Steamworld Heist | Review

Developer	Publisher	Platform Reviewed	Available on
Image and Form International AB	Image and Form International AB	PS4	PS4, 3DS, XB1, PS Vita, Wii U, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Linux, Mac OS

In Steamworld Heist you play as Piper Faraday, a space pirate who loves to pillage other ships, and in Steamworld Heist this is exactly what you do with the help of your crew. This game does remind me of the TV show Firefly as it's pretty much the same theme in what happens. Pillage and Plunder is the main theme.

Steamworld Heist is a 2D Platformer which is turn based for the most part. When you are on your ship or at one of the stops you're free to run around, however within missions it is turn based between your crew and the enemies.

This turn based part can be slightly annoying, because there are times that to achieve greater distance in your move you have to forego any opportunities you have to take a shot at the enemy. I found sometimes though that this couldn't be avoided and the extra distance was required, you just have to be careful that this doesn't leave you open and vulnerable to attacks.



Mission structure and enemies faced throughout the game are pretty similar for each ship that you adventure too, the only difference is that each ship is randomly generated, so you never know what you're really going to get on a mission to mission basis. The structure is similar so you will know what to do and that will be the same to everyone else, but the ships will be different person to person playing. It's not to say though that you won't get the same levels as someone else but there more than likely not going to be in the same order.

There are exceptions to this where the levels do stay static and these are the boss fights that you take up. The boss do tend to be quite a challenge when they come to it and you are going to need a strong crew as well as a strong strategy for everyone to be able to get out of them unscathed.

Completing missions does mean as well that you will be able to rank up your crews experience (as long as they have made it out alive) to be able to grant them further abilities or give them extra health and movement room.



Another thing that can be earned from missions are rep stars, these will allow you to hire further crew members and improve your chances when you start getting to the harder levels.

I mentioned above about being able to shoot your enemies, shooting within the game is done manually, you select where your shooting by using the thumb sticks. However, your shots have to be accurate, as there is no percentage guide to tell you for kills etc, you just gotta make sure that during your turn you make your shots count, otherwise you could find your self in a big pile with no way out of it.



There are some annoyances with the shooting as sometimes you're having to scroll back and forth across the screen to make sure that the shot you lining up is accurate. It would have been nice to maybe have a zoom out feature for this to make sure that the entire shot is in view, this would have saved a lot of pain.

During missions you will also find a lot of loot to....er.... loot. There is a plentiful amount which is good for trading in and using to get supplies, I would highly recommend trying to get as much as possible during the mission and not just the amount that it tells you (if there is extra available). This will be vital to getting those weapons as well as crew members to make your team the unstoppable machine they can be!



I was pleasantly surprised by the length of the game, it clocks in at around 12 hours, so there is lots for you to do. I was also surprised by how fresh the game was kept in terms of the missions. These type of games I have found in the past to get quite repetitive and boring, but Steamworld Heist was kept fresh and always though of bringing something new to the table, which was a nice change and kept the interest peaked within the game. I think this is something that other Devs could take note of. Platformers I have played over the years, haven't really offered anything new after a couple of hours and the remainder of the games has ended up boring and I have found it hard to finish them, so it is nice to have something that keeps my interest peaked.

The final bonus that I found with this game is that is it a cross buy title, so when you purchase it, you will get it for both PS4 and Vita, and while I haven't tried it on Vita, this does seem the perfect game to play handheld.

A very good game that is kept fresh throughout with lots to do. 8/10