Thunderful and The Station have announced that SteamWorld Build will release on Nintendo Switch “later in 2023.”
Promising to take a well-known genre and give it a unique twist, you play as the architect of a SteamWorld mining town and must break ground and raise houses for your steambot citizens.
Challenged to construct a thriving town above ground while mining resources and dealing with the monsters that lurk below it, you will need to keep your loyal citizens fed while providing “some rootin’-tootin’ entertainment.”
With the abandoned mine rumoured to be filled with ancient tech that holds the key to escaping impending doom, the natural resources that you recover above ground and the abundant ores buried below it can be used to expand your town. Digging ever deeper, you will ultimately discover what you need to help the town leave the planet.
The developer has simultaneously created the game on PC and console to make sure that its design, user experience and user interface “work just as well with a controller in hand, as they do with [a] mouse and keyboard.” Their hope is that their approach has resulted in a game that caters to both experienced players and those who are new to the city builder genre.
“When The Station joined Thunderful in 2020 and told us that they wanted to make a city builder, we thought it offered a great opportunity for SteamWorld and Thunderful to move into another new genre,” explains SteamWorld universe and franchise director Brjánn Sigurgeirsson. “They know what it means to work on big IPs thanks to their experience developing for LittleBigPlanet, including crossovers with God of War, Dark Souls and many more. After losing plenty of hours getting sucked into the amazing gameplay loop they’ve created between overground city-building and underground mining, I can tell you that I’m really proud of what they’ve managed to do within the SteamWorld universe.”
The Station producer Adam Vassee adds: “Having the opportunity to work on an award-winning franchise that’s loved by fans was a real honour for us. 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.”
The publisher has outlined the game’s key features as below:
- Set in the multi-award-winning SteamWorld Universe
- Build your own unique SteamWorld mining town
- Explore and develop an abandoned mine
- Manage and optimize increasingly complex resource chains
- Tackle the dangers you will encounter
- Experience five distinctive SteamWorld-inspired maps littered with secrets
- Three well-balanced difficulty levels to give a challenge to players of all abilities
SteamWorld Build will release digitally on the Nintendo eShop for Nintendo Switch worldwide “later in 2023.”
