SteamWorld Heist: more info, coming out in August

IGN recently got to try out SteamWorld Heist, a turn-based Strategy game from Image & Form. It’s set several hundred years after the events of SteamWorld Dig, and it gives you control of a squad of robots: during the adventure, you can recruits them and set up your very own team. You can even chose their classes, weapons, abilities and more.

The only similarity with SteamWorld Dig, besides the shared universe and esthetics, is the 2D point of view and easy to grasp controls. The right stick allows you to move the camera, in order to check out the position of the various enemies in a room. As for the D-pad, it lets you move your characters. By moving the cursor on the screen, you can see if your character can move and shoot during the same turn: if the line that appears is gold, then you’re all good!

If it’s blue, then that means your character won’t be able to shoot during the same turn. Therefore, you have to think about your moves very carefully, or your characters will end up as sitting ducks. Firing weapon is a bit special, as it happens in semi-real time: it requires careful aim, and it’s probably going to take some practice before you hit your targets without missing once. Apparently, you can shoot through floors, and enemies certainly won’t stand idle if you happen to miss a shot.

IGN got to play with three characters:

– Pipper: her gun is a bit on the weak side, but it got a very handy sight that can be used to ricochet bullets off of walls;
– Sea Brass uses a hand cannon which is quite formidable at close range, but without its own sight;
– a robotic fish that uses an uzi which got strong recoil, which messes up his aim;

As for enemies, they seem to be quite varied: grunts, snipers, automated turrets, and big burly robot bosses… According to Brjann Sigurgeirsson from Image & Form, each map is procedurally generated, and got multiple pathways. Carefully chosing the classes of your robots will be crucial: an engineer can repair broken pathways and help teammate to reach hidden treasures, for example.

But what happens if one of your characters dies? According to Image & Form, it’s going to be a pretty important event, but it won’t be as bad as perma-death. Indeed, you’ll be able to recruit another version of him later in the game.

SteamWorld Heist (Wii U / 3DS) comes out in August.

Source: IGN