Steamworld Build

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

For over a decade, the Steamworld series has been surprisingly consistent in its quality, despite bouncing between various disparate genres that all play wildly different. While its 2010 beginnings with Steamworld Tower Defense on Nintendo DSi’s DSiWare service were competent but largely unspectacular, the series has moved on to produce success after success with subsequent games Steamworld Dig, Steamworld Heist, and Steamworld Quest, with the only direct sequel in the series thus far being Steamworld Dig 2. In Steamworld Build, released in 2023 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, the franchise aims for yet another genre it hasn’t tapped yet – Management Simulation games.

All above games technically exist within the same universe (I think), featuring what appears to be a post-human society peopled entirely by clunky, mostly-humanoid, presumably steam-powered robots. However, Steamworld Build seems closest in its theming to the Dig games, with the game mirroring those earlier titles’ vaguely old-timey “Wild West” themes, complete with covered wagons, saloons, prospectors, and other standard trappings of that setting.

The presentation here combines animated (in the “paper doll” style) 2D art of the characters, with the gameplay itself being in 3D, with some good detail. I did see a bit of slowdown at points, but nothing that was particularly upsetting, and given how much can be going on onscreen the performance on Nintendo Switch seemed more than adequate to me. This is all backed by a fairly relaxed soundtrack with hints of Western-inspired themes, something that works well for the game.

Players control the placement of buildings, roads, and other facilities, while at the same time managing a large-scale mining project underground. This makes for one of Steamworld Build’s more unique qualities, as both above-ground and below-ground feature gameplay that fits neatly within Management Simulation territory, with both parts of the game dependent on each other, but the gameplay in both sections is somewhat different.

Above ground, you’ll be focused on ensuring your building placements have proximity to other buildings they depend on, via an interconnected network of roads you’ll build. Workers’ homes need to be within a reasonable distance of a general store and a repair shop, while engineers need to be close to both of the above as well as a saloon, and then there are resources that don’t require proximity, but still need to be produced, such as cactus water made by farms.

Meanwhile, underground you’ll be gradually exploring outward as you dig through the area around you, expanding your miners’ living quarters while also being sure to shore up areas with weak ceilings to avoid a cave-in. As you progress through the game, you’ll become more occupied with ensuring your workers have the fastest and most efficient path back from the resources they’re mining to the mine’s entrance, to make your rate of extraction of those resources as effective as possible.

In both cases, one element here reigns supreme, even more so than other games in this genre – supply chain. Virtually every structure you build in the game requires other structures, and those structures require their structures, and so on. This can get… a little involved.

To build an engineer’s home, for example, you need to start by building a standard worker’s home. The worker’s home needs to be connected to the train station via a road, and as mentioned before, must also be near a general store and a repair shop. You’ll also need the aforementioned farms producing cactus water, and these must not only be connected by roads, but also adjacent to a field and within range of a wearehouse to store goods. Buildings cost money, but they also cost resources, with most buildings requiring lumber, which needs a forester (placed near trees and connected to your road network), preferably near a lumbermill (also connected via your roa… look, just assume everything above-ground needs to be connected to roads, okay?). Your engineer will also want coal, which requires a coal plant, also within range of the forester.

As time goes on, your population will demand increasingly more varied resources. Before long, your workers will want to eat hamburgers, which requires a hamburger restaurant, which requires a ranch, which requires a pasture… oh, and you need more coal to cook the meat, which means building more foresters and lumbermills, because if you don’t continue upscaling everything you’ll run out of resources at some point down your supply chain. What’s more, if building an Engineer’s house means building a new forester, sawmill, coal plant, general store, repair shop, farm, warehouse, rancher, restaurant, and then even more stuff as the game progresses… and many of those things require workers to operate, this means that you’ll be building even more workers’ homes just to keep it all running… which can trigger the whole cycle all over again.

It’s… a lot to keep track of.

Know that the game thankfully doesn’t toss you in the deep end right at the start – its tutorial slowly introduces new elements and the new requirements those elements have. And the game does thankfully use icons for each resource so you can identify what you need at any given time. However, these icons can often be a tad on the small side and it may be difficult to make them out, at least until you get used to what everything needs. And while it can certainly feel like juggling a dozen things at once just to get one thing done, that’s not to say it’s not satisfying. However, it’s absolutely not going to be a game for everyone, even for fans of the genre.

I hope I’m not giving off the wrong impression here – I like Steamworld Build. The theming and presentation are great, and the Management Simulation gameplay is enjoyable. However, you have to work for that joy, and know that any small change you want to make may very well require dozens of other changes. Players who freak out at being overloaded with things they need to do may find this isn’t the game for them. But detail-oriented fans of Management Simulations who think they’ll enjoy creating something where all of the pieces are independent on one another in an intricate web of supply and demand, this may well be the perfect game for you.

tl;dr – Steamworld Build takes the long-running franchise to yet another new genre – Management Sims. This game has you building up a mining town peopled by anthropomorphic steam-powered robots, while also managing the mining operation underground. Both above- and below-ground feature different takes on Management Sim gameplay, and both are quite good. However, Steamworld Build’s heavy reliance on everything being connected via a complex resource chain makes performing even simple tasks complicated, and while the result is still enjoyable, it’s detail-oriented in a way that not everyone will appreciate.

Grade: B-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2023 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Most Disappointing

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