SteamWorld Build's city management and dungeon defense offers a blend of genres that satisfyingly feed into each other. However, its easy access point means city sim enthusiasts may not be able to live out their micro-managing dreams.
Whether it be theme park or simulated city, there is an allure to micro-managing hundreds if not hundreds of thousands of virtual people. For all intents and purposes, the player is a god. The capability of directly plucking a villager or a farmer out of thin air with a virtual hand or creating vast metropolises with a single sweeping motion has long been a gaming pastime.
Yet SteamWorld Build is one of only a handful of management sims I’ve ever engaged with. As absolute as the power may feel, there’s a level of… well let’s call it patience, that I lack. The thought of having to appease the needs of the masses to achieve a kind of victory state makes me wallow in mild anxiety, the kind of tension I may expect from a horror game or a Call of Duty match.
And let’s face it: real life can be fairly boring. Even when you’re dictating the flow of a particular microcosm of civilization.
Perhaps that’s why SteamWorld Build gelled with me better and should for other players hesitant to delve further into the genre. There is a distinct ease of use and approachability found in the game that compartmentalize busy management sim mechanics in digestible ways while blending in a bit of tower defense and dungeon keeping. However, I imagine hardcore fans could find themselves searching for more boundless complexity than SteamWorld Build seeks to offer. Though it may be a conflicting ideology, a personality shines through here, making the whole package worthwhile.
Despite the presence of a narrative throughline, SteamWorld Build‘s story is relatively threadbare. Nestled into the franchise as a whole, Build sees a ragtag group of robotic settlers attempting to get into a rocket and launch away from their dying planet. Like other SteamWorld games, Build features vaguely humanoid robots packed with personality and mimicking steampunk and Wild West aesthetics. Thematically distinct, Build will evoke familiarity with anyone who has played the Dig, Heist, or Quest variants.
Personally, I’m only familiar with SteamWorld Dig, having played it years ago from being a fan of the back and forth feedback loop of plunging increasingly profitable and dangerous depths. And while there is charm to Build, it’s obvious that the SteamWorld license is meant to express a theme, a blending of genres, and player-friendly mechanics like it has in the past. Additionally, I can’t think of many city builders that prominently house a fascinating narrative in their quests for profits and never-ending expansion. It just so happens that incremental progression will slowly unearth more about the world of Build, its characters, and the strange futuristic technology guiding the settlers, but not deeper than the mines it asks you to plunder.
What makes Build such an enjoyable spin on the city management simulation genre is not only that SteamWorld aesthetic but how generously the game allows the players to be accustomed to all the details of maintaining and expanding their robotic colony.
Unsurprisingly, players start out a settlement by drafting roads connected to a main train station. From those roads, housing is placed that feeds into the total amount of settlers that players need to perform tasks. Resource-earning facilities need to be placed near their appropriate items (i.e. lumber-producing buildings need to be near trees) and warehouses to store all these materials need to exist as well.
This common foundation usually is the key to any builder, crafting game, or RTS. You start out simple, then explode from thereon becoming more powerful or wealthy in the process. In Build, that process starts out relatively quickly, within the first 30 minutes or less. The citizens of your settlement need their mood maintained and require multiple facilities to keep a positive temperament. General stores and other amenities must be built in addition to worker-related buildings.
Adding a layer of further management is the need for everything to be connected by roads and within a certain distance of each other. Thankfully, roads are extremely cheap to build and easy to draw along the multiple maps players can choose to build in. Each map provides varying terrain and landscape to sculpt around with a dash of cosmetic difference to keep everything from being samey. But be forewarned, Build, like other games in the genre, can become visually unruly.
Instinct may dictate packing buildings like sardines in a tin but as a settlement’s needs increase, it becomes readily apparent that the sheer amount of possible structures is somewhat vast. Players may think they can shove residential buildings in one corner and amenities in another. But that becomes an issue unto itself.
As progress continues, basic settlers will need to become engineers. To become engineers, players need to reach certain satisfaction thresholds along with the required financial and material costs. It isn’t just enough to create engineers as they require their own specific resources like moonshine and saloons, which require more advanced refineries. Eventually those simple settlers will need to grow into scientists from a long chain of tasks and upgrades. The domino effect of Build should not be foreign to genre veterans or even players with a modicum of logical thinking. That doesn’t mean everyone will pre-plan, however.
In that opening hour my settlement’s need for cacti, lumber, manageable roads, general stores, and upgrades become a frenzy of red faces above nearly every building. Satisfaction was at a low because I was poorly managing the limited opening space I started with and was plugging holes as a new need arose.
Panic shouldn’t dictate every decision in Build and while players may think it best to restart, the game is remarkably generous. I’m sure there is a type of fail state here but moving buildings around and readjusting everything is relatively painless. A rough start will merely be a lesson learned for a new game or further massive expansions. I grew to enjoy making micro-towns where multiple facilities were chugging along in small footprints. As a settlement becomes more prosperous, the visual scope might get ugly if players aren’t being mindful. Despite players having the ability to zoom in and pick out great detail on everything and add decorations, it won’t mean much if there is no breathing room between roads.
Build also makes intelligent use of a controller and the UI. For a genre requiring a lot of precise selection and movement, a mouse and keyboard is likely ideal but I prefer playing on console. Thankfully, The Station has a mastery of Build‘s controls translated through buttons and joysticks. This means menus are easy to navigate and further easy to read and interact with.
Eventually the ability to unlock underground mines opens up as a new avenue for progression and a way to access the relics needed to power the rocket. Though slightly different from the city building, mining in Build has a similar functionality.
The settlement will need to account for miners and create buildings and facilities to please them above ground, while creating the tools to dig deeper and defend against the threats found underground. Much like resource-gathering, the process of mining becomes relatively automatic as players work to create better pickaxes and other tools to gather more profitable ore. Monsters arrive the longer and deeper players engage in underground mining, requiring defenses to be built to protect not only workers but the structures that automate other processes.
When it all flows together, Build becomes a city builder, a crafting game, and a mild tower defense. And none of these elements breaks from the cohesive nature of Build. Juggling everything can be somewhat stressful based on the difficulty players select but the ability to instantly go above or below ground means that needs can be met rapidly and without loading.
Once that rocket takes off, however, there isn’t a great deal of variety left in Build. Players are rewarded with map modifiers and unlockable bonuses that can be applied after victory. The question is whether or not the gameplay loop is enticing enough to continue. Because Build is relatively friendly and not overly complex, it’s slightly harder to justify return trips that introduce significant amounts of variety into what the player has already accomplished. And that may be a deal-breaker unless players are willing to make return visits as the game gets updated or experiment with personal restrictions and goals.
SteamWorld Build is an enjoyable city management game that is perfect for newcomers to the genre. Its friendly approach makes its building simulation and mining complex but not overbearing. A thin narrative and limited post-game can hamper long-term engagement but the SteamWorld license proves malleable enough that satisfaction can be found for nearly anyone.
