The SteamWorld series is a cross-genre video game franchise developed by Swedish Image & Form, taking place in a world where the wild west and steampunk clockworks meet after the world has since succumbed to apocalypse. Nearly every game is almost entirely self-contained, distinguished by unique subtitles; subsequently, every entry is also a different genre, with distinct gameplay that best suits the context of any of the given games.
This is the Community Thread for discussing the metas, plots and strategies for each of the games in the SteamWorld series. Please tag all relevant spoilers and clearly denote what is being spoiled.
- SteamWorld Tower Defense
Released in 2010 exclusively as DSiWare, the SteamWorld series began with SteamWorld Tower Defense.
Rather straightforward, in SteamWorld Tower Defense human invaders wish to steal gold from the Steambots' mining facilities. It is up to the player to, in Tower Defense tradition, set up turrets and other traps to impede their progress to your base.
Despite being the most standard of the bunch, SteamWorld Tower Defense has maintained a reputation as the single-most difficult game developed by Image & Form, with the game's lead developer being the only employee to complete the game as of 9 years later.
- SteamWorld Dig
SteamWorld Dig saw the first multi-platform release of a SteamWorld game, in 2013 seeing itself on the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Wii-U, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita and PC, and later being ported to the Nintendo Switch in 2018.
In SteamWorld Dig, players assume the role of a Steambot named Rusty as he assists the desperate mining town of Tumbleton by descending into the town's subterranean labyrinth of a mine. A 2D platformer with heavy Metroidvania influences, SteamWorld Dig features strong cyclical gameplay; lowering oneself into the mine, the player uses Rusty's pickaxe in order to deconstruct the game world and platform downwards, picking up minerals along the way until they find their outings soft-limited by their carrying capacity and torchlight. The player must return to town, sell minerals, and upgrade the duration of their torch and increase how many minerals they can carry in order to gradually increase the length of their next dig. Throughout the game, per the Metroidvania standard, Rusty finds new abilities which allows him to platform in previously inaccessible locations.
The game later spawned a sequel called SteamWorld Dig 2 which featured identical gameplay, but the player played as one of the hub-world NPC's from the first game.
- SteamWorld Heist
SteamWorld Heist is the 2016 successor to SteamWorld Dig, released on the Nintendo 3DS, PC's, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii-U, XBox and mobile devices. The planet Earth has long since died, exploding and scattering itself throughout the universe. Now taking to interstellar travel, the Steambots have colonized the fragmented planet, squabbling over what few precious resources are still there to be scavenged. Players take the role of Piper, a royal soldier-gone-renegade, now smuggler and space-pirate captain, as she leads her rag-tag band of steam-powered bandits as they raid ships for water and eventually take to a revolution against the Red Queen.
SteamWorld Heist is a turn-based tactics game that attempts to combine the side-scrolling, active-aiming system of the Worms series with the management of XCom. Units are distinguished by their class, which dictates what special skills and passive abilities they learn when leveling up and what weapons they're able to use; in addition, units are distinguished by a equipped weapons, which not only have unique projectile and aiming qualities, but also sometimes unique perks which modify the behavior of the unit's skills. Though there's a plethora to choose from, at the onset of every mission the player must pick a team of three.
- SteamWorld Quest
Released in 2019 on the Nintendo Switch and PC's, SteamWorld Quest is the most recent entry in the SteamWorld. Taking place within a fairytale where all the residents of a high-fantasy world from the people to the animals are clockwork, SteamWorld Quest has players control a motley crew of small-name villagers as they go on a quest to rescue the imprisoned members of the famed Hero Guild and as our hero Armilly attempts to earn the Guild's favor by solving the mystery of an up-and-coming Dark Lord and his Void Army.
SteamWorld Quest is a deckbuilding/turn-based RPG hybrid. In a party of 3, every participant in combat has a deck of eight-cards which is then combined into a party-wide deck of 24. Every turn, the player draws to 6 cards in their hand and plays up to three in order, using weak cards to build up Steam Pressure as a price for more powerful cards. Every character's unique abilities are represented by their unique cards, of which there are over 100 for players to synergize and glean comprehensive decks from.
