Summary

• Dusty Caverns: Introduces mining system and resource gathering, simple but engaging design.
• Marshy Ruins: Adds complexity and difficulty, introduces enemies and tower defense-like gameplay.
• Crackling Depths: Most lore, terrifying atmosphere, dangerous enemies, intense story reveal.

Building a functional and thriving city is only half of the fun in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Steamworld Build, and you can't do it without literally delving into the ground beneath you. Restoring the abandoned mines beneath your city is an important part of the game, and each floor you go to is a new experience.

The mineshaft floors you'll explore aren't just plain old caves, though. Each layer has its own atmosphere and environment and plays its part in the unfolding story. In this list, we'll go over each of the three mineshaft layers in detail, ranking them and appreciating their designs in equal measure.

3 Dusty Cܫ𒊎averns

• Introduces you to the mining system and the mines themselves well with a simple but engaging design.
• Adds on to the city building aspect by having you now need to plan quarters for different types of Steambots.
• Makes resource gathering more engaging by having you need to do part of it.

Dusty Caverns is the first mineshaft floor you encounter after starting your city, and it sets a good tone going forward. It's as dusty as its name implies, and from the beginning, you'll be faced with the first threat of the game: instability. You'll quickly need to set up quarters for your Miner Steambots and start digging out the walls to make room.

Are the caverns a little too dark and dusty? The game's settings menu has a separate Brightness setting for the underground.

Dusty Caverns introduces many of the staple resources you'll see for the rest of the game, and the atmosphere is almost hopeful in the plain caves.

Lore Found In The Dusty Caverns

This relatively peaceful environment also offers glimpses into the past. There are old buried minecarts with bits of ore still inside them, a dinosaur skull and other fossils can occasionally be found poking through the dirt, and pieces of old railways in the dirt at your Steambot's feet.

As the first mineshaft floor, it also does a great job of introducing you to finding Rocket Parts, one of the main goals of the game, and makes you curious about why they're even buried in the first place. To make things even stranger, the elevator that goes down further is broken and locked by a metal gate secured by levers.

Between the heavy implications of a prior collapse, the locked door, and the Core's warnings of dangers deep in the earth, Dusty Caverns really gives you the sense that things are more than meets the eye.

Overall Opinion

Despite its plainer environment, Dusty Caverns isn't any less of an interesting mineshaft floor thanks to its subtle storytelling, but it does get overshadowed by both of the later two mineshaft floors.

2 Marshy Ruins 🐟

• A distinctly wild and eerie place that shows you the mines aren't as peaceful as they seem.
• Brings in the first enemies in the game and makes them a threat right off the bat.
• Increases the overall difficulty of the game by adding new obstacles and hostile entities, as well as introducing tower defense-like gameplay.

After Dusty Cavern's relatively plain but compelling design that introduces you to the mines and what you'll be doing in them, Marshy Ruins adds a new level of complexity and a fascinating but threatening environment.

Marshy Ruins instantly hits you with a sense of its temperature and climate: wet, hot, foggy, and all altogether swamp-like. Soon after your arrival, you'll realize there's more than instability you'll have to deal with.

Marshy Ruins makes you come face to face with the first enemies in the game, a species of beetles that come in different shapes and sizes and aren't too happy to be intruded on. If that weren't bad enough, Marshy Ruins has carnivorous ground worms that disguise themselves as plants and a native fauna known as The Creep.

Lore Found In the Marshy Ruins

Marshy Ruins gives you further hints of what came before. In the canyons cutting through the ground, you can find the ruins that give it a name. There are pieces of what might've been buildings sinking into bubbling goo and beneath your Steambots' quarters, there are still bridges standing, leading to places unknown.

And like Dusty Caverns, there are things hidden in the ground. On this floor, you'll not only see more bones but also what might be broken road tiles, pieces of pottery, and even mummified bodies.

When you try to get to the Rocket Parts, you'll come face to face with The Hive, a mysterious force that drives the beetles to launch coordinated attacks against your bots and machines. It attacks as soon as you try to touch the Rocket Parts and doesn't stop until you give up or completely unearth it.

Some wildlife attacking is normal, especially when you're bothering them, but Marshy Ruins really makes you wonder why they get so coordinated and why they want to stop you from getting the Rocket Parts.

Overall Opinion

After Dusty Caverns, Marshy Ru꧙ins not only increases the intrigue and gives you an entirely different and eerie environment to explore, but it ups the challenge significant♓ly.

1 🍎 Crackling Depths ๊

• The most lore out of all the mineshaft floors between its subtle storytelling and the cutscenes.
• A terrifying and threatening atmosphere that has you wanting to build bridges over every inch of the canyons.
• The most dangerous enemies in the game to handle. And they're endless.

From the start, the game hints at what you'll be facing in the Crackling Depths: the new Enemy Soil tiles show unknown Steambots trapped within coiling wires, mouths open in a silent scream.

As you dig farther into the floor and more of the map is revealed, the eerie atmosphere changes dramatically. The Crackling Depths are full of canyons lit by bright red lights that cut across the landscape, revealing masses of wires🍬, pipes, scaffolding, enemies, and giant Steambots frozen in time.

If that wasn't creepy or terrifying enough, the canyons go down farther than you can see, and there's no telling what's further down.

Lore Found In The Crackling Depths

The atmosphere gets even more creepy when you actually encounter the Crackling Depth's enemies. As opposed to the natural wildlife of the Marshy Ruins, the Crackling Depths is all about Vectron enemies, most of whom are heavily implied to be the bodies of the Steambots who lived in the area prior and collapsed the mines on purpose.

Some of these bots even wield pickaxes, further implicating their corruption or reanimation by Vectron technology. The most basic of them crawl towards your Steambots like zombies, slow and undeterred, and others, like the more advanced Gunner Bot, have technology you don't. As for the Creeping Hulks, they're an amalgamation of machinery, unlike a Steambot at all.

If you've got the story on, this floor is also the site of a pretty intense story reveal that's been hinted at multiple times. This fact, combined with the horrifying enemies and the environment, really drives home how great Crackling Depths is.

Overall Opinion

All the atmosphere and design choices, the somber but intense musical track and the worrying revelations in the story, combine to create Steamworld Build's crowning achievement in atmosphere and creative design.