SteamWorld Takes on a Whole New Genre, Coming to Xbox This Year

Hi Xbox fans, I’m Brjann Sigurgeirsson, the director of the SteamWorld Universe and Franchise. I’m happy to share some exciting news with you today, especially with all the SteamWorld fans out there. We have just announced the next instalment of the series and we’re jumping genres again! It’s called SteamWorld Build and will be available on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One in 2023!

Before I dig deeper into the latest entry in the series, I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on its varied predecessors and how they have influenced what we are doing this year with SteamWorld Build. I’ve been with the series since the very beginning, all the way back in 2010 when SteamWorld Tower Defensewas released. With our debut SteamWorld title we put players in control of an army of steam-powered robots in a – well, you guessed it – tower defence-style gameplay.

With SteamWorld Dig, which came to Xbox One in 2015, the engine really started chugging. In that game, we combined elements of Spelunky, Boulder Dash, Dig Dug and Metroidvanias. This created a satisfying loop of exploration, mining, combat and upgrading that you all really got behind and helped make our small series into an indie superstar. Then we returned to that story with SteamWorld Dig 2 in 2017, our attempt at a full blown metroidvania which you Xbox fans loved!

One of the reasons I wanted to briefly walk you through the genre-switching history of SteamWorld is to re-emphasize what SteamWorld is and how you can expect a continuation of this in SteamWorld Build later this year. SteamWorld is a universe that we’ve purposely cultivated to give us the creative freedom to take in any direction we want. With each genre we take on, we try to distil the gameplay down to its core essence, and then add our own unique twist to make it feel fresh again.

This leads us onto the game I know you’ve all been eagerly waiting to hear about: SteamWorld Build! We’re again taking SteamWorld in a whole new direction, fusing our beloved steam-fuelled robots with the city builder genre. In our upcoming game, you will not only build and manage a city above ground, but dig below as you mine for materials to manage and optimise your resource chains to ensure the city thrives. I’ve lost enough hours in this game already to tell you that the gameplay loop of this multi-level approach is incredibly rewarding!

To a degree, it’s a loop that builds on what we’ve done with the Dig games. You explore, mine, collect, and then return to the surface to build, upgrade and improve. In the case of SteamWorld Build, there are multiple mine levels to uncover and explore. While each depth yields more precious resources, there are also more dangers for you to deal with. Your guards are going to deal with giant bugs, creepy crawlies, and other living threats.

With all the different SteamWorld titles released in the past, we showed how we were able to give new players an accessible entry point to a complex genre without stripping away strategic richness for veterans of the series. That’s a key part of the SteamWorld formula and something we are doing again with SteamWorld Build. Built for console from the outset, we are inviting newcomers and genre-devotees alike to follow a story that leads the steambots down into dangerous depths and find ancient technology that may help them take off into space and escape earth before it completely collapses.

Having worked on the SteamWorld series from the very beginning, I’m really excited for this next step in the franchise and hope you will all join us on a journey that will see the SteamWorlduniverse expand in new and exciting directions. I’m looking forward to telling you more about SteamWorld Build, as well as the other SteamWorld titles we have in development, via the standard version of SteamWorld Telegraph, which will become a regular community show later this year.

Thank you for reading this Xbox Wire post. I’m happy to welcome back our fans, old and new, and we will see you later this year for the release on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox One. You can follow the game on YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook.