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PREVIEW
As our party members have
fallen, our hands of six cards have
become more and more greyed out
with moves we can’t use. Only
our main warrior, Armilly, stands
against this enemy who’s launched
a terrible attack on our village – a uni-wheeled
armoured robot with a caged canary for a head.Its health is low, but we’re only just holding on
ourselves. One more hit will turn us into scrap.
Then with one last draw of the cards, we assemble a
hand that we have just enough Steam Power to pull
off, playing a full chain combo to win the fight, and
polish off our two chapters with the game.
What started as a side-project spin-off from
Image & Form’s SteamWorld series has
ballooned into the biggest, most built-out
SteamWorld game to date. The games
all share a steampunk aesthetic, unique
charm and humour, and a loving attention
to detail, but vary in genre. Where
SteamWorld Dig was about building tunnels
through dungeon-like environments, and
SteamWorld Heist was a tactical shooter,
SteamWorld Quest is a turn-based RPG
with a deck-building combat system. It’s
wonderful to see a series with such strong
direction retaining its essence through
different formats. Despite SteamWorld
Quest being radically different from its
predecessors, it’s hard to imagine fans will
find anything wrong in the way it feels –
it’sa SteamWorld game through and through.
Each chapter is presented in the style of a
medieval storybook. While Image & Form is keeping
exactly when in the timeline this one is set a secret,
members of the dev team tell us that it will become
obvious once you get further in, and will tie in quite
directly for those familiar with the previous games
(though it’ll also work just as well as a standalone).
The story initially follows Armilly and Copernica,
robots styled like a knight and a witch respectively.
More party members with their own playstyles will
join them over the course of the game. Running from
screen to screen on a wider map you can uncoversecrets and chests, and do battle with
enemies. Touch them and you’ll be
thrown into the RPG fighting system,
as you might expect, and you can use
your weapon to get the drop on them
to start the fight with an advantage.CARD TRICKS
Each party member has an eight-card
deck. At the start of a fight these
are shuffled together (they’re colour-
coded), and at the start of each turn
you always make your hand back up to
six cards. When you run out of cards
they’re shuffled back around again,
and you get a generous two redraws
per turn if you need them. Each round
you choose three cards to use, from
attacking skills to support ones, then
confirm that sequence. Play three
cards of the same colour in a row and
that character will use a special chain
attack, which varies depending on the
party member from a strong single
attack to healing your whole team.
Some cards are free to use and
when you use them build up your
Steam Power (SP), which you can
then spend to use more powerful
cards. It’s a very dynamic system, as
even when selecting the cards for the
round the SP will be gained as you go,
allowing your final selection to use the
accumulated SP of the previous cards.
It sounds more complicated than it
is – the true joy is how simple it feels
in practice. Striking a balance between
free and SP-cost cards is intuitive after
only a few rounds, and the somewhat
limited ‘eight cards per character’ setup
allows you to experiment and play
around with how you make the most
use of your cards. There are plenty of
extra ones hidden away – explore the
quirky world to uncover them. We’ll
be dealt in later this year.STEAMWORLD QUEST:
HAND OF GILGAMESH
A wild card that should beat the odds
FORMAT PS4 / ETA 2019 / PUB THUNDERFUL / DEV IMAGE & FORM
FACTRICK
The cards are actually
punch cards that give your
robotscommands,andhave
uniqueidentifyingnumbers.1.PUNCHCARDThere are plenty of extra
cards to find and collect,
andyoucanreplayareasto
uncoverthem.2.CARDCOLLECTORImage & Form asked fans
on social media what genre
they wanted, and RPG was
the winner.3.PLAYERS’CHOICE