Developer: Image & Form Games
Publisher: Image & Form Games
Rrp: £10.99 (Gog.com, humblebundle and Steam)
Released: 7th June 2016
Available on: Steam, Humblebundle and Gog.com
Played Using: An Xbox 360 Control Pad
Approximate game length: 8 Hours
It’s an age old story, a threat arises from the darkness and a group of ragtag misfits band together to defeat it because the powers that be seem to be incapable. Nothing new there. But I doubt that in the heroes have ever been a bunch of steam powered robots…
Steamworld Heist is the third game in the Steamworld series, this time though this game isn’t a platforming game. Instead what we have here is a turn based
tactical shooter… with steam driven robots or Steambots as they call themselves.
The game is split up into missions the difficulty of which can be changed before you start that mission, with higher difficulties offering greater experience. However if you lose or abort the mission the penalty increases with the difficulty level. Another thing you can (and really should) change before a mission starts is the loadout of your party as well as the members of crew that will be in the afore mentioned party.
The levels for each mission are randomly generated, though the goal of the mission itself always remains the same.
As I mentioned before the combat is turn based, and works like a 2D version of X-Com. On your turn your steambots can move, shoot and pick up items. The movement is displayed as two colours; yellow and blue. If your character stops
within the yellow area then they can also shoot or move again. If the move stops within the blue area then they are considered to have sprinted and therefore will not get to shoot or move again.
A great thing about this game is that your shots, as well as your opponents, can be ricocheted off of walls and cover to allow you to strike at enemies that
wouldn’t ordinarily be possible. This is easier to perform with some characters than others as they have special weapons that show where the bullet will end up.
Experience is divvyed out among the surviving members of the party involved on the mission, if one of your party was destroyed then they miss out on the experience and their portion is lost completely. Thankfully the destruction of a crew mate isn’t permanent and they will reappear alive and well back on your ship. You may well think then that that means this game has little to no punishment for allowing a crew member to die but that isn’t the case, if a member of your crew is destroyed it lowers the reputation you would have received. Thankfully any mission can be replayed whenever the fancy takes you, allowing you to try and improve your reputation score (more on that shortly) as well as train up any members of your crew that aren’t as experienced.
Reputation is earned through completing missions, the better you do on a mission the greater the amount of reputation you receive. Reputation is used to
unlock new areas, weapons as well as hire certain members of your crew.
This game is great, I had a real blast with it and even continued to play it into the new game plus mode that appears at the end completing it twice more. I highly recommend getting this game whenever you can.
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