SteamWorld Build review: joyful citybuilding and delightful dungeon digging

In another lifetime, SteamWorld Dig could have easily ended up as SteamWorld Build. When Image & Form first released their 2D digging platformer back in the depths of 2013, its moreish loop of carving out rocky chasms, finding gems and treasure, then upgrading your pickaxe and burgeoning township back on the surface was instantly captivating, and its 2017 sequel continues to be one of my favourite platformers of all time. Now, a decade later, SteamWorld Build has reimagined Dig's core ideas as a handsome citybuilder, placing equal focus on managing your rustbucket town up top, while plundering its depths via an abandoned mineshaft to find treasure, resources and (most importantly) rocket parts, so you can escape your crumbling planet and find a new homestead up in the stars.

Despite the threat of annihilation hanging over the horizon, however, SteamWorld Build is one of the most relaxed and easy-going building games I've ever played. This is a game that's more concerned with keeping your economy running like a well-oiled, uhh, machine than turning a profit, for example, and it merely dips its toe in the genre's wider, ongoing obsession with building up defences to fend off oncoming hordes of malicious town hall-eating nasties. If the scales do get thrown out of equilibrium, the worst that will happen is you get lots of angry little red robot faces appearing above your houses. You won't go bankrupt, you won't get turfed out for being incompetent, and you definitely won't see any kind of game over screen if the aforementioned nasties end up running amok in your mining levels. The stakes, then, are quite low, which is probably a good indication of whether you'll get on with SteamWorld Build, and how much you'll get out of it.

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