It's quite incredible that Steamworld Dig 2 and Build are different genres yet manage to capture the same meditative core loop. You can sink 4-5 hours into Build without blinking an eye, and I think because it rights two wrongs of the Two Point series (the last city style builder game I played): you've got always something to do, and you're not punished harshly for mistakes made. The freedom and fleixibilty to move buildings around is greatly appreciated.

Beat the first map in about 10 hours and immediately dived into the next one with my understanding the key to success is communist style block development.

City architects are the real heroes!!!

I started with such grand visions of a beautiful, symmetrical city grid, but it quickly spiralled into chaos as I scrambled for resources. Even this city builder is too taxing for my simple brain.

Anyway, this was really cute and satisfying, and even though they are all in different genres, the Steam World brand continues to be tied together by addictive gameplay loops. Things build up so gradually that you don't even notice just how much plate spinning you're actually doing.

I didn't end up finishing my first town as I felt like I had reached my limit of looking at meters fill up (or empty, usually) but I had a fun time nonetheless.

The first SteamWorld game in the post-Image & Form era is a lovingly crafted albeit simple city builder, made by a new team but maintaining the same adventurous spirit of a series that started as a tower defense game but has dabbled in platforming, turn-based strategy and card-based RPG.

The city builder itself is very low stakes and decidedly one note. Any problem is quickly solved by plopping more residents down, adding a new resource building (or using some of the production cards if you're later in the game) and moving things around so everyone stays happy. The game scales up nicely with a variety of resources and industries but doesn't really do much with them aside from just them existing in a pretty world. And don't get me wrong the game is beautiful, the art team knocked it out of the park and really gave the game a SteamWorld feel. There's just very little personal expression to the world you're making. It will very much look the same regardless of playthrough.

The mining sections feel great and I suspect them being procedurally generated has something to do with this. You're constantly expanding and managing everything in a more fun way than you do above ground, and deeper section of the mines adds a lite-rts/tower defense element that makes it so you can't just set it and forget it. Managing multiple floors of the mine against hostile forces is probably the best thing the game has going for it.

But it's frustrating that the game often times feels like a disjointed push/pull between the city building sections above ground and the mining underneath. The entire game feels unbalanced because of this and any progress made underground often comes to a halt by the need to add more resources and money above ground. My first playthrough was longer than normal just because I play these games at a slower tempo but I can see places where I'll breeze through in future scenarios (which don't look all that different).

Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, and while the story wasn't something to write home about I'm at least glad it stayed grounded to what the series has been since the start. I wasn't expecting much in those terms from a city builder but I'm glad it felt nice. I will say not defaulting to steambot voices was a jarring decision. The game has done well with their own unique language.

TL;DR it's a fine game, but fairly one note and simplistic for many people who love city builder primarily.

I was deeply hooked on this from minute 1. The core loop is really satisfying, and I really liked how the mining aspect fed into the city building aspect. I do have a few issues with it, the biggest one being the alert system. The game tells you about major events happening, like an enemy attacking or an imminent mine collapse, but it doesn't give you any way of knowing where those things are happening. Later in the game when you're juggling 3 mine levels at once it becomes really annoying to have to find those things. Similarly, I really liked how there was a strategy to the city building where certain buildings could be removed and replaced because higher tier citizens didn't need them, but it's basically impossible to find those buildings once the city gets to a certain density. A simple list of buildings with a "locate" button would have done wonders. Apart from that though I really loved this.