your workers. And by this time, there will be an urgent need to keep your underground facilities secure, since your below-ground facilities now feed into your topside economy.

Conclusion

The first time that you help nurture a self-sustaining, multilevel microcosm of robo-workers, it’s a true delight. Naturally, you be rewarded for your managerial efforts, unlocking a new building that will make any subsequent campaigns a bit faster. But even with a new efficiency, variety is lacking across subsequent excavations. As such, SteamWorld Build offers a solid six-to-eight hours of enjoyment, with additional playthroughs on different maps progressively becoming a chore.

SteamWorld Build’s initial playthrough is engaging, allowing you to construct an interconnected town and an underground quarry. Players who prefer portable consoles such as the Steam Deck or ROG Ally will appreciate the game’s controller-based input method. But when it comes to longevity, the game stumbles, offering scant motivation to revisit your managerial duties. As such, you might want to wait for a sale before diving into Build. Those with an aversion to sketchy privacy practices buried within the terms and conditions will want to excavate the agreement before descending.

SteamWorld Build was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher