I’ve found myself increasingly drawn to city-builder games of late. I think it’s the cold and wet weather outside, pushing me towards longer, slower experiences. I dabbled with the Farthest Frontier in early access, and I’m very much looking forward to Manor Lords and Frostpunk 2 launching next year. I had to uninstall Cities: Skylines though, otherwise I’d never get anything done. I am, therefore, struggling to work out exactly why I bounced off SteamWorld Build in quite the way I did.

SteamWorld Build is a hybrid city-builder/tower defence game. You construct and maintain a Wild West-themed frontier town on the planet’s surface, inhabited by steam-powered robots. Meanwhile you’re digging mines below to obtain resources, but these need defending from the threats they contain. The mines are also needed to find and secure parts to a rocket ship your steambots need to build, but more on that shortly.

Your robot frontier folk are led out into the desert by a GLaDOS-like, spherical computer called Core, who is so transparently sinister it’s a wonder that the bots didn’t immediately drop it down the nearest mineshaft. Instead, they follow its guidance and start mining for long-buried technology which will allow them to leave the planet and head out into the stars. As such, it’s up to you to manage the co-dependent town and mines, ensuring residents are happy and the mines continue to operate.

It’s this axis which the game evolves around; unlocking technology is based around having enough of certain classes of residents, and you won’t be able to access lower levels of the mine without certain tech. The class of resident can only be obtained by upgrading the homes of more lowly residents who have all their needs met. While the town has its own economy, certain resources required for upgrades can only be gathered by mining. You need to keep that cycle running, as if it stops, then so does your progress.

Now, it has to be said that I’ve not played any of the earlier games in the genre-hopping SteamWorld series. As such, I wasn’t really clear on why the robot cowboys were just blindly going along with Core’s increasingly insistent demands to dig deeper, especially as doing so was accompanied by odd messages regarding some sort of past disaster. Why were we all so intent on building a rocket in the first place? It wasn’t until the final cut-scene in which the whole planet explodes that I really understood the imperative. There was mention of “escape” and “safety” in the introduction, but I would’ve preferred something a bit more explicit regarding the imminent planetary Armageddon. [Ed’s note: the end of SteamWorld Dig 2 provides a bit of context to all this planetary destruction…]

I think it’s this conflict between mechanics and story that caused me to struggle to find a place in my heart for SteamWorld Build. It’s not a case of ludonarrative dissonance, per se, although the idea of working to build up a sustainable community for the sole purpose of ditching it as soon as possible does grate somewhat. It’s more a question of intent. When I play city-builder games, it’s with the aim of building and developing a living system which I improve over time. Almost a balancing act – add new things without breaking what’s come before.

Adding a storyline to that experience shifts the focus. Where usually imperfections in the system become a problem to be designed out, here they felt like hurdles – inconveniences in the way of the plot. Even here, where the story is relatively lightweight. I think I might have enjoyed it more if the story elements weren’t included, and I was just asked to build a western-themed robot city because, well, they’ve got to live somewhere right? Instead, I found myself impatiently waiting for resources to tick up to the required number.

To be clear, SteamWorld Build is by no means a bad game. It’s perfectly well made. There’s a lot of charm to the design of the buildings and the visuals in general. It’s technically solid and everything here works exactly as expected. I just didn’t vibe with it. I found myself getting annoyed at having to move buildings around to make space for new ones as they get unlocked. I was aggravated by the inability to sell all the gold I mined for much needed cash. The tower defence aspects of the mines felt overly straightforward.

I almost feel bad. But then what is a review if not one person’s opinion, and I’d be doing a disservice if what I write is anything other than what I feel. I’m sure if SteamWorld Build sound like your bag, then you’ll probably have a great time with it. However, I’ll have to put this in the “not for me” pile.

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SteamWorld Build was developed by The Station and published by Thunderful, and it’s available on PC PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Switch. We played the PC version.

Disclosure statement: review code for SteamWorld Build was provided by Thunderful. A Most Agreeable Pastime operates as an independent site, and all opinions expressed are those of the author.

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