Have to Know
What’s it? A metropolis builder with Dungeon Keeper-like layers, set in a world of steampunk robots.
Launch date December 1, 2023
Count on to pay TBC
Developer The Station
Writer Thunderful Publishing
Reviewed on Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Playable
Hyperlink Official website
For a decade now, the SteamWorld video games have been carving out their very own beautiful little area of interest, bringing appeal, accessibility, and a brisk tempo to a number of completely different genres. They’ve not put a foot improper but, however this newest entry is a threat—it is the primary SteamWorld sport not developed by authentic creators Picture & Kind, with The Station taking the reins as a substitute. Does it reside as much as its predecessors? Nicely… not fairly, however that does not imply its mash-up of metropolis constructing and Dungeon Keeper-like underground excavation is not nonetheless a really nice technique to spend a weekend.
A mild introduction sees you increase a frontier city of steampunk robots by plonking down charming, chunky little buildings and connecting them up with roads. It is a intentionally easy tackle city-building—much like the Anno sequence or The Settlers, there is a huge deal with creating provide chains that refine assets into different assets (and doubtlessly then refine them additional into but extra assets) to gas your growth.
Homes generate employees, wanted to run varied different buildings. Meet your employees’ wants by constructing mandatory companies close by—resembling a water supply and a normal retailer—and so they’ll multiply, maximising every home’s output. As you hit “milestones” of inhabitants, new wants are revealed; preserve assembly these new wants and shortly sufficient it turns into attainable to improve absolutely blissful employees into engineers, who allow all kinds of recent buildings to be positioned. However engineers require their very own distinctive companies to make them blissful, so immediately you have to match all these in too. When you do, you can improve them into an much more needy type, and so forth.
SteamWorld Construct is consistently unfurling new layers like this, and it is a actually intelligent method to the style. Not solely does it imply new complexities are solely added as soon as you have absolutely gotten a grip on what’s already in entrance of you, but it surely additionally offers what is usually a stuffy model of sport an important sense of discovery and shock. However its most spectacular reveals occur underground.
As soon as your city is up and working, you are in a position to begin mining, switching to a brand new underground map with its personal completely completely different gameplay. Down right here is the place you discover the Dungeon Keeper influences. You are marking out blocks of rock in your miners to dig by, to excavate out house and collect assets. In these newly fashioned caves, you place not buildings however room tiles, marking out completely different zones for various features and slowly increasing them as you dig out your environment additional and additional.
Although it runs on completely different guidelines, this underground layer is symbiotic along with your overground settlement—every gathers assets the opposite wants, and also you’re in a position to hop seamlessly between the 2 as you try to maintain them in steadiness. It is a beautiful technique to inject extra selection into a comparatively easy sport, and at any time when issues get sluggish on one layer—for instance, when money runs low in your city and it’s essential to wait earlier than you may construct something new—it is the proper time to change over to the opposite and do one thing completely completely different.
Maintain constructing and digging, and earlier than too lengthy deeper underground ranges are revealed—every their very own map, all working concurrently. In these deeper realms, your presence is not welcome. Monsters roam and resist your growth, and periodically swarm you in waves, including a brand new layer of tower defence to the sport.
Time is cash
The precise distinction between a well-run mine and a disastrous one is simply how lengthy it takes to supply the assets you want.
By the later phases of SteamWorld Construct there’s loads to maintain observe of, but it surely’s by no means a busy sport. Nothing can actually go that badly improper. Manufacturing in your city could be stifled if it is mismanaged, but it surely’s not going to break down, and even monster assaults under floor largely simply go away constructions and robots damaged and in want of restore fairly than destroying them. There is no risk of a sport over looming; you by no means even really want to rebuild after a disaster, as a substitute simply ready a couple of minutes for order to robotically reassert itself.
On the one hand, that is a sensible transfer in a sport that wishes you to be shifting between completely different maps—if you happen to have been worrying about your mines each time you went to rearrange your residential district, you’d by no means be capable of focus. The plain flipside of that’s there’s little or no stress on you to play properly, and after a sure level it turns into clear that point is the one factor at stake. The precise distinction between a well-run mine and a disastrous one is simply how lengthy it takes to supply the assets you want, and it may be arduous to shake the thought that as a substitute of spending 5 minutes tweaking your digger’s path to the ore veins, you would simply watch humorous movies in your cellphone for 15 and find yourself with simply as a lot steel.
Like most metropolis builders, it is in the end a sport about attempting to make your little engine of a settlement as environment friendly as attainable—however with no actual obstacles in your approach or different factions to compete towards, that quest for effectivity simply exists for its personal sake. That is not a dealbreaker—in the end it’s inherently extra satisfying to make +30 instruments a minute than +5—but it surely does go away the sport someplace a bit on the improper facet of sedate.
You are not left with that feeling for too lengthy, no less than, as a result of the whole expertise of SteamWorld Construct is definitely very quick. An entire run of the story—a reasonably skinny story of constructing a large rocket to flee the planet—solely takes about 5 hours, and although you are inspired to replay it on completely different maps to unlock new and highly effective constructing sorts, there’s not likely sufficient that modifications run to run to make {that a} tempting supply.
I truly discovered that quick run time refreshing—it is uncommon to have the ability to simply sit down with a metropolis builder, see all of the enjoyable stuff it has to supply, and get a satisfying conclusion in a weekend. There’s a great deal of enjoyable stuff crammed into that point, and in contrast to some examples of the style it would not really feel padded out or repetitive.
However I can see that there could also be a mismatch of expectations there—individuals come to metropolis builders able to lose dozens and even lots of of hours, whether or not constructing their excellent metropolis in an unlimited sandbox or enjoying by a multi-scenario marketing campaign. SteamWorld Construct merely would not supply that, and style veterans are more likely to be upset by the scale of the providing right here.
It might be an important first dip into the style for a newcomer, particularly a youthful gamer.
For those who take it for what it’s, SteamWorld Construct is a captivating and really chill technique to get a fast metropolis builder repair with sufficient attention-grabbing twists to face out. It might be an important first dip into the style for a newcomer, particularly a youthful gamer—somebody who’ll actually profit from how accessible and forgiving the sport is. But it surely does really feel very slight in a style stuffed with heavier hitters, and there is no cause this idea could not have been expanded additional right into a extra substantial expertise.
Although, as I say, accessibility and brevity are each hallmarks of the SteamWorld video games, Construct would not match as neatly into the present sequence because it might both. Its central style mash-up idea is a good one, but it surely would not really feel as modern and gleefully experimental as Picture & Kind’s entries. Neither can it fairly match their persona. Although the little animations of your bots working round and producing oddities like glowing oil wine and cactus water are pleasing, the story and characters really feel like an afterthought, and your view excessive above the motion makes you are feeling indifferent from their unusual steampunk world. Although it is very nice and in some methods fairly intelligent, Construct is the primary SteamWorld sport that I can not give an unreserved advice.
