The robots yearn for the mines.
SteamWorld Construct appears to mix the basic, randomized excavation of SteamWorld Dig with a contemporary city-builder. Throw in some very mild real-time-strategy parts for good measure and also you’ve acquired the recipe for a captivating and charming recreation. The query is, can SteamWorld Construct successfully leverage the limitless replayability of each their very own SteamWorld Dig sequence, and any good city-builder?
Every map will begin with you build up a settlement round a damaged down prepare station. Your first objective will probably be to construct up sufficient assets and employees to restore the prepare station. As soon as that is accomplished, trains will begin arriving with purchasable upgrades and can be used to commerce for extra assets. Along with assets wanted for conventional building (wooden, metallic, and so forth), you’ll additionally want to offer for the wants of your inhabitants with shops, restore outlets, eating places, and extra. These service buildings will should be in vary of the inhabitants that wants them, so correctly zoning your metropolis is essential.
At first you’ll solely be capable to recruit fundamental employees, who will fill out easy jobs and supply some restricted expertise. As your inhabitants grows you’ll be capable to improve your employee housing to engineer housing, opening up new applied sciences and jobs. Preserve increasing and also you’ll unlock increasingly inhabitants varieties. The one drawback is, as a result of making new kinds of models relies on upgrading outdated ones, you’ll have to always make housing in an space that fulfills the wants of a employee, earlier than upgrading it and shifting the complete home to a distinct space that matches the engineer’s wants. Regardless of what number of models you unlock, you’ll at all times have to improve them to each step alongside the way in which, making metropolis format administration needlessly sophisticated. With the ability to merely produce models from scratch or skip the incremental upgrades would considerably improve the city-building aspect of SteamWorld Construct.
After all city-building is just half of the gameplay loop. When you’ve constructed up a good variety of engineers, you’ll be capable to restore your first mineshaft. Right here you’ll be capable to transition underground, the place you’ll start establishing houses in your mining workers and exploring the randomly generated depths. You’ll be able to assign miners to dig by particular person grids of the underground to seek out extra assets that may in flip be used to additional develop your metropolis. Conversely, as your metropolis develops, you’ll acquire entry to extra unit varieties underground. Not like your above-ground metropolis, your underground models don’t require upgrading; reasonably, you possibly can merely place houses for miners, prospectors, mechanics, and so forth. This makes the mining section way more attention-grabbing and easy to play whereas highlighting the issue above floor.
Your final objective is to gather spaceship elements that can can help you depart the planet behind. These are solely discovered underground and would require you to delve deeper and deeper, repairing new mineshafts to entry extra ranges. Every degree will show step by step extra harmful requiring you to recruit guards and arrange defenses in opposition to monsters. It isn’t a full real-time-strategy recreation by any means, however it provides a pleasant twist to the gameplay.
As I frolicked with SteamWorld Construct, I discovered myself vastly having fun with my time underground, whereas rising pissed off with the boundaries of the city-building. Finally the linear upgrade-based development of the city-building removes most of your freedom in that section of the sport. Your metropolis will at all times develop precisely the identical method. You’ll be able to’t focus extra on one unit, or select one technique over one other. You merely spawn employees, till you possibly can spawn the subsequent unit, after which the subsequent, after which the subsequent. And with every one in every of these you’ll be selecting up buildings and shifting them from one a part of town to a different to satisfy that unit’s particular wants. When you make it underground, SteamWorld Construct is a delight, however any time spent on the floor is stuffed with delicate frustrations that slowly add up and depart me craving for the mines. It ought to come as no shock, I suppose, that SteamWorld is at its finest once you’re digging.