SteamWorld Build Review

City building games are, traditionally, quite highly involved, complex things, involving a lot of micro management and problem-solving. Often, it's a tricky balancing act, but SteamWorld Build manages to deliver all of the above, without ever feeling too overwhelming. Rather, it's a mesmerising, enjoyably comfortable city builder experience you can easily play with your feet up and a cup of tea, albeit with hidden depths. If it's a (mostly) stress-free dose of SimCity-meets-Dungeon Keeper (there's mining to be done) you seek, then look no further.

It all starts very gently, as you choose a location, be it Giddyup Gorge, Highroller Dunes, Grand Gully, Tumbleton, or Fossil Park, then follow the journey of Jack Clutchsprocket and his daughter Astrid, as they arrive in a lifeless, blank expanse boasting nothing more than a dilapidated train station. First order of business - at the behest of blustering entrepreneur Gunn-Britt Gildenwire - is to place housing for Workers, before repairing the local train station to receive deliveries and make trades. You'll then set about constructing essential services to keep your residents happy and efficient.

Dropping a forester and lumbermill near a fertile forest will provide a steady stream of wooden boards to build with, while dropping a charcoal kiln will ensure you have fuel. Your town's denizens will soon want more, of course, which is when you'll start building general stores, saloons, moonshine distilleries, service stations, and all manner of places where your steambots can let off, well, steam. Workers can be upgraded to Engineers, who in turn can become well-to-do 'Aristobots', before growing to become Scientists who can access the farthest depths of your chosen region's mines.

First, you'll have to repair the mineshaft, at which point you can establish an underground operation, excavating precious materials like gold nuggets, rubies, tools, and scrap metal, which then get shipped up to the surface. Only by ensuring your Workers achieve 100% happiness can you make them Engineers, and the same goes for making Engineers into Aristobots, and Aristobots into Scientists. The higher the class of citizen, the more extensive their needs, too, so Aristobots require a sheriff's office, a place to buy hats, plenty of moonshine, a casino, a gunsmith, and gourmet restaurants, while Workers require little more than a few basics to meet their modest demands.

Once you delve into the mines, you'll discover so-called 'old tech' – ship parts for building your very own rocket to the stars, which means shovelling, pickaxing, and drilling through rocks or varying hardness (like simple dirt, hard sandstone, and even harder bedrock) and pulsating lumps of green goo (literal 'enemy soil') harbouring dormant hostile beasties. Above ground, your city may flourish, but down below, your Miners, Prospectors, and Mechanics are all toiling away to ensure your steambots are furnished with all the creature comforts they desire.

Accumulate enough Aristobots, and you can employ Guards to protect your mining endeavours, the grid-based subterranean expanse enabling you to drag and drop quarters for your teams – the larger the quarters, the more workers you'll summon to the mines. Place a workshop and an arsenal, and you can conjure machines to automatically excavate certain materials for you, alongside thumpers to keep carnivorous worms at bay, and grenade turrets, lightning turrets, or flamethrowers to blast through voracious evil insects, toxic creep plants, and hives, in a spot of tower defence. It can get a little intense at times when the hives awaken and the insects mount an attack, but it's nothing that can't be calmly and methodically dealt with, especially if you have Guards running around with flamethrowers and ample turrets keeping the monsters at bay.

And that's the real beauty of SteamWorld Build – the nice and easy pace at which you can manage your city, meeting the needs of your growing population, before popping down into the mines now and again to see how those industrious little bots are getting on (don't be surprised if you sink hours on end into mining). It's thoroughly enjoyable stuff, supported by an incredibly addictive gameplay loop and an elegant, simple user interface. Everything is but a button press or two away, and nothing ever feels too fussy or messily presented, although there's ample complexity to be found.

For instance, it can be all too easy to fall into the trap of doing too much all at once, leaving your city haemorrhaging cash and resources, leaving you frantically looking for ways to shore up the deficit. Residential buildings are your bread and butter, so often the solution involves dropping in more Worker houses for the rent money, but then, you have the issue of dwindling space, prompting you to move or demolish existing structures, and perhaps have a rethink about what should go where. Complexity, see.

Its narrative might be somewhat perfunctory, but SteamWorld Build does an awful lot right in mashing together genres, being careful not to leave any aspect of the game underdeveloped or half-baked. Combined with the series' signature style and pleasingly colourful visuals, this emerges as a joyful and engaging slab of city building and subterranean mining/tower defence that more than warrants repeat playthroughs (each can run to about five or six hours), especially when you're craving something nice and cosy, like a warm pair of socks. SteamWorld build is simply superb.