The next game in the SteamWorld series is another radical departure from what came before: a frontier city-builder-called SteamWorld Build. You’ll make a bustling wild west city above ground, while mining and dealing with monsters who lurk just below the surface. SteamWorld Build is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Nintendo Switch in 2023, and a demo is available on Steam now.
As the mastermind of a SteamWorld mining town, you’ll create housing and provide food for your citizens and make sure they stay entertained. Meanwhile, you’ll need to venture underground to explore an old abandoned mine, in search of ancient technology that could save your fledgling community from certain doom. Gather ores and other resources from below ground, and use them to build up your town on the surface–with the ultimate goal of getting off-planet entirely.
Publisher Thunderful notes that the game was built on PC and consoles simultaneously to make sure that it all works as well with a mouse and keyboard as it does with a controller. You can also pick from three difficulty levels to make it inviting to sim-builder newbies as well as veterans.
Thunderful announced the game as part of its first SteamWorld Telegraph presentation. SteamWorld franchise director Brjánn Sigurgeirsson said another Telegraph presentation will be coming later this year with more SteamWorld news on at least some of the other three SteamWorld games that are currently in development. Sigurgeirsson is overseeing the production of SteamWorld Build, and the game is coming from The Station, a Thunderful-owned studio that has previously produced art and assets for various LittleBigPlanet games.
“Having the opportunity to work on an award-winning franchise that’s loved by fans was a real honor for us,” said The Station producer Adam Vassee. “We’ve put a lot of effort into making sure the game retains the charming character of previous entries, but we’re also lucky in that the SteamWorld series is all about trying new things. That’s been liberating in allowing us to put our own twist on SteamWorld and the city builder genre to craft an intuitive Anno meets Dungeon Keeper style system that we think is unlike anything else out there.”
In addition to the demo on Steam, the publisher is holding a SteamWorld sale on Steam so you can catch up with past games. The SteamWorld series is known for being eclectic, from action-platformers to strategy to a full-fledged RPG called SteamWorld Quest. SteamWorld Dig is the most celebrated of the series, and the only one to receive a sequel, SteamWorld Dig 2, in 2017.
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