A beloved indie franchise is about to turn city builders steampunk

The upcoming game in the SteamWorld franchise is a drastic shift from previous titles in the series, the last installation having come out over four years ago. The latest entry in the globally-acclaimed genre-hopping SteamWord series is SteamWorld Build, which is said by the devs to be similar to “SimCity with Dungeon Keeper” mixed in, reaching the hands of PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch owners later this year.

Being set at approximately the same time as SteamWorld Dig 2, SteamWorld Build highlights a different set of robots in its story who are looking to make it out of their planet and head into the large and infinite space. You will need to set up a mining town first, however, to prepare yourself for your escape by digging out the requisite rocket parts.

You will need to be on top of your workforce as you make your way into the underground within an old abandoned mine in search of scrap metal, rubies, gold, and ancient technology. Treasure and prehistoric tech are not the only things that are waiting for you in the sprawling underground, however, as you will need to make sure your workers are kept safe from the horrors found down there waiting to devour your mechanical miners.

Publisher Thunderful announced the game as part of its very first SteamWorld Telegraph presentation. SteamWorld’s franchise director Brjánn Sigurgeirsson mentioned a second Telegraph presentation will be arriving later this year with deeper SteamWorld news on at least a couple of the other three SteamWorld games that are in development at the moment. 

Sigurgeirsson is in charge of production at SteamWorld Build, with the game coming from a Thunderful-owned studio called The Station, which previously produced art and assets for a plethora of LittleBigPlanet games.

In the SteamWorld Telegraph presentation, The Station producer Adam Vassee was interviewed by Sigurgeirsson. “Having the opportunity to work on an award-winning franchise that’s loved by fans was a real honor for us,” he said.

He continued, saying the team have “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.”

Not only can you play the demo of SteamWorld Build on Steam right now, but you can also familiarize yourself with the past games in the franchise since Thunderful is holding a SteamWorld sale on Steam at the moment.