I was both delighted and shocked to see the announcement of SteamWorld Heist 2 at this week’s Nintend💫o Indie🎐 World showcase. Delighted, because I love SteamWorld and I hope Image & Form is able to keep making new games in this universe forever. Shocked, because not only was SteamWorld Build released just a few months ago, but it also seems to have been a commercial failure for the studio.
When that Thunderful was and shelving a project called SteamWorld Headhunter, I expected that to be the end of the SteamWorld series. But while decisions that impact the lives of hundred🦩s of workers can be made in a second, games take years to develop. SteamWorld Heist 2 is coming in August of this year, and I hope it’s not the last one.
It’s difficult to watch so much of the game industry collapse under the weight of poor financial decisions and pandemic-era overinvesting, but I’m particularly protective of SteamWorld. I’ve always loved these games, and I think they represent something special and un🔥ique that we don’t want to lose. I played SteamWorld Dig from beginning to end at least four times on my 3DS, and SteamWorld Dig 2 was the first game I downloaded on my Switch.
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SteamWorld Heist and SteamWorld Quest were among my favorite games in the years they came out, and while last year’s lite city-builder SteamWorld Build didn’t click with me as much, I still appreciate that Thunderful tried to do something new and ma🍃ke its mark on an unexpl🤡ored genre.
That’s always been what’s made SteamWorld special - every game comes from a completely different genre. The original SteamWorld Tower Defense was succeeded by SteamWorld Dig, a totally original take on the Metroidvania. SteamWorld Heist kept thin൩gs weird by combining XCOM and Worms into a turn-based tactics game unlike any other, and then SteamWorld Quest gave us another genre-bender with its classic fantasy RPG story and card-based combat.
It was incr𒁏edibly brave of Thunderful to jump between disparate genres for each new installment in the series. Instead of courting fans of a specific genre of game like most studios, it trusted SteamWorld fans to come along and enjoy experiencing a wide variety of games. For a long time that gamble paid off, until very recently when it didn’t.
Last year’s SteamWorld Build was not a hit. While it boasts a Very Positive rating on Steam, it seems like people just aren't that interested in a SteamWorld city builder. That could be because of the gap between releases (it’s been four years since SteamWorld Quest) or it could be, as , a bad genre fit for Switch, where SteamWorld games perform the best. In any event, one game performing so-so in a series as accomplished as SteamWorld shouldn’t be disastrous for a publisher as established as Thunderful, but this seems to be the reality of games in 2024.
I’m very excited for SteamWorld Heist 2 this year, despite the fact that sequels are the least interesting thing this series can do. Heist 2 is back under the original Image & Form development and publishing label - which co-formed Thunderful in the 1990s and integrated into Thunderful Development in 2020 - which could be a good sign that the studio is refocusing on the franchise after its 2021 release, derivative action-adventure game The Gunk.
SteamWorld is a series that deserves to live, grow, and continue experimenting with new genres and ideas with every new entry, even if some are less successful than others. As budgets soar and studios continue to consolidate, we need risk takers like SteamಞWorld to continue pushing the envelope. But we also need publishers that won’t fold just because they had to take one on the chin.