What is it? A city builder with Dungeon Keeper-like layers, set in a world of steampunk robots. Release date December 1, 2023 Expect to pay TBC Developer The Station Publisher Thunderful Publishing Reviewed on Nvidia Geforce RTX 3080, AMD Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM Steam Deck Playable Link Official site
For a decade now, the SteamWorld games have been carving out their own lovely little niche, bringing charm, accessibility, and a brisk pace to a selection of different genres. They've not put a foot wrong yet, but this latest entry is a risk—it's the first SteamWorld game not developed by original creators Image & Form, with The Station taking the reins instead. Does it live up to its predecessors? Well… not quite, but that doesn't mean its mash-up of city building and Dungeon Keeper-like underground excavation isn't still a very pleasant way to spend a weekend.
A gentle introduction sees you building up a frontier town of steampunk robots by plonking down charming, chunky little buildings and connecting them up with roads. It's a deliberately straightforward take on city-building—similar to the Anno series or The Settlers, there's a big focus on creating supply chains that refine resources into other resources (and potentially then refine them further into yet more resources) to fuel your expansion.
Houses generate workers, needed to run various other buildings. Meet your workers' needs by building necessary services nearby—such as a water source and a general store—and they'll multiply, maximising each house's output. As you hit «milestones» of population, new needs are revealed; keep meeting those new needs and soon enough it becomes possible to upgrade fully happy workers into engineers, who enable all sorts of new buildings to be placed. But engineers require their own unique services to make them happy, so suddenly you've got to fit all those in too. Once you do, you'll be able to upgrade them into an even more needy form, and so on.
SteamWorld Build is constantly unfurling new layers like this, and it's a really clever approach to the genre. Not only does it mean new complexities are only added once you've fully gotten a grip on what's already in front of you, but it also gives what can be a stuffy style of game a great sense of discovery and surprise. But its most impressive reveals happen underground.
Once your town is up and running, you're able to start mining, switching to a new underground map with its own totally different gameplay. Down here is where you find the Dungeon Keeper influences. You're marking out blocks of rock for your miners to dig through, to excavate out space and gather resources. In these newly formed caves, you place not buildings but room tiles, marking out different zones for
The website gametalkz.com is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
Players will be thinking about making a new base in once they realize they have a lot of good Pals to work it but not enough room for all of them. You may also find that your current base is not close enough to key resources and wants to be closer to an Ore orSulpher vein. These are only some reasons one would want to build a second base and begin to expand.
A unique structure called a Statue of Power may be built in to give a permanent stat boost to Pals on your team. This statue can also increase your overall capture rate, allowing you to obtain Pals that would normally be very difficult to catch. However, you have to reach a certain level before you can research the technology necessary to have a Statue of Power.
It’s been an extremely long time coming, but Project Zomboid‘s promising Build 42 update appears to finally be coming along. The developer The Indie Stone has now officially confirmed on Twitter: Build 42 is due to release sometime in 2024.
The Sims 4 recently released a kit focused on castle building, and a player has managed to make an incredible castle, resorting only to the items available in the base game and this new pack. The Sims 4 went free-to-play in 2022, and this made it possible for a greater number of gamers to enjoy the game. While players can enjoy dozens of features with the base game, they can also significantly diversify the type of gameplay they get access to by purchasing additional content.
Microsoft has rolled out the latest Windows 11 Insider Preview Build exclusively for members of the Windows Insider Program in the Beta Channel. This latest release, version 22635.3066, introduces a significant upgrade to the USB4 standard, delivering a substantial boost in performance from 40Gbps to an impressive 80Gbps.
With Season 3 right around the corner, planning a build for your new Seneschal Companion can be a real hassle. What are the new Skills? Do we know what the Tuning Stones are yet? How can I mix and match to plan my build? We've got you covered! Wowhead is proud to unveil our Beta Seneschal Stones Build Planner Tool — letting you make the most of your playtime by planning ahead, so when it comes time to play you can just relax!To see the full, interactive Diablo 4 Beta Seneschal Stones Build Planner, take a look at each class available for more information, then click to the Seneschal Stones tab. With the addition of the new Seneschal Companion in Season 3, we'll be constantly updating our Build Planner Tool with the latest and greatest information — so you'll never be caught unawares as you fight Malphas and his minions.
Thunderful Group, the company behind games like 2023's SteamWorld Build and Lego Brick Tales, has announced plans to lay off roughly 20 percent of its workforce, as first reported by GamesIndustry.biz. Kotaku notes that 20 percent of the company's workforce is about 100 employees. As for why, Thunderful CEO Martin Walfisz cites the company's need to reduce costs.
Build a Rocket Boy, the development studio founded by former Grand Theft Auto series producer and Rockstar North president Leslie Benzies, completed a $110 million series D fundraising to launch its products.
A round of videogame company layoffs following a period of "unsustainable" spending? It must be a Wednesday. Swedish conglomerate Thunderful Group AB - whose corporate possessions include Somerville developer Jumpship and several teams working on the SteamWorld games - have announced that they will lay off around 20 percent of their staff as part of a restructuring program that "stems primarily from over-investments made in the last few years".
Build a Rocket Boy, a Scotland-headquartered game development company founded by one of the former lead developers behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, today announced it has raised $110 million in a Series D round of funding.