SteamWorld Heist: a Rootin’, Shootin’, Galootin’, Steam-Tootin’ Strategy RPG

Intro

I have fond memories and associations with the SteamWorld franchise of games, even before SteamWorld Heist.

The original SteamWorld Dig, created by Swedish studio Image & Form Games, was one of the first indie game purchases I ever made.

I saw the trailer as a sophomore in college. The trailer caught my attention and I bought it almost immediately on PlayStation Network. Stupidly this was for the PS4 version of the game. I just had a PS3. It would be at least another year before I finally get a chance to play it.

D’oh. Oh well.

When I finally got my hands on SteamWorld Dig some time later, I was sucked in by the worldbuilding and addicting gameplay.

As a kid I had played flash games on places like Shockwave.com where you drill down into the earth, collect minerals that become more rare and valuable the further down you go, sell them on the surface before you run out of light or oxygen, and use the proceeds to buy new gear and equipment so you can go down even further.

But I hadn’t ever played a similar game with such high production quality. Or a vibrant art style. Or an imaginative backstory. Or a cool SteamPunk aesthetic for that matter.

Years later, I played SteamWorld Dig 2 while I was studying abroad in Yokohama, Japan. It was even better. It improved on all the things that made the original SteamWorld Dig so fun and absorbing, and that was before they gave you the jetpack.

Now it seems as though Image & Form is mixing up the formula with more recent installments. Most recently with their latest installment SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. I intend to play that one later.

For now though, let’s talk about SteamWorld Heist.

SteamWorld Heist: Gameplay and Story

SteamWorld Heist mixes up the formula of previous games in the series – which took the style of a metroidvania game.

This iteration is a turn-based, side-scrolling strategy RPG.

You play as Piper Faraday. You are a steambot, one of a race of steam-powered automotons made by the ancient human precursor race, long since extinct. The Earth was destroyed after the events of SteamWorld Dig 2, and the steambots have now colonized space just outside its ruins.

You are the leader of a gang of rough-and-tumble smugglers and pirates on the outskirts of the Earth’s orbit.

A rival gang of ruthless thugs called The Scrappers are muscling in on your turf, driving away business could risk drawing the attention of the fuzz, so you round up your ragtag team of misfits to teach them a lesson.

Each mission starts with a loadout. You choose which crewmates you want to send in when you board the enemy spaceship, outfit them with guns and send them in guns blazing in a good ol’ fashion western shootout.

One of the game’s selling points is ricocheting bullets. If you get the timing just right, you can bounce bullets off the ceiling, the floor or the wall and shoot the bandito you’re aiming at square in the back, adding a whole new dimension to strategy.

Many of the missions are randomized and procedurally generated. You’ll rarely know quite what to expect in a given mission. Enemy types and placement will sometimes differ as well. You need to balance out your team’s stregnths and weaknesses so they can be prepared for anything that comes their way.

SteamWorld Heist Has Me Feeling Like a Steam-Powered Cowboy

I’ve mentioned before in other reviews that I play games to relax and unwind and typically dislike having to think too hard unless I’m being payed for it.

I have to say though. SteamWorld Heist is almost dangerously addicting.

This is a game that makes you think strategically. SteamWorld Heist excels at making you plan your every move and think two or three steps ahead while being flexible enough to adapt to the situation, and yet it’s fast-paced enough to still feel exciting.

Do I move my sniper out of position for a better shot but leave him vulnerable to oncoming fire, or do I let him stay put and risk missing a game-critical shot if I’m off by so much as a millimeter?

Do I give my heavy artillery a grenade launcher that can lob around shields, or a bazooka that can obliterate enemy Scrapper bots from across the room? That depends, do I anticipate close-quarters combat or wide-open rooms?

Do I send in my frontline assault troops and clear the room, or retreat to a defensive position and draw the enemy out into the open.

And oh my gosh, lining up the perfect shot is SO satisfying.

Taking the time to position yourself and getting the angle just right takes a lot of finesse.

Missions often depend on a well-timed shot – oftentimes I ended up screwing myself by missing a shot by a hair’s width. It takes some practice, and mistakes are VERY costly.

Failed or aborted missions make you lose half of your money. Kiss that shiny-new siderm pistol bye-bye until you grind for a few more hours.

You can also shoot the hats off enemy steambots, like they used to in old western movies. I thought that was pretty humorous.

The worldbuilding I liked from previous games in the SteamWorld series is still here.

Similar to the SteamWorld Dig games, SteamWorld Heist features Colorful, quirky characters with memorable personalities. There’s just something really endearing about steam-powered robots who wear cowboy hats and say words like “varmit,” “tarnation,” and “dag nabbit.”

My favorite one is probably Ivanski, a Russian weightlifter robot who you recruit about halfway through the first series of levels. His thing is that he’s strong. He is constantly lifting a dumbell with one arm, even while holding a grenade launcher in the other in the middle of an intense shootout with space bandits inside a cramped spaceship corridor.

Also similar to previous SteamWorld games, it looks gorgeous. The robots in a spaghetti western set in space theme makes me think of Firefly but with robots, which is probably the only way that show could be cooler. It makes for a neat combination.

The steampunk aesthetic is cool too. The actual music itself is done by the steampunk comedy trio Steam Powered Giraffe. Whatever happened to that scene anyway?

The gameplay lends itself to a lot of variety as well. There is so much joy to be had in learning how to use each character’s strengths to your advantage while balancing out each other’s weaknesses.

When I was kid first getting into RPGs, my go-to strategy was to max out my one or two favorite characters and make them OP. That wouldn’t work in SteamWorld Heist because you need to learn to adapt to the given scenario.

You could send in a team of tanks with assault weapons and explosives and blast everything to shit, but then oh no! Some snipers with long-range rifles are headshotting you one-by-one. It’s important to have a well-rounded team that can adapt to a variety of different situations.

It’s so much fun to replay missions with different configurations of crewmates, skill sets, weapons and equipment. It makes SteamWorld Heist very replayable.